Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, on Sunday afternoon waded into the raging battle for the Abia State governor’s seat, advising the various parties to wait for the pronouncement of the courts.

The country’s chief law officer in a statement issued in Abuja and signed by his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Comrade Salihu Othman Isah, dismissed “the insinuations and crass lies being peddled and disseminated by a cross-section of Nigerians and the various media platforms” that he “is behind the legal logjam over the Abia State governorship seat.”

The statement said: “Of particular concern are those who have peddled ill-natured rumours with a view to misinform our discerning populace that the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation and by extension, the Federal Government of Nigeria that gave directives to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to issue Certificate of Return to Dr. Uchechukwu Ogah declaring him Governor-Elect. He has definitely not taken any action either by spoken words or body language as far as this Abia governorship crisis is concerned.

I wish to therefore, on behalf of my principal declare that these rumours are untrue and a figment of the imagination of those pushing these selfish, shameless and irredeemable lies into public space which only translates to partisanship on the side of its purveyors.

“As far as the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation is concerned, the constitutional powers for the legal opinion of his office have not been invoked on this issue. So far, nobody has approached him to proffer any legal opinion to it. As a strong believer in the rule of law, it is his belief that the law should naturally take its cause. The Honourable Attorney General of the Federation will not be dragged into this controversy and mind-games being played out by the various legal minds and spin doctors of both camps at this point.

“The parties involved should await the decision of the courts.

In fact, we wish to by this statement advice those in the habit of dragging the highly esteemed “Office of the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice into knotty issue of this kind even when it is yet to take a position. They should desist from these unwarranted presumptions henceforth.”

•Photo shows AGF, Abubakar Malami, SAN, fielding questions from newsmen.

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