One time Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Alfa Belgore has debunked media report which alleged that he is influencing some of the Judges handling the assets falsification case against the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, for a soft landing.

Belgore accused a foreign online newspaper publication, in an interview with Leadership, of smearing his name that he was using his status as a former CJN to arrange a soft landing for the embattled Senate President who has been facing a 13-count criminal charge at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT, in Abuja.

Reacting to the allegation, Justice Belgore said, “The whole thing is a very big lie. I have known Saraki perhaps since he was a boy. When the father was marrying, I attended the wedding in London. I never knew the father was from Ilorin. I thought he was from Mid-West. It was because of the woman he was marrying that I attended, who was a Law student then.”

The former CJN recounted that he knew the late Dr. Olusola Saraki, a former Senate Leader and late father of the current Senate President in the 1960s after he was introduced to him by a late friend when he was on leave in Lagos.

“Saraki was working in a General Hospital in Lagos; he was not yet in politics at all. When I went there, Bukola was just about a year and two months old. He came out and I picked him. But, otherwise, since Saraki entered politics, I had very little to do with him”.

Justice Belgore said that as people of Ilorin origin, his family and that of the Sarakis do meet alongside other families of Ilorin extraction on what he described as family and traditional matters, stressing that, “Many people write about me, and the majority of people that know me, when they read anything wrong, they just laugh, they don’t believe, it was just rubbish.”

Justice Belgore further stated that since the online media published that story not a few prominent Nigerians have expressed concerns over the unprofessional conduct of the said online media outfit, describing it as mischievous aimed at tarnishing his image.

The former CJN also said he has enemies in life but he has chosen to ignore the masterminds of the malicious publication. “I don’t quarrel with anybody, but of course as a judge I did my duty according to what the law says,” he declared.