No fewer than 500 private legal practitioners have volunteered to defend Nasir Gawuna, the Kano governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, at the Supreme Court.

Joseph Onwudiwe, a spokesperson for the lawyers under the aegis of the Guardians of Democracy and Rule of Law, stated this at a news conference in Abuja on Tuesday.

Mr Onwudiwe said the gesture was to enhance the country’s democracy.

“Nigerians have observed keenly the situation unfolding in Kano state regarding the March 18 governorship election. As a group saddled with the onerous responsibility of safeguarding our democratic ethos and values, we are no longer comfortable with the unwarranted attacks on the judiciary,” Mr Onwudiwe explained. “And certain moves to blackmail the court into giving backing to wanton electoral malfeasance and vote heist.”

He added, “We will no longer fold our arms as lawyers and watch the judiciary be continuously harangued and the temple of justice desecrated by a group of people who failed to perfect an electoral heist.”

Mr Onwudiwe applauded the sound reasoning that resonated in the judgments of the tribunal and the Court of Appeal. He said the judgments aligned with the yearnings and aspirations of the majority of Kano people as expressed in the valid number of votes cast in the March 18 Kano governorship election.

He said the group was not surprised that Governor Abba Yusuf and his agents had become insistent in selling propaganda in the name of a contradiction in the CTC of the Appeal Court judgment.

“Nigerians will have nothing but pity for a party in a suit who finds no premise upon which to launch a successful appeal against a judgment backed by law and fact. May we repeat here that the judgment of the Court of Appeal on this case was a very straightforward one which rightly dismissed the appeal of Abba Yusuf and upheld his sack by the tribunal,” he said.

Mr Onwudiwe said the courts envisaged clerical errors in judgment and, therefore, embedded in their handbook and rules, enactments that empowered it to vary its judgement to reflect original intentions.

Mr Onwudiwe urged Nigerians not to cave into the misleading narrative being pushed by the agents of Mr Yusuf, who were grasping at the clerical error on page 67 of the CTC of the Court of Appeal judgment.

He said this was geared to bring the justices who delivered sound judgment to public disrepute, stressing that the importance of the judiciary in keeping the country’s democracy alive could not be overemphasised.

“We are with the judiciary and we assure them of our unflinching support as they move to save Nigeria’s democracy from vote riggers and election fraudsters.

“We must sanitise our electoral system now and build a strong democratic wall against vote inflation and other electoral malfeasance,” said Mr Onwudiwe.

(NAN)