The Department of State Services (DSS) has dragged a former presidential candidate, Prof. Patrick Utomi, before the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, over allegation of forming a shadow government in the country.
In the charge marked FHC/ABJ/CS/937/2025, the federal government accused Prof. Utomi of attempting to illegally usurp the executive powers of President Bola Tinubu.
According to the DSS, Utomi’s action was capable of destabilising the country as it was intended to create chaos.
The secret police agency said the planned shadow government was not only an aberration but constituted a grave attack on the Constitution and a threat to the democratically elected government that is currently in place.
It told the court that such a structure, styled as a ‘shadow government’, if left unchecked, may incite political unrest, cause intergroup tensions and embolden other unlawful actors or separatist entities to replicate similar parallel arrangements, all of which would pose a grave threat to national security.
Prof. Utomi was listed as the sole defendant in the legal action the DSS filed through a team of lawyers led by Mr. Akinlolu Kehinde, SAN.
Among other reliefs, the plaintiff prayed the court to declare the purported “shadow government” or “shadow cabinet” being planned by the defendant and his associates as “unconstitutional as it amounts to an attempt to create a parallel authority not recognized by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended).”
It prayed the court to declare that under Sections 1(1), 1(2) and 14(2)(a) of the Constitution, “the establishment or operation of any governmental authority or structure outside the provisions of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended). is unconstitutional, null, and void.”
The plaintiff further wanted the court to issue an order of perpetual injunction, restraining Prof. Utomi, his agents and associates from “further taking any steps towards the establishment or operation of a ‘shadow government,’ ‘shadow cabinet’ or any similar entity not recognized by the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended).”
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