By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network
NEW YORK | LAGOS (IDN) – Efforts to clean up government – difficult in the best of times – were hamstrung by none other than Nigeria’s top judge accused of failing to declare hundreds of thousands of dollars that ‘suspiciously’ appear in his accounts but were never declared as required by law.
President Muhammadu Buhari, who has often accused the judiciary of frustrating his anti-corruption fight, defended his announced suspension of Chief Justice Walter Nkanu Samuel Onnoghen.
In a furious tweet storm on January 25, President Buhari said the judge should have stepped aside when the allegations reached the court. “This is not a mere technicality like innocently placing a document in a wrong file or mistakenly placing yesterday’s date on a document.”
Buhari suspended Onnoghen on January 18, two weeks after corruption allegations first surfaced against the judge. In a statement, Buhari said investigators had since discovered “millions of dollars” in “other suspicious transactions” made to Onnoghen’s personal accounts.
But the suspension has drawn noisy protests by opposition politicians including Atiku Abubakar, a former Vice President of Nigeria, who called the removal “an act of dictatorship”. Abubakar is one of the main challengers to Buhari in presidential polls scheduled for February 16.
In a letter to the Ambassadors of France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, Abubakar wrote: “President Muhammadu Buhari is and undermining organs and institutions of State in order to advance his personal interest.”
He added: “While the President has ironically taken oath to safeguard and defend the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the reality of his selective and wanton violations of its provisions means that his oath is observed only in the breach.”
Abubakar’s People’s Democratic Party has halted its campaign to protest the action against Onnoghen who would have ruled on any legal challenge to the voting result.
Even the Nigerian Bar Association has jumped into the fray, directing its members to boycott courts across the country for two days (January 29 and 30) over the manner in which Onnoghen was ousted.
The U.S., UK and the European Union expressed unhappiness with the move but the President fired back demanding that foreign countries desist from meddling in Nigeria’s internal affairs.
“Their statements seem more driven by unfounded assumptions and to be honest, a certain condescension to this African democracy,” Buhari retorted. “This is unfortunate.”
“Over the years and with great frequency, they have advised and even chided Nigeria about official corruption. Now we are presented with the sad and unwanted situation where the Chief Justice is discovered to have a vast, unexplained amount of money in his pocket.
“Had the situation been reversed, you would swiftly move to suspend the official pending final determination of the causes against him.”
An editorial in the Vanguard newspaper however wrote: “… the suspension of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) … by President Muhammadu Buhari has put our hard-won democracy in great danger. It was a coup against the Judiciary, the third arm of our presidential democracy; a cynical violation of the principle of separation of powers.”
The editorial continued: “The frightening aspect is that the Head of the Executive Branch unilaterally suspended the Head of the Judiciary. It is unprecedented in our history. The former military rulers only suspended portions of the Constitution, scrapped the Legislature and ousted the courts’ powers over certain military decrees. The Judiciary’s status as the last hope of the citizenry remained sacrosanct.”
President Buhari, 76, is seeking re-election against a backdrop of mounting concern about vote-buying and violence. [IDN-InDepthNews – 29 January 2019]
Photo: Opposition candidate Atiku Abubakar in a letter to the Ambassadors of France, Germany, USA, Britain and the European Union, accuses President Buhari of threatening Nigerian democracy by serially breaching the provisions of the constitution. Credit: THISDAYLIVE
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