Removal of CJN: PDP suspends campaign in protest

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Presidential Campaign Council has suspended its presidential campaign in protest of President Muhammadu Buhari’s decision to suspend the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen.

According to a statement personally issued by the National Chairman of the main opposition party and co-chairman of its Presidential Campaign Council, Prince Uche Secondus, the action is also in solidarity with Nigerians in the party’s collective rejection of the assault against the nation’s democratic order.

Describing President Buhari’s action as a “dangerous and brazen assault on the constitution,” the PDP Campaign Council said that there was no point in campaigning to contest in an election which very basis has been so flagrantly undermined.

But the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in a swift reaction, described the PDP’s action as a face-saving measure, saying the PDP’s campaign never gained traction in the first instance.

The PDP Presidential Campaign was scheduled to be in Benue State on Saturday. But it now said it is suspending its campaign activities for a period of 72 hours in the first instance.

But the PDP, in a statement, said: “The basis for this election is the democracy itself. When democracy comes under this kind of virulent attack, then the election itself becomes superfluous,” the statement said.

The statement added: “In the first instance, we are suspending our campaign for 72 hours. It is our hope that President Buhari will listen to the voice of all lovers of democracy the world over and restore democracy in Nigeria immediately and without qualifications. At the moment, the President has effectively suspended the constitution under whose basis the elections are being contested.

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“The action of President Buhari represents a constitutional breach and a direct attack on our democracy. This must never be allowed to stand, as there is no way by which democracy can survive under these autocratic tendencies.

“We call on all well-meaning Nigerians to rise in defence of democracy and save our nation from this imminent slide into tyranny.”

However, Mohammed, while responding to questions from reporters in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on Saturday, on the suspension of the PDP’s campaign, said: “Which Campaign? Their campaign was over a long time ago. There is nothing to suspend. We said it that their campaign had floundered. You can now see. What they are doing now is looking for a face-saving way out of a dead and buried campaign.’’

He wondered why the PDP “is crying more than the bereaved,” asking the opposition party whether Justice Onnoghen was one of its members.

“In any event, let’s ask them this question: Is there something that they know that we don’t know? Is there something between them and the suspended CJN? Otherwise, we did not see why they should suspend their campaign anyway, but I can understand that their campaign was bound to end this way,” Mohammed said.

He said while Nigerians have been trooping out in large numbers wherever the president’s campaign ship berths, the PDP supporters have been dwindling by the day.

On the outcry by some people and organisations over Justice Onnoghen’s suspension, the minister said it was troubling that those who are crying foul over the suspension of the CJN have actually ignored the fact that a serving Chief Justice not only had millions of dollars in his account, but admitted that he forgot to declare same in his Assets Declaration Form.

“For anybody who read Mr. President’s address yesterday, two things stood out. The first is that additional evidence has just been revealed that the suspended CJN refused to declare millions of dollars in his possession. More worrisome is the fact that when the suspended CJN was confronted with the petition that he failed to declare his assets, he added that it was a mistake; that he forgot.

On the constitutionality of the CJN’s suspension, Mohammed faulted those claiming that the president acted outside of the constitution, adding that in suspending Justice Onnoghen, the president merely carried out an order of a court of competent jurisdiction directing him to suspend the Chief Justice pending the final determination of the cases against him.