‘Nigeria is not a dictatorship’ — Atiku kicks against rearrest of Sowore

Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 election, says the manner in which operatives of the Department of State Services (DSS) arrested Omoyele Sowore within court premises is unacceptable. 

After 124 days in detention, Sowore, convener of the #RevolutionNow movement was released on Thursday but rearrested at the court premises on Friday by DSS operatives.

The DSS had earlier disobeyed court orders asking Sowore to be granted bail.

In a statement released on Friday, Abubakar said the judiciary has never been treated with such disdain in the history of Nigeria’s democracy.

“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,” the former vice president said.

“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.

“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.

“I further call for all law enforcement agencies in Nigeria to immediately respect not just the court order made by Justice Ojukwu, but the order of any court in Nigeria, on any detainee, be it Omoyele Sowore, Sambo Dasuki or Ibrahim Zakzaky, among others.

“We cannot have a situation where our government is quick to obey foreign court orders and even quicker to disobey domestic court orders. This is symptomatic of a mindset that is servile to foreign powers and brutal to Nigerians.

Calling on Nigerians not to keep quiet in a time like this, Abubakar said power flows from the people, not from the barrel of a gun.