By David Musa
It’s apparent that the judiciary as an arm of government saddled with the responsibility of dispensing justice based on equity and fairness would function well and achieve its set objectives when it is not overtaken by prejudice and encroached by dirty deals by its occupants and the powers that be. It is certain that unfair treatment and infusion of the judicial processes and proceedings could reduce the institution to a subject of mockery and disdain with hopelessness.
Essentially, the system must be rid of corruption and clean itself from the political cum administrative interference to make it a genuine and reliable institution that can pride hope and hope to those who run to it seeking for justice.
In contrary, it is evident that even to a puerile mind that the present All Progressives Congress (APC) regime has totally politicized its widely publicized war against corruption to a political witch hunt, harassment, intimidation and cowing of political opponents and adversaries, with the intent to reduce them and make them live in a police state.
Today, those in the opposition precisely the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) are living at sea not knowing where or when the tendentious Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) would strike to advance the political aims and objectives of its paymasters. Indeed, the atrocities and Gestapo modus operandi of the EFCC are too numerous to document and elaborate.
The unprecedented and utterly ruthless campaign to discredit and truncate the political career and legitimate ambitions of one of the founding fathers of the PDP and former Jigawa State Governor, Sule Lamido by the EFCC, the judiciary and other APC agents is both distasteful as it is dastardly and despicable in all its ramifications. Lamido’s case is not different with that of his contemporaries who were accused to have stolen huge from their state’s treasury and decamped to the APC and given safe political heaven as he was accused only of collecting kickback.
Even at that, instead of the case to be heard speedily, Lamido has been facing trial in a manner prejudicial to equity and fairness as unnecessary delay was being created, the latest being the abrupt suspension of Justice Adeniyi Ademola who is hearing the case at a time he has examined 18 out of the 19 witnesses, and almost completed adjudication of the case. This is indeed very questionable and there is nobody to offer any tangible explanation on this. The EFCC is leveraging on this as it has sought for the reassignment of the case freshly to another judge, a move vehemently opposed to by the counsels to Sule Lamido who has obtained a favorable Court of Appeal judgment to that effect.
Sensing that its mission was facing imminent defeat, the anti-graft agency put undue pressure on the judicial organs handling the trial of Sule Lamido at the Federal High Court, but the case was returned to the already recalled Justice Ademola who was ordered to complete the trial. Hardly had the ink dried on the court’s judgment than Justice Ademola suddenly resigned in a cloudy and questionable way thus negating the whole substance of the Court of Appeal ruling.
It is not Sule Lamido alone. The list of PDP members being subjected to this kind of harassment is endless. From the Col. Sambo Dasuki saga where up till now the EFCC has refused to obey the High Court order to release him on bail; to the Olisa Metuh trial where he was arrested in handcuffs like a common criminal, it has all been a sordid tales of their fundamental human right abuse.
It is this reprehensible attempt by the APC led-Federal Government to intimidate the judicial officers of the nation as well as blatantly subverting the legal and judicial process that is most troubling to the hundreds of millions of Nigerians as well as dedicated civil society groups, human right activists and public affairs analysts who are deeply concerned as the nation continues to drift irredeemably from civilian dictatorship.
But the government is soft in handling its own if one remembers the case of the former Secretary to the Federal Government, Mr. Babachir David Lawal who was alleged to have siphoned and mismanaged the Federal Government funds. A kangaroo committee – not the EFCC, DSS, ICPC or any statutory body saddled with such responsibility – was set up to investigate him because the committee report is to be doctored with a view to giving the former SGF a soft landing.
It is very much in public knowledge that very highly placed presidential aides have received a huge kickback from the MTN, but the EFCC pretends to be living in another world as it is not doing anything about that. We now can see the different treatment for different folks on the same subject.
If we may ask, who is afraid of the conclusion of Sule Lamido’s case? There is no way politics can be ruled out from this. The former Chairman of the EFCC has once said then that 21 governors had cases to answer before the anti-graft agency. Some of the former governors are in APC and in the Senate without them being ridiculed. Why at this time is Sule Lamido being singled out?
What interest would the back and forte transfer of the case serve, and for whom? Why would the powers that be continue to manipulate the judicial process for narrow and self-centered political aims and objectives? It is even shocking that the Buhari administration has been the most visible beneficiary of judicial and electoral due process and the rule of law. So why would they seek to subvert the same process that brought them to political limelight and reckoning? From all indications the vexatious, frivolous and tactless efforts of the APC-led Federal Government – only recently the DAILY TRUST on SUNDAY reported with the headline that the EFCC chases many big birds, catches small ones – the efforts of the EFCC to diminish the towering stature of Lamido has failed woefully given that international human rights rapporteurs have reprimanded the Buhari government over its incessant harassment and intimidation of the PDP chieftain and his legion of supporters and admirers respectively. It is not with Lamido who the courts had cleared the agency would make up for it colossal failures. It does not have to go far outside the current government; the big birds are in there. Let Ibrahim Magu go catch them there.
