Buhari persecuting judiciary, Secondus alleges

The National Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, on Thursday, alleged that President Muhammadu Buhari was persecuting the judiciary rather than tackle the corruption in his administration.

A statement by his media adviser, Ike Abonyi, in Abuja recalled the President’s Tuesday’s remark on former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Ononghen, where Buhari explained why he “dealt” with him.

Secondus admonished the President to look inwards at his “stinking executive and stop the hostility and ill-treatment of the nation’s Judiciary.”

Describing the President’s remark made when he received a faction of Afenifere at the presidential villa, Abuja, Secondus regretted what he saw as “President Buhari’s continued show of hostile behaviour on the nation’s  judiciary as exemplified in his unwarranted and unprovoked attacks on the former Chief Justice of the Federation CJN, Justice Walter Nkanu Onnoghen.”

Secondus noted that the President’s aversion for the judiciary was becoming very apparent, dangerous and antithetical to democratic norms.

“He 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,” the statement said.

The PDP boss remarked that the motive behind the endless attacks on the Judiciary by the President especially last Tuesday’s “narration of his so-called ordeal with the courts is strategically designed to cow them into submission to his undemocratic desires.”

Secondus said that “even among Buhari’s audience where he was lampooning the Judiciary were persons whose questionable source of wealth is not unknown yet he pretends not to be aware because it favours his political interest.”

“We all know it as a fact that the motive of the President in his countless berating 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,” the statement added.

Secondus described as preposterous and highly unacceptable what he said was the continuous ridiculing of the highly revered arm of government “just because they did not dance to your selfish tune at some point.”

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He then urged all lovers of democracy in the country to rise up in defence of this critical arm of government  “which gets a bashing from an executive arm that seeks absolute power from the back door.”

The PDP boss noted that the double standards apparent in the administration of President Buhari manifested glaringly when “he ceaselessly berates the Judiciary and turns blind eye to the monumental corruption going on in the executive arm.”

He charged members of the Judiciary never to abdicate their responsibilities in the sustenance of democracy and “refuse to be intimidated, but to insist on delivering justice in the land knowing that it is the only route to  growth and development.”