You can’t force judges into submission, Secondus tells Buhari

Uche Secondus, national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has accused President Muhammadu Buhari of turning blind eyes to the “monumental corruption’ among those under him.

In a statement, Secondus alleged that the president is haunting the judiciary in order to cow judges into submission.

Secondus was reacting to Buhari’s recent comment on the trial of Walter Onnoghen, former chief justice of Nigeria.

While hosting leaders of Afenifere, Pan-Yoruba socio-political group on Tuesday, Buhari had said he was reluctant to deal with Onnoghen but the evidence against him was weighty.

But the PDP national chairman said the president’s “disdain for the judiciary” was becoming dangerous and antithetical to democratic norms.

Secondus urged the president to look inwards and focus on the “stinking executive and stop the hostility and ill-treatment of the nation’s judiciary”.

“He (Buhari) has continued to bemoan his past with the judiciary by displaying his unconcealed anger and unforgiving desire to take a pound of flesh on them,” he said.

“The motive behind the endless attacks on the judiciary by the president, especially Tuesday’s narration of his so-called ordeal with the courts, is strategically designed to cow them into submission to his undemocratic desires.

“We all know it as a fact that the motive of the president in his countless berating of members of the judiciary at the slightest moment is deliberately designed to frighten them, take away their confidence and force them to submit to his wishes by intimidation.

“He ceaselessly berates the judiciary and turns blind eye to the monumental corruption going on in the executive arm.”

Secondus urged members of the judiciary not to abdicate their responsibilities in order to sustain the country’s democracy.