Forty six youth organisations, under the aegis of YIAGA Africa Initiative, have called on President Muhammadu Buhari to reverse the suspension of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen, within seven days.
Daily Trust recalls that the President on Friday suspended Justice Onnoghen, pending the conclusion of his trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) and swore in Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammed as the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria.
The Executive Director, YIAGA Africa Initiative, Samson Itodo, made the call on Saturday in Abuja at a media rountable on the 2019 Elections and Parallel Vote Tabulation of the Watching the Vote (WTV) project.
“Every attempt to rationalize this action taken by the executive and the President is completely irresponsible and should not be tolerated in anyway.
“I urge all men and women of reason to rise up and call on the President to reverse this suspension within seven days.
“Because how can the President suspend the head of another arm of government on the basis of an order by the CCT which was issued on 23 based on the time stamp on the order, but the Court of Appeals also issued an order on the 24th asking the CCT to stay proceedings.
“Anyone who wants equity must come to equity with clean hands, must also do equity; but in this particular regard, beyond the optics and the fact that we are close to the elections, is the fact that it is completely condemnable and unacceptable,” Itodo said.
He said it was important to say that they don’t condone any form of corruption and that the present government in its campaign manifesto strongly condemns corruption and has designed programmes or policies to fight corruption.
“But it is important to emphasise that you can’t fight corruption without the rule of law as the law is very important and compliance is very important.
“What happened yesterday (Friday) was Executive rascality and should be condemned in every respect, because the President overreached himself and it was just unfortunate because the optics are completely wrong.
“We are just about 20 days to the elections. I thought that the President would have respected the oath that he swore to protect and defend the Constitution, but to suspend the CJN is completely unacceptable,” Itodo said.
In her welcome remarks, the Watching The Vote, Project Director, Cynthia Mbamalu said that as part of YIAGA WTV initiative, 882 observers will be deployed to all 774 local governments to observe pre-election proceedings, while 3,034 Polling Unit Observers will be deployed across the 120,000 polling units across Nigeria.
“What is important for us is that before the elections, we put all our plans together as an institution that will deploy observers and ensure we have better partnership with election stakeholders,” she said.
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