The Court of Appeal has dismissed the report of the resignation of a member of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), Justice Moses Ugo, describing it as false and misleading.
Speaking to newsmen on Thursday in Abuja, the Chief Registrar of the Court, Mr Umar Bangari, dismissed the report and appealed to the general public to ignore the fake news in its entirety.
According to him, there is no iota of truth in the report.
The chief registrar explained that Justice Ugo was still on the panel of justices of the court handling the petitions by the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Labour Party (LP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
He faulted the report, saying neither his office nor the information department of the court was contacted before dishing out what he called a false report.
The Labour Party and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi and PDP alongside Abubakar Atiku are before the court challenging the declaration of Tinubu as president.
The news of the purported resignation of Justice Ugo from the bench, citing demands “to kneecap democracy”, broke in the early hours of Thursday and spread rapidly on the internet.
The online report stated that Justice Ugo resigned from the bench, citing demands from the executive branch that he believed would destroy the country’s democracy.
The online platform that carried the report said Justice Ugo alleged that siding with the government on the petitions challenging the election of President Bola Tinubu would be the “death of Nigeria’s democracy”.
He reportedly said that he could not in good conscience remain silent.
According to the judges’ purported statement, he was asked to “cripple the independence of the judiciary” by ruling in favor of a certain political candidate, whom he did not name.
He was also said to have alleged that he was asked to suppress evidence and dismiss cases that could have an impact on the election.
