Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has demanded that an independent panel of inquiry be constituted to identify and probe those who invaded a Federal High Court Friday in Abuja, and the maltreatment meted out to Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu.
According to a statement by his Media Office, those found guilty of the offence must be sanctioned to the highest extent permissible by Nigerian laws.
“Today (Friday) I am in extreme anguish of spirit having watched the unfortunate drama that played itself out at the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, in which agents of the state not only caused a commotion in court in order to frustrate a judgment of a court of competent authority.
“Never in the history of Nigerian democracy has a judge been treated in such a disdainful and brazen attack on not just her person and office, but on the entire judiciary. This is unacceptable.
“It is a rape on the sanctity of the court. Nigeria is not a dictatorship. We are a democracy, no matter how inconvenient this fact is to the powers that have forced themselves on us.
“I further call for all law enforcement agencies in Nigeria to immediately respect not just the court order made by Justice Ojukwu, but the order of any court in Nigeria, on any detainee, be it Omoyele Sowore, Sambo Dasuki or Ibrahim Zakzaky, among others.
“We cannot have a situation where our government is quick to obey foreign court orders and even quicker to disobey domestic court orders. This is symptomatic of a mindset that is servile to foreign powers and brutal to Nigerians,” Atiku said.
Similarly, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said the “furious invasion” of the sanctity of the Federal High Court by the Department of State Services (DSS) further confirmed that Nigeria, under the Buhari Presidency, was finally sliding into a frightening dictatorship.
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