Ekiti Gov. Ayo Fayose has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to obey court orders and respect the principle of separation of power rather go around castigating the Nigeria judiciary in his fight against corruption.
“The president must act like a democratically elected president that he is by respecting the judiciary, which is a separate arm of government before his complain about the role of the judiciary in his fight against corruption can be taking seriously,” Fayose said in a statement made available by his media aide Lere Olayinka.
President Muhammadu Buhari complained to Nigerians in Ethiopia days ago how the Nigerian judiciary is more like a pain in the neck to him in the fight against corruption, citing his slew of electoral defeat for 12 years at the Supreme Court.
Fayose said the president should have told the whole world that he hated the Nigerian judiciary because he lost the petitions he filed against his electoral defeats in 2003, 2007 and 2011 instead of hiding under the fight against corruption to ventilate his anger.
The governor also accused Buhari and the APC of hamming up the anti-corruption fight, and using it to persecute the PDP while the president allows his own party men guilty of corruption to walk free.
“Even the president’s party men are beginning to condemn openly the trial of people accused of corruption in the media, with newspapers quoting Rotimi Akeredolu (SAN) on Saturday as describing it as convicting the suspects without giving them fair hearing,” Fayose said.
The governor has been put on the spot following the revelation of the state’s PDP former chieftain, Tope Aluko. He said in a Channel Television interview on Sunday that Fayose got about N4 billion plus the support of military chiefs from former President Goodluck Jonathan to rig the 2014 guber election in the state.
Responding, Fayose said no sane man would join issue with the PDP turncoat. He called for Aluko arrest and trial for perjury because he was the party’s only witness at the tribunal sitting over the APC challenge of PDP’s victory then.