Jigawa Attorney-General sues NBA, others over probe panel report

Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General of Jigawa State, Dr. Musa Aliyu, has sued the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), its President, Mr. Olumide Akpata, and five others over implementation of its fact-finding committee report.

In the suit dated November 9, 2021, the plaintiff, through his counsel, Abdurrahman Abdullahi, prays the court to set aside the report and stop the implementation against the plaintiff.

The report was said to have indicted the Attorney-General for abuse of office, after a petition was written against him by two staff of the Jigawa State Ministry of Justice, Nuhu Tafida and Adamu Mukhtar.

Aliyu averred that the committee lacked the power to investigate him or assume the disciplinary powers of the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC).

Other defendants in the suit are John Aikpokpo-Martins, Godwin Omoka (SAN), Ahmed Uwais, Mustapha Imam and Abdulrahman El-Ibrani.The plaintiff wants the court to determine whether, in the Light of Rules 2 and 4 of the LPDC Rules 2020, the first defendant’s committee chaired by the third defendant, with the fourth to seventh defendants as members, has the same powers as the LPDC to entertain and determine a complaint submitted to it against the claimant to the extent of finding him to have conducted himself in a manner unbecoming of a legal practitioner in the course of his undue interference in the affairs of Dutse.

He also sought, among others, to know whether the defendants have power to direct, interfere and meddle with the constitutional functions and powers of the claimant enshrined in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended) in his capacity as the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Jigawa State, under the guise of a mandate given to a fact-finding committee set up by the third defendant.