Former Senate President Bukola Saraki has petitioned the Legal Practitioners’ Privileges Committee (LPPC), urging it to deny the state’s Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Sulyman Ibrahim, the prestigious rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) over allegations of abusing his office’s prosecutorial powers to pursue politically motivated criminal cases.
In the petition, Mr Saraki, a former governor of Kwara State, asked the committee to investigate what he described as Mr Ibrahim’s repeated misuse of prosecutorial powers and to withhold his elevation to the SAN rank pending the outcome of the inquiry.
Mr Saraki’s petition dated 25 May and supported by his affidavit sworn on 9 July, cited two cases of prosecutions he accused Mr Sulyman of launching maliciously against him this year.
One of the cases, according to him, involved alleged “trumped-up” charges the attorney-general instituted against him in April regarding the concluded 2018 Offa, Kwara State, robbery case. In the other case, he said, Mr Ibrahim charged him under the Penal Code for posting on social media that incumbent Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq did not complete his secondary school.
He said the police and the Department of Public Prosecutions of the Federation investigated, prosecuted and had the suspects in the Offa robbery incident jailed, while also clearing him of any connection to the crime.
