ACN DISMISSES ALLEGED SALAMI'S MTN CALL LOGS
THE Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has dismissed the alleged MTN call logs insinuating a deal between ACN chieftains/lawyers and Justice Ayo Salami, as contained in the petitions by Messrs. Segun Oni and Osun Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Sunday Ojo-Williams. The ACN considered the call logs as ''selective perception,'' designed to muddle the waters.
The ACN warned the PDP and the colluding top Federal Government officials not to throw Nigeria into an avoidable crisis over their desperation to reverse the Appeal Court judgments on the Ekiti and Osun governorship election petitions.
In a statement issued in Abeokuta, Ogun State yesterday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the Appeal Court judgments in the cases were final, irrespective of what the ousted governors were being told by their advisers or the buttons they were pressing at the Federal Government level.
''Despite the clandestine meetings in the highest echelon of the PDP and also involving some top officials of the Federal Government, the PDP cannot re-write the Nigerian Constitution just because the rulings in these cases did not favour them. Heavens did not fall when other parties lost to the PDP in many other election petition cases.
'And heavens will not fall now that the PDP has lost the cases in Ekiti and Osun, where the rigging party did not win anyway.
'As we said earlier, the cases are not final because they are infallible, but they are infallible because they are final. The sooner the PDP understands this, the better for everyone. There is no point trying to bring down the entire judiciary just because they lost cases they could not have won on the strength of the available evidence,'' it said.
ACN warned however that should the PDP think it could re-open the cases and overturn the judgments, then it should be ready for an epic battle, the end of which no one could predict, and the consequences of which could only be imagined.
''We have the strength of character, the courage and the conviction to mount a sustained campaign in defence of justice, and in defence of our mandate. We will not surrender a mandate freely given to us by the people, which was evident in the massive jubilation that greeted the rulings of the Appeal Court in both Ekiti and Osun states,'' the party said.
The party continued: ''If the petitioners and their sponsors want to really convince Nigerians about their allegations, they should be courageous enough to publish all the call logs of Justice Salami during the period in question, so that all can see all the calls that Justice Salami received during the period.
''The fact that Justice Salami is the President of the Court of Appeal does not mean he will not have a social life, or that people can no longer call him. Can't his friends, acquaintances or others even call to invite him to social sessions like weddings, birthdays and burials? Do such calls - even if they are from party members - automatically translate to seeking undue favour? Why publish only calls from a few people when all the call logs during that period should have been published for all to see? This selective perception will not help the petitioners in their lost cause,'' ACN said.