A presidential spokesman, Mallam Garba Shehu, said on Sunday in Abuja that it was wrong to assume that the CJN had been removed from office or permanently replaced as being spread in some quarters.
He said Onnoghen was only suspended from office, pending the final determination of the cases against him.
Shehu, who is the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, said it was not correct for the U.S., UK and the EU to link the suspension of Onnoghen to the forthcoming general elections in Nigeria.
He stated that the countries involved in the issuance of the statements might have been misinformed on the facts surrounding the case of Onnoghen.
The statement read in parts: “Despite these errors and omissions by the CJN, let us make this very clear, he has not been removed from office. Nor has he been permanently replaced.
“Those who claim that he has been permanently removed, do so out of imprecision of thought or mischief.
“CJN Onnoghen has been suspended pending the final determination of the substantive issues in his matter. The suspension is only temporary. This is only as it should be. He cannot sit as both defendant and umpire in his own matter. No legal system allows for such self-interested adjudication; the US, UK and EU should not now ask us to embrace such an anomaly,’’ he said.
He said that while the three friends seemed to give much credence to those who question the constitutionality of the suspension, they seemed to give less to those who believe what we did is constitutional and protective of the integrity of the judiciary.
“Last, the three make a curious direct linkage between the CJN suspension and the elections.
“However, in Nigerian law there is no such linkage. The CJN does not run the election. Nor is he the first arbiter of any electoral complaints.
“He and the Supreme Court will only get involved as the final arbiter at the end of the appellate process,’’ he said.
Shehu, therefore, condemned the assertion that the CJN’s suspension had a link to the forthcoming general elections.