*Says ignoring NJC is curious
Henry Omunu, Abuja
President General of the umbrella organisation of Ndigbo, the Ohananeze, Chief John Nnia Nwodo has accused the federal government of heating up the polity by prosecuting the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen.
The president general said that legal opinion did not support the action and therefore should not have been contemplated at all by the Buhari administration.
Ohaneze made its position known in a statement by Chief Nwodo.
He said that Ohaneze received with shock and disappointment, the decision of the government, acting through the Code of Conduct Bureau to prosecute the nation’s chief legal officer.
Chief Nwodo stated that legal opinion abound that the action is premature and ill – conceived following an extant Court of Appeal decision which interprets the procedure for prosecuting judicial officers.
According to him, this procedure has not been followed, asserting that the fact that the National Judicial Council has been ignored is not just illegal, but suggests deliberate court shopping and a predetermined objective.
“Secondly, the fact that one of the issues being canvassed by the CCB before the CCT is for an order of the CCT for the chief justice to step aside from his exalted office pending the conclusion of the trial contrary to the procedure for his removal from office as provided by the Nigerian constitution exposes the aim of the prosecution,” Onhaneze declared.
Similarly, Nwodo said that a perusal of some of the depositions in the charge sheet shows a completely distorted conception of the regulations pertaining to the declaration of assets, adding that assets acquired after assumption of office are declared at the end of a public official’s tenure in order to present a comparison with assets declared on assumption of office.
“The federal government is heating up the polity. Not long ago, we were entertained with all sorts of interpretations of the Vice President’s powers while the President is on leave. The group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was accused of violating laws pertaining to the award of contracts.
“Because he comes from a protected ethnic group and class, no investigation was conducted.
“Fulani herdsman killed 110 natives of Nimbo, in Enugu state. Police investigations led to the arrest of some of the herdsman with their telephone pictures of the carnage but not one has been prosecuted.
“The same carnage took place in Benue state. Pictures of the murderers wearing the uniform of the choir members of a Catholic church where they murdered their priests and members of their congregation were all over the social media. No one was arrested or prosecuted.
“Their sponsors, Miyetti Allah, addressed a press conference recently extolling their ethnic agenda and making decisive and inciting statements. Not one of them was arrested.
“The insensitiveness of the federal government to respect our constitution, its patronage of double standards in the enforcement of the law is sickening and abhorrent. If these developments are taken together with the obvious rigging regulations approved by INEC, we fear that our country is about to be thrown into a needless political instability,” Nwodo said.
