In an apparent middle finger to the Nigerian Supreme Court, Attorney General Abubakar Malami has insisted former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is unfit to run for president, claiming he is not a Nigerian.

Mr Abubakr, in 2019 contested in the presidential election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party against President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress. He is seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2023.

When Mr Abubakar challenged the results of 2019 presidential elections, Mr Buhari and APC said the former vice-president was unfit to stand for election in the first place because he was born in Cameroon in the 1940s, before the section of that country was collapsed into Nigeria.

Although the Supreme Court upheld Mr Buhari’s victory, the court, the highest judicial authority in Nigeria, dismissed disputes of Mr Abubakar as unfounded. The judges said Mr Buhari and APC’s lawyers had no basis to question Mr Abubakar’s nationality as a Nigerian.

But Mr Malami, who should be the nation’s top law enforcement official, has now disregarded the position of the Supreme Court, relitigating the matter before a lower court in Abuja and seeking to disqualify Mr Abubakar from running for president again in 2023.

Mr Malami, in an affidavit in support of a suit, marked FHC/ABJ/CS/177/2019 and filed before the Abuja Federal High Court by the Incorporated Trustees of Egalitarian Mission for Africa (EMA), argued that Mr Atiku is not a Nigerian, The Nation reported.

EMA, in 2019, challenged Mr Atiku’s eligibility to run for president on claims that he was a Cameroonian and unfit to run for Nigeria’s president according to the constitution.

EMA demanded that the court considered the provisions of sections 25(1) &(2) and 131(a) of the constitution and the circumstances surrounding his birth.

But Mr Malami, through his legal team, led by Oladipo Okpeseyi, argued that Mr Atiku, 75, is not a citizen by birth and therefore “not a proper person” to contest in a presidential election.

He submitted that “the first defendant (Atiku) is not qualified to contest to be president of the federal republic of Nigeria.”

He further argued that Mr Atiku was born on November 25, 1946, at “Jada, at the time in northern Cameroon.”

“By the plebiscite of 1961, the town of Jada was incorporated into Nigeria,” he stated. “The first defendant is a Nigerian by virtue of the 1961 plebiscite, but not a Nigerian by birth. The first defendant’s parents died before the 1961 plebiscite.

Mr Malami added, “This qualified all those born before the 1961 plebiscIte as citizens of Nigeria, but not Nigerian citizens by birth. Consequently, only citizens born after the 1961 plebiscite are citizens of Nigeria by birth.”

According to the justice minister, who cited the provisions of 1960, 1963, 1979, and 1999 constitutions, the “reasoning of the lawmakers in ensuring that the persons to be the president of Nigeria is a citizen of Nigeria by birth is because such a person is the number one citizen and the image of the Nigerian state.”

He noted further, “This is even more so where his parents do not belong to any tribe indigenous to Nigeria until their death.

“The facts of his (Atiku’s) birth on the Cameroonian territory to Cameroonian parents remain unchallenged.”

Continuing his argument, the justice minister stated regarding Mr Atiku, “At best, the first defendant can only acquire Nigerian citizenship by the 1961 plebiscite.

“The citizenship qualifications under Section 26 and 27 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999), by implication, has limited the first defendant’s privileges or rights and cannot be equal or proportional to the privileges of other citizens who acquire their citizenship status by birth.

“This would include the legal preclusion of the first defendant from contesting the office of the president of Nigeria.”

“if either his parents had become Nigerian citizen by virtue of Section 25(1) of the 1999 Constitution, which must be in compliance with Sections 26 and 27of the same constitution,” he pointed out.

The minister of justice stated that “with no concrete proof of compliance, we submit that the first defendant cannot contest election to the office of the Nigerian President.”

He, therefore, submitted that Mr Atiku committed an offence under section 118(1)(k) of the Electoral Act when he contested and won the office of the vice-president in 1999.

However, Mr Atiku and the PDP, in their notice of objection filed jointly, insisted that he is “a bona fide” Nigerian.

The former presidential candidate argued that his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were born in Nigeria, lived and died as Nigerians.

The judge, Inyang Ekwo, fixed May 4 to hear the suit.

The APC, in 2019, had also argued in a petition that Mr Atiku was not a citizen by birth and unfit to run for president but struck out by the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC).