Bola Tinubu, a national leader of
the All Progressives Congress (APC), says a permanent discipline awaits Walter
Onnoghen, former chief justice of Nigeria (CJN), if he is found guilty of the
false declaration charges levelled against him.
Tinubu said this while responding
to the position of Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP), on the suspension.
In a state of the nation address,
Atiku accused President Muhammadu Buhari of clamping down on the judiciary.
But Tinubu said if the charges
against Onnoghen turned out to be wrong or unproven, he would be automatically
reinstated as the head of the judiciary.
“President Buhari conditionally
suspended the CJN. By doing so, this allows for the case to move forward
without the CCT or others fearing the CJN might use his position to unduly
interfere with proceedings. If the CJN is exonerated, then he will return to
his position. If not exonerated, then a more permanent discipline awaits him,”
he said.
Tinubu accused Atiku of
misleading the public that Buhari removed Onnoghen from office even though he
knew that the president suspended him.
He wondered why Atiku was
defending a “jurist who has enjoyed the sweet but hidden benefits of several
million dollars of mystery money passing through his secret bank accounts even
when discovered, these accounts held several hundred thousands of dollars in
them”.
He said left to Atiku, Onnoghen
should not be investigated despite the weighty allegations levelled against him.
Below is the statement:
The PDP’s presidential candidate,
former Vice President Atiku, recently made comments regarding suspension of CJN
Onnoghen. Atiku’s release is entitled “State of the nation address”. I
encourage everyone to read it. In its disregard for the truth and patent
misrepresentations, it will go down in political history as a classic of
self-incrimination. Atiku thinks the piece exalts him. Instead it evinces his
penchant for wilful misstatement that make him unfit for the office he now seeks
and has always coveted.
In the statement, he claims to
have dedicated all his life to the defense of democracy. Those of you who know
him, and even those who don’t, know this is not true. If all of his life has
been dedicated to support for democracy, then he is far too young to run for
president; however, I must congratulate him for having somehow managed to find
or begin a second life. This rebirth as a defender of democracy must have taken
place only a few short hours ago.
His previous life of over seventy
years was one of skirting democracy and of blatant impunity in attempting to
enshrine reactionary government and installing an unjust political economy on
the backs of the people.
In his address, he claims the
nation has entered a difficult moment. To my dear and good friend Atiku, I say
the difficulty is not so much with the moment but with your memory.
When you lorded over Nigeria in
tandem with President Obasanjo, there were myriad court orders mandating that
your government render to Lagos state the funds due it to improve the lives of
its millions of inhabitants. Instead, you gladly and without dispute joined
Obasanjo in utter disregard for these unambiguous legal verdicts. In so doing,
you demeaned the rule of law. You also readily sacrificed the economic
development and welfare of millions of innocent people in Lagos just to gain
some illicit political advantage that proved to be fleeting and of no avail to
you in the end.
You now speak of democracy and
the need for executive restraint. But such verbal finery never crossed your
lips or traversed your pen when you and Obasanjo improperly removed Senate
Presidents more easily than a trendy cad exchanges a pair of shoes or changes
the subject of his false affections. Your love for democracy is such that you
were recently observed apologising to the PDP for not rigging the Lagos 2003
gubernatorial polls as you did the polls in the other Southwestern states.
Instead of repenting for rigging
at least five states too many, your expressed regret was that you had not
rigged enough; that you rigged one state less than the complete mauling of
democracy your party and your principal had mandated. Regarding such a destructive
love as this, I am sure democracy and fair elections would rather do without.
A few weeks ago in a televised
broadcast you even revealed to the people that your official policy envisioned
the base enrichment of your friends should you achieve the presidency.
I must assume that your lifetime
as a defender of democracy began after this long record of unjust deeds and
even after your latest statement of intent to mould Nigeria into an oligarchy.
If this is not the case and if all these things you have done and said are
consistent with your current notion of democracy, then there is but one
conclusion. The democracy you now claim to support remains a rather strange
breed of democracy, such as to be nigh indistinguishable from the regressive,
rentier political economy you designed and foisted on Nigeria as the crafty
lieutenant of the bullish Obasanjo.
Strange that you would choose to
depict the current situation so inaccurately as to stir emotions unduly. You
claim that CJN Onnoghen has been removed. However, this is not so. He has been
temporarily suspended. You and your advisors should know and recognize the vast
legal difference between “suspension” and “removal.” Yet you persist in
conflating the two in what you say is a pursuit of justice. While true you may
be in pursuit of something. It is not justice.
