Lukman Olabiyi, Lagos
The Open Bar Initiative (OBI), a voluntary advocacy and justice initiative for lawyers, has dared Kaduna Governor Mallam Nasir El-Rufai to file a defamation suit over various allegations it has levelled against him.
The group was among those who wrote a petition against the Governor which led to the exclusion of El-Rufai as one of the keynote speakers in the forthcoming virtual conference of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA).
The National Executive Committee of the NBA at a pre-Annual General Conference (AGC) took the decision on Thursday to remove the Governor as speaker following the outcry by some lawyers and groups which include the OBI.
And following the NBA decision, El-Rufai in a press release issued by his spokesman, Muyiwa Adekeye, stated that the defamatory statements in the petition against him were another matter entirely, and the petitioners would receive the appropriate response from him.
However, in its reaction to the Governor’s statement, the group, on social media, dared El-Rufai to go ahead with his threat.
OBI posted on Twitter: ‘At best, this is laughable. Even at a time that he is expected to be sombre, he is dishing out threats for an imaginative “defamation”. Well, bring it on, the Courtroom will not contain the lawyers for the Defendant & more will be revealed about him. Shame! @ChidiOdinkalu @sjonu.’