Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
Former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, yesterday, said it is imperative for the federal government and security agencies in the country to obey court orders. Atiku, in statement entitled, “Without rule of law, there cannot be rule at all,” decried situations where the government is allegedly quick to obey orders given by foreign courts, but fails to obey court orders in the country.
The former vice president, who was reacting to alleged invasion of a court by security operatives during proceedings in a suit involving Omoyele Sowore, described the incident as unacceptable. The statement reads: “Today, 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 call for an immediate inquiry to be set up to identify those responsible for the maltreatment meted out to Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu and the desecration of her court, and indeed the Nigerian judiciary. They must be sanctioned to the highest extent permissible by our laws.”
