An Abuja-based legal practitioner, Nkem Okoro, Esq has condemned social media attacks against Justice Sylvanus Chinedu Oriji of the FCT High Court over his ruling on the #EndBadGovernance Protest.
Justice Oriji had on July 31 barred the participants of the #EndBadGovernance Protest from marching on the streets of the FCT but to use the Moshood Abiola Stadium, also known as the National Stadium.
However, in an interview with Daily Trust, Okoro said he was shocked to read the insinuations linking the judge with FCT Minister Nyesom Wike over his decision.
He said the judge is one of the finest judges in the FCT with a merit-based adjudication style which is worthy of emulation on the bench.
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“Incidentally the judge is the admin vacation judge hence any matter that comes before him during vacation, he has the right to assign either to himself or other vacation judges and if he assigned that matter to himself, he determined it on merit,” he said.
Okoro said for the particular application having been argued by two senior advocates of Nigeria, the judge must have been convinced without any external influence before making the order.
“If the lawyers could convince them (judges) on the interim injunction, it is always at their (judges) discretion to grant such applications.
“I am sure he probed them before giving the order and I am sure that every reasonable Nigerian knows that that application was granted on the exigencies of the moment and so nobody will question it.”
The lawyer said the judge had been doing his work well long before the appointment of Wike as FCT Minister, adding that he once enjoyed some favourable order from him even when he never met him.
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