LAGOS OCTOBER 13TH (URHOBOTODAY)-Chieftain of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Sunny Onuesoke has described recent arrest of Judges and Magistrates by Department of State Service (DSS) across the country as sacrilegious and desecration of the judiciary.
Onuesoke who spoke t newsmen in Abuja, while reacting to the DSS attack on judges argued that while he is in full support of the government’s efforts to eradicate judicial corruption, he would not accept anti-corruption strategies and methods which patently offend the rule of law and undermine the authority, integrity, sanctity and independence of the judiciary as stipulated in the principle of separation of powers.
According to him, “The new onslaught against the Judiciary signals great danger to our hard won democracy, freedom, liberties, human rights, independence of the Judiciary and the doctrine of separation of powers”
The PDP Chieftain who decried the alleged gestapo style of the DSS in the arrest of the judges, advised that the secret police should have forwarded names of the suspected corrupt judicial officers to National Judicial Commission (NJC) which is the statutory body that can punish or dismiss any erring judicial officer as stipulated by the constitution.
“The action the DSS took against these judges was very bad. The Executive is over stepping its boundaries. You cannot go and arrest a judge in his house at 1.00 am. This is not a military era. Nobody is saying that if a judge committed an offence he should not be questioned. We operate a democratic system that is based on the principle of the rule of law. Going to waylay judicial officers in their homes around 1.00 am cannot be an example of the rule of law in action. It is not done in any civilised society,” Onuesoke stated.
He pointed out that if DSS execute their threat of charging the judges to court, needless constitutional crisis would have been deliberately foisted on the polity by the executive, stressing that, “You cannot arraign a serving justice of the Supreme Court, who has not been suspended from office, before a court of law in Nigeria for offence of professional misconduct, which includes official corruption.”