The Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, has taken Dame Pauline Tallen, Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, to a Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja High Court, asking the court to bar her from holding any public office in the country.
In the suit, the NBA accused the Minister of inciting persons to defy a court of competent jurisdiction.
It was said that the minister labeled a Federal High Court decision that fired the country’s lone female governorship candidate, Aishatu Binani, as a “kangaroo judgment” in a speech she gave at a public occasion.
It was observed that the verdict, handed on October 14, was in a complaint filed against the All Progressives Congress, APC, by Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, a former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
“The verdict that sacked Aishatu Binani, the country’s only female governorship candidate, is a kangaroo judgment that should be repudiated by well-meaning Nigerians,” the Minister allegedly remarked in response to the judgment. The court has ruled that the party does not have a candidate. This is intolerable. It’s a kangaroo decision, but we’re not giving up.”
According to NBA, the minister made the declaration on the occasion of the First Global Reunion and Annual General Meeting of the Federal Government Girls’ College, Bida Old Girls Association in Abuja on October 15, 2022.
It is asking the court to rule that the Minister’s remark was “unconstitutional, thoughtless, reckless, insulting, a call to defy the court’s verdict, and so disrespectful of the Federal High Court of Nigeria.”
It also requests that the court “declare that the defendant is thereby unfit to hold or continue to hold the office of the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development of the Federal Government of Nigeria, or any public office of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, by virtue of the aforesaid statement of the defendant referring to the judgment of the court as ‘kangaroo.'”
NBA also requests that the court order the defendant to publish a personally signed apology letter to Nigerians and the Judiciary on a full page of two national dailies; and an order of perpetual injunction barring the defendant from holding any public office in Nigeria as a result of her ignoble conduct unless she purges herself of the ignoble conduct by publishing a written apology that must be published in each of the dailies.”