Democracy Day Celebration: NBA asks FG to release Dasuki, El-Zakzaky

……seeks recall of suspended Judges

By Ikechukwu Nnochiri
ABUJA – As the country marks its Democracy Day, the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, yesterday, scored the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari low on respect of the rule of law and court orders.

The legal body, at a world press conference it held in Abuja to commemorate the 2017 Democracy Day, said it was “appalled at the continued detention of certain individuals in blatant disobedience to court orders”.

Speaking through its National President, Mr. Abubakar Mahmoud, SAN, NBA, which is the umbrella body of legal practitioners in the country, said: “Amongst these individuals are Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky and his wife and also Colonel Sambo Dasuki the former National Security Adviser.

“Whilst we recognise the seriousness of the charges on which these individuals are held, we nevertheless view their continued detention as unjustified and contrary to the express court orders.

“We call on the government to without further delay respect these orders. The NBA wishes to use this opportunity to call on the Federal Government to continually demonstrate religious adherence to the tenets of constitutional democracy”.

Both Dasuki and El-Zakzaky who is the leader of Islamic Movement in Nigeria, also known as the Shi’ite sect, have been in detention since 2015.

FG spurned different court orders that directed it to release the duo on bail pending the determination of cases it has against them.

Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court in Abuja had on December 2, 2016, held that the continued detention of the Shi’ite leader without trial amounted to a gross violation of his constitutionally guaranteed rights.

The court ordered FG to release him and his wife, Zeenat, within 45 days, and pay N50million to them as damages.

On the other hand, three different trial courts, ordered that the detained ex-NSA, Dasuki, should be released on bail pending the conclusion of his trial over alleged illegal diversion of $2.1billion arms procurement fund.

Similarly, the ECOWAS court, in a judgment it delivered on October 4, 2016, ordered FG to immediately release Dasuki from detention.

FG had since ignored all the court orders, an action the NBA condemned yesterday.

Mahmoud, SAN, said the association had on various occasions, engaged the President Buhari-led government through the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, on the need for it to respect court orders.

“We will continue the engagement and maybe possibly consider other options”, the NBA President added.

Besides, NBA called on the government to recall some of the Judges that were suspended from the bench after they were arrested by the Department of State Service, DSS, over corruption allegations.

“In the wake of the arrest and detention of certain judicial officers by the DSS, the NBA had taken the view that the judges affected should recuse themselves from judicial functions until the investigations and outcome of those investigations were determined, we note that nearly 8 months after those investigations were lunched, the are some of the Judges who have not been prosecuted or charged before any court of law.

“This situation is completely unsatisfactory and unacceptable. The NBA calls on the Government to terminate the investigations against those judges to enable them resume their work as judicial officers”.

Nevertheless, NBA commended FG on what it termed “great improvement in the area of security”, even as it called for a more aggressive implementation of the various programs and initiative under the four-year Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP).

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