Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike has accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of intimidating the judiciary ahead of the 2023 general elections.
Citing the recent siege to the residence of Supreme Court Justice Mary Odili, Wike said the Federal Government was riding a roughshod on the rule of law and the sanctity of the country’s electoral system.
He spoke yesterday at a special court session to mark the opening of the 2021/2022 Legal Year of the Rivers State judiciary held at the Chief Judge’s ceremonial court, Port Harcourt.
“While cases with political undertones, including the constitutional validity of certain sections of the recent amendments to the 2010 Electoral Act, if assented to by Mr. President, would necessarily come before our courts; what is important is the duty and capacity of our judiciary to save our democracy and the country.”
Wike said it was the responsibility of the government at all levels to protect the judiciary and assist the courts to enable them safeguard their independence, advance the rule of law and dispense justice equally and fairly to all citizens.
He said the Federal Government had been very weak in resourcing and strengthening the judiciary, but very strong and readily predisposed to ridiculing the entire institution and subjecting individual judges to both physical and psychological trauma for its own self-interest.
“Since then, the intimidation of judges whose judgments, intellectual or moral disposition they are not comfortable with has continued unrelenting with the latest attack on a peaceful mother, wife of a former governor and Justice of the Supreme Court, our own highly revered Hon. Justice Odili.
“It is important to emphasise that we allow these intimidations to become acceptable standards of behaviour and even become complicit in their unholy design to undermine the administration of justice when we all opt to keep quite in the face of these assaults.”
Wike commended the leaders of the Nigerian Bar Association, the Body of Senior Advocates, the Chief Justice of Nigeria and members of the public for promptly condemning the siege to the judiciary.
On the plan to have more Law School campuses, the governor urged the management of the Nigerian Law School, the Council of Legal Education, and the Federal Government to see the folly in the plan and nip the idea in the bud.
He said: “Here again, some lazy and uninformed characters have criticised our Law School development project with the unfounded and lousy allegation that it lacks budgetary provisions in our 2021 budget, even when they conceded to the propriety of the project and the optimal benefits it would attract to the state and the business community.”