If justice was your goal, you
would acknowledge that the CJN has only been temporarily suspended not
permanently removed. Thus, your recourse to saying that the president violated
the constitutional provision regarding the removal of a CJN is inaccurate in
that Buhari never intended to remove the CJN. What he has done is to have the
CJN temporarily get out of his chair so that the serious matters against him
can be heard by someone other than himself. Should the charges show themselves
to be wrong or unproven, the CJN will be automatically reinstated as the head
of the Nigerian judiciary. However, for Atiku to state that the CJN should
remain on seat while credible and grave charges swirl around him is to put the
entire workings of the Supreme Court under a heavy cloud.
It is ironic that Atiku of all
people throw such darts at President Buhari. Buhari actually exercised
considerable restraint in this matter. He has reasonably balanced concerns
about the integrity of the judiciary with concerns for the individual rights of
the accused. Nothing has been taken from the CJN that cannot be restored if the
facts warrant such restoration. Thus, President Buhari conditionally suspended
the CJN. By doing so, this allows for the case to move forward without the CCT
or others fearing the CJN might use his position to unduly interfere with
proceedings. If the CJN is exonerated, then he will return to his position. If
not exonerated, then a more permanent discipline awaits him.
This is an imminently fair and
balanced approach, especially given the fact that the constitution and other
laws really do not provide clear and unambiguous guidance in how to proceed in
a case whether the CJN is the defendant under this unique fact pattern. While
Atiku rails against Buhari because of this act of restraint, we can but imagine
the tack Chief Obasanjo and Atiku would have taken if they presided over this
situation. By now, they would have put CJN Onnoghen in the stocks or shipped
him off to that infamous farm in Ota where he would have begun his new career
in plucking poultry.
It is curious that Atiku would
take up the marker of a jurist who has enjoyed the sweet but hidden benefits of
several million dollars of mystery money passing through his secret bank
accounts, Even when discovered, these accounts held several hundred thousands
of dollars in them.
Someone in Atiku’s position would
normally be wary of a judge thusly tainted. A politician in Atiku’s position
should more objectively be concerned that the government would have been the
source of the hidden funds or that government would use the fact of the
clandestine money as leverage against the judge to make sure he did
government’s bidding for surely this a jurist highly compromised by pecuniary
indiscretion. It is almost unnatural that an opposition candidate would
champion the soiled cause of such a judge who seems to have sold something in
exchange for the money found in his vest’s secret pockets.
Yet, Atiku now cries the
anguished cry of a man who thought he had won the lottery only to find he had
misread the last number on his claim ticket. Or perhaps these are the tears of
a man who thought he had invested in a sure deal only to see the reason for the
investment evaporate before his very eyes. Now, Atiku and his cohort seek to
turn their personal disappointment into a burning national issue. They seek to
manufacture a constitutional crisis where none exists.
They said they suspended their
campaign because of this matter. Here, they are as illogical as illogic can
beget. By suspending their campaign, did that mean they were permanently ending
it? Of course not! That would be a boycott or the permanent “removal” of the
campaign. No, they have resumed their campaign after temporarily suspending it.
If they know the meaning of suspend in this regard, only malign intent allows
them to feign ignorance to the meaning of the word “suspend” when applied to
CJN Onnoghen.
There is no need to quake at the
solitary incident of the interim suspension of a justice pending the legal
resolution of serious criminal claims against him. If this matter is shorn of
the political trappings it has acquired, there is no fairer way to handle the
matter.
Atiku, I gather, would rather
leave the man in seat and allow the charges against him to go unattended. Or
Atiku would rather that the CJN preside over his own trial. Such is the logical
conclusion of Atiku’s position. It is an odd bravery that would lead Atiku to
stake such a position. If Atiku is as oddly courageous as he now depicts, then
let him venture a step further. Pray tell, let Atiku tell us what good and
precious thing he and the PDP rendered that they cannot even countenance the
temporary and conditional suspension of a single jurist until the charges of
illegality against the man have been fully resolved in open proceedings
conducted by his judicial peers.
Atiku claims to be a democrat and
defender of democracy, but where was he, his voice and action during Abacha’s
suffocating maximum rule? Was he not a member and cheer-leader of one of the
five Abacha parties aptly described then as five leprous fingers of Abacha? Did
he even have the courage to visit his mentor, late Major General Shehu Musa Yar
Ádua, in jail for fear of Abacha stopping him from running for the governorship
of Adamawa?
Dare Atiku say what is really
upsetting him and what he really is hiding in his attempt to cloak his lifetime
of undemocratic reckonings in the swaddling of this much too belated democratic
second birth he now claims for himself.
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com