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Chukwudi Nweje
Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and rights activist, Femi Falana has asked President Muhammadu Buhari and the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led government to behave like an elected government by obeying court orders.
Falana said it was ironic that while the military regime headed by Buhari between 1983-85 obeyed court orders, the democratically elected administration he now heads ads the proclivity of disobeying the orders of courts.
“At the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights held in Lagos in May, I was compelled to express regret over the proclivity of the Buhari’s administration to disobey orders of courts. The embarrassing development is an irony because the dreaded Buhari military junta had complied with all orders of Nigerian courts for the release of political detainees and criminal suspects from custody.”
Falana said he was personally detained under the State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree No. 2 of 1984 and that despite the provision of the military decree in its Section 4 (1) that “no suit or other legal proceedings shall lie against any persons for anything done or intended to be done in pursuance to this Decree”, that the legal validity of many detention orders was successfully challenged in the various high courts.
“The seat of power was then in Dodan Barracks,Lagos. Majority of the habeas corpus or fundamental rights cases were filed in the Lagos High Court. To the eternal credit of the judiciary, the judges who handled the cases decided them without fear or favour. Even though a substantial number of the cases were dismissed for want of jurisdiction, the courts did not hesitate to order the absolute or conditional release of detainees whose arrest and incarceration could not be accounted for under the preventive detention legislation,” Falans said.
The rights activist, cited some of the cases to include Lamina Lawal Arowoye and six others v. Inspector-General of Police (Suit No: ID/14M/84); Chief Sunday Ogunyade v. Inspector-General of Police and two others (Suit No: ID/15D/84); Maxwell Okudoh v. Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Police Command (Suit No: M/32/84); Dr. Tai Solarin v. Inspector-General of Police and two Others (Suit No: M/55/1984).
