The Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) has expressed shock over the reopening of investigation by the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF) and the Inspector General of Police (IGP) into the alleged forgery of the Senate Standing Rule, which is pending before the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.
The CLO, in a statement by Comrade Ibuchukwu Ezike, protested that the declaration as “inconclusive” by the Office of the AGF, the investigation upon which it had earlier claimed to have concluded and preferred criminal charges against the Senate’s presiding Officers and two others, beats the group’s imagination. “This is so given the fact that the AGF had earlier tendered an Affidavit of Conclusion of Investigation deposed to, on oath, by Mr. Okara Neji Jonah, Litigation Officer of the Federal Ministry of Justice, avowing that the Police Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department had “concluded investigation of the case and has forwarded the file to the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation for Prosecution,” CLO declared.
Ezike considered it unfortunate that at the resumed hearing of the case at the Federal High Court, Abuja, the AGF and his team could not prepare their reply to the written Summons over 90 days they were served with the document. As a result, the court could not sit on the matter nor the Senate whose members were in court in solidarity with their leaders, he noted. “While the leaders of the country are supposed to sit down to plan how to proffer solutions to revamp the ailing economy that is causing monumental hardship on the citizens, principal state actors are clad in a clannish legal duel that consume their legitimate time of national service,” he stated.
“This is worrisome as the whole exercise smacks of a desperation by the Presidency to cripple and pocket the federal legislature, the nation’s hallowed institution of democracy, by every means possible,” Ezike declared.
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The CLO observed that the reopening of investigation by the AGF and IGP appears to corroborate the position of the Senate that the names of the accused persons were politically generated as names of the Senate President, Dr. Olusola Saraki, and his Deputy, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, could not in any way be related to the Proof of Evidence, including petition by members of the Senate Unity Forum, statements by persons interrogated by the Police, and the police report itself, as their names appeared nowhere in the documents nor any wrongdoing linked to them.
Following the argument overleaf, CLO assumed that the Office of the AGF and Ministry of Justice have committed perjury, having earlier deposed to an Affidavit on Oath, to the effect that investigation had been concluded on the allegation and water-tight case established against the accused men, only to turn round to reopen investigation on the same matter that investigation, hitherto, by their oath, had been concluded.
CLO recalled that Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court, Abuja, ruled on June 28, 2016, that the prosecution of the Presiding Officers and two others by the AGF, who was, until his appointment as a Minister, was a legal counsel to the Respondents in the suit challenging the constitutionality of Executive’s meddlesomeness in the internal affairs of the Senate without allowing the court to determine the legality of the police investigation/report, was “a gross abuse of legal process and an action taken in desperate haste”.
This obscene manipulation of the machinery of justice to subvert the foundations of democracy, prioritise the will or rule of man over the rule of law, and indeed reduce our hard-won democracy to a civilian junta is very worrisome, CLO contended.
“CLO is disturbed by these anti-democratic practices because we were one of the organisations that led the struggle that wrested powers from military and restored democracy to Nigeria with huge prices in human and material resources,” Ezike declared.
CLO lamented that instead of wearing the thinking caps to cogitate and plan on how to rescue Nigerians from the present economic quagmire and restore happiness and hope to the citizens, the APC government is wasting time on inanities.
“It, therefore, worries us more that the Federal Government is busy chasing rats, while the entire house is on fire. Nigeria is the greatest loser because all these power games are coming at a time when all hands are needed to be on deck, with all the arms of government working concertedly and intensively to salvage the nation’s dying economy,” CLO declared.
For the umpteenth time, CLO called on President Muhammadu Buhari, to get his priorities right. “He should separate primordial from national interest. This Senate forgery trial is so fraught with manipulations that may tend to make one think that the “war” is not in the national interest. It is a distraction that we can do without in this dire times when Mr. President is supposed to inspire confidence, trust and unity among our people than the dance of “kokoma” that this regime has danced since it came to power,” CLO further declared.
CLO maintained that the choice of the leaders of the National Assembly is an internal matter of the two chambers which nobody except the members can query. “It is important that we allow the doctrine of the Principles of Separation of Powers to succeed as it is one of the credential of constitutional democracy,” the group maintained.