Nigerian Concord Newspaper
A Social Media influencer, Emmanuel Adi has condemned a misleading media report by one of Governor Hyacinth Alia’s publicists, Deneh Achussah titled Like Aondoakaa, Like Gusa where he tried to mislead the public about the official activities of the People’s Democratic Party Governorship candidate, Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN as the Minister for Justice and Attorney General of the Federation.
In his reaction through a media note , Emmanuel Adi described Achussah’s report as a case of political misinterpretation and legal ignorance.
The media note reads below:
Mr. Denen Achussah’s attempt to draw a political parallel between former Attorney-General of the Federation, Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN, and former Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Benue State, Barr. Michael Gusa, is nothing more than a politically motivated distortion of the constitutional responsibilities of public legal officers.
It is important to remind Mr. Achussah that an Attorney-General does not occupy his office as a representative of his village, ward, local government or ethnic group. He occupies a constitutional office and takes an oath to discharge his duties in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of the land.
Under Section 150 of the 1999 Constitution, the Attorney-General of the Federation is the Chief Law Officer of the Federation. Similarly, Section 195 establishes the Attorney-General of a State as the Chief Law Officer of that State. The Attorney-General therefore acts in the legal interest of the government and the public interest, not as a community advocate merely because a matter happens to concern people from his locality.
More importantly, Sections 174 and 211 of the Constitution empower the Federal and State Attorneys-General respectively to institute, take over, continue or discontinue criminal proceedings, while expressly requiring them to have regard to the public interest, the interest of justice and the prevention of abuse of legal process. That is the constitutional reality which Mr. Achussah conveniently ignores.
When Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN, served as Attorney-General of the Federation, he did so as the Federal Government’s Chief Law Officer. His office was consequently responsible for representing and protecting the legal interests of the Federal Government in matters in which the Federation was a party or had an interest.
It is therefore intellectually dishonest to suggest that because some of the victims in a particular case were Tiv, a Tiv Attorney-General was expected to abandon his constitutional responsibility and act as their personal or ethnic representative.
The Federal Ministry of Justice itself describes the Attorney-General’s mandate as including the representation of the Federal Government in legal matters and the representation or supervision of its representation in proceedings in which the Federal Government is a party or has an interest.
Mr. Achussah should therefore tell Nigerians whether he expects a Federal Attorney-General to disregard his constitutional responsibilities simply because the opposing litigants happen to come from his ethnic group.
THE SAME PRINCIPLE APPLIES TO MICHAEL GUSA
Barr. Michael Gusa , as Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice of Benue State, was equally the State’s Chief Law Officer, not Attorney-General of Gwer East, not Attorney-General of Taraku, and certainly not Attorney-General of any particular ethnic or political constituency.
If the Benue State Government was a party to litigation, the responsibility of its Attorney-General was to provide legal representation and advice to the government within the framework of the law.
An appeal, by itself, is not proof of hatred for judgment creditors. An appeal is a constitutionally recognised legal mechanism through which a dissatisfied party seeks appellate review of a judicial decision.
Mr. Achussah should know this, or, at the very least, should have consulted a lawyer before constructing an entire political argument around such a basic misunderstanding of litigation.
Mr. Achussah’s assertion that “it was left to the administration of Fr. Alia to eventually pay the Taraku Mills workers” is presented as though the matter began and ended with a benevolent political decision by the present administration.
The publicly available court records and reports tell a more complicated story.
In 2020, the National Industrial Court ordered Fidelity Bank and the Benue State Government to pay about ₦1.4 billion in respect of claims involving 210 former Taraku Mills workers/creditors. The court also issued enforcement orders against Fidelity Bank.
Earlier, in 2016, the National Industrial Court had also ordered the Benue State Government to pay ₦989 million to 210 former Taraku Mills workers, with the court making further orders concerning Fidelity Bank and enforcement of the judgment.
Therefore, it is grossly misleading to reduce a long-running judgment-debt and enforcement dispute into the convenient political slogan that “Alia paid the workers” while portraying previous legal action as evidence of wickedness.
If Mr. Achussah has documentary evidence showing that all the affected Taraku Mills workers were paid by the Alia administration, let him publish the payment schedule, beneficiaries, dates, amounts and the legal authority under which each payment was made.
If, as available court proceedings suggest, payments or enforcement were tied to particular court orders and claims involving Fidelity Bank, then Nigerians deserve the complete facts, not a campaign narrative manufactured to score cheap political points.
What is particularly curious is that Mr. Achussah has suddenly discovered a passion for accountability when discussing former PDP officials, yet appears remarkably less interested in demanding accountability from the government currently controlling the resources of Benue State.
If his concern is genuinely the welfare of Benue people, let him deploy the same energy to ask the Alia administration fundamental questions about the State’s finances, federal allocations, internally generated revenue, grants, loans and other inflows received over the past three years.
Let him ask:
How much has accrued to Benue State since June 2023, how much has been received from the Federation Account and other sources, how much has been spent, on what projects, and with what verifiable results, how much does the State still owe in outstanding judgment debts and workers’ entitlements, what is the present status of the Taraku Mills workers’ claims?
These are the questions that matter to ordinary Benue citizens.
Mr. Achussah’s intervention appears less like an objective assessment of Benue’s legal history and more like an attempt to smear two accomplished lawyers and PDP stakeholders at a time when the opposition party is rebuilding its structures and gaining political momentum across the state.
Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, SAN, does not need to be introduced to the Nigerian legal community. Neither does Barr. Michael Gusa need to be defended through a distorted interpretation of the constitutional office he once occupied.
What Mr. Achussah has written does not establish that either man betrayed his community. At best, it demonstrates a fundamental failure to distinguish between personal/community representation and constitutional responsibility.
The people of Benue deserve political arguments based on facts, records and verifiable evidence, not ethnic insinuations, selective history and convenient half-truths.