ROTIMI AMAECHI | Buhari Partial, Against rule of Law

ROTIMI AMAECHI | Buhari Partial, Against rule of Law

Justices Inyang Okoro and Justice Sylvester Ngwuta of the Supreme Court had, in sepa­rate letters to the Chief Justice of Nigeria after their arrest by the Department of State Servic­es (DSS), traced their ordeals to Amaechi, for declining to influ­ence the court’s judgement in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidates in the Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Abia and Ekiti states’ governorship elections as allegedly demand­ed by the minister.

In a reaction to the Justices’ allegations, the PDP on Sunday accused President Muhammadu Buhari of encouraging injustice by refusing to order the arrest and prosecution of Amaechi.

The opposition party said the allegations from different quar­ters were too grievous for the President to ignore.

It stated that “this is a con­firmation that the President is against justice and the rule of law.”

The party said that the Jus­tices’ ordeals in the hands of the DSS were the fulfillment of a se­ries of threats by the President, Amaechi and the APC National Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun.

In a statement by its spokes­man, Prince Dayo Adeyeye, the PDP said that its attention was drawn to “another letter writ­ten to the Chief Justice of Nige­ria (CJN) and Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC), Justice Mahmud Mohammed, dated 18th of October, 2016, in which Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Nwali Sylvester Ngwuta, accused former gov­ernor of Rivers State and now Minister of Transport, Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, the former governor of Abia State and now Minister of Science and Technol­ogy, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu and President Muhammadu Buha­ri on their involvement and hot pursuit to induce and subvert jus­tice in favour of the APC gover­norship candidates of Rivers State and that of the Labour Party in Ebonyi State who was to switch to APC if he had claimed victory at the Appeal Court.

“This latest allegation is an­other indictment on the Execu­tive arm of government and the serial complicity and involve­ment of the President, mem­bers and leaders of his party, the APC, the DSS, especially, the former governor of Rivers State who has been mentioned twice in both petitions written by the Honourable Justices of the Su­preme Court within a few hours’ interval.”

Adeyeye said that the PDP is not surprised that President Bu­hari is mentioned in the letter by Justice Ngwuta because the Pres­ident has left no stone unturned to confirm the fact that he detests the judiciary and the rule of law as seen in his body language and actions since he assumed office.

He recalled that President Buhari, sometime in February, displayed actions that showed that he hates the judiciary.

Quoting Buhari, the PDP said: “On the fight against cor­ruption vis-à-vis the Judiciary, Nigerians will be right to say that is my main headache for now. In my first attempt in 2003, I end­ed up at the Supreme Court and for 13 months I was in court. The second attempt in 2007, I was in court close to 20 months and in 2011, my third attempt, I was also in court for nine months. All these cases went up to the Supreme Court until the fourth time in 2015, when God agreed that I will be President of Nige­ria.”

The party also recalled the statement of Odigie-Oye­gun, shortly after the Supreme Court Judgment in Rivers and Akwa Ibom states gubernatori­al elections that, “I still find the judgment on the Rivers State governorship election totally astonishing. There is something fundamentally wrong in the ju­diciary. We have lost very im­portant resource-rich states to the PDP. No matter how crude oil prices have fallen, it is still the most important revenue earn­er for the country. There is obvi­ously something fundamental­ly wrong in Rivers State which needs to be investigated and ad­dressed.”

The PDP said that from Bu­hari and Odigie-Oyegun’s state­ments, “it is obvious that the judiciary can be said to have functioned appropriately only when they and their party win a case. Otherwise, the judiciary must be punished. How ridicu­lous!”

“On this note, it has become clearer that the present ordeals of judges in the hands of President Buhari’s DSS are the fulfillment of series of threats by President Buhari, Hon. Amaechi and Odi­gie-Oyegun.”

“Consequently, we wish to sadly conclude that Nigeria’s de­mocracy is indeed in grave dan­ger. It therefore appears that we have returned to the barracks’ rule through the ballot.