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By Lukman Olabiyi
Senator representing Osun Central, Surajudeen Basiru, has cautioned the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and Citizens’ Democratic Movement (CDM) against discrediting the judiciary.
Basiru, Senate’s spokesperson, in a statement, yesterday, condemned NLC for allowing itself to be used as the body to denigrate, discredit, rubbish and threaten the judiciary.
The senator was reacting to a statement credited to the NLC and CDM, pleading with the judiciary to do justice to all election petitions brought before it.
The lawmaker, in a statement, entitled: “Why must we rubbish all our institutions because of our tendencies?” advised the coalition and their likes to desist from unwarranted vituperations and veiled blackmail of the judiciary.
He described the statement by the NLC and CDM as coercive, tendentious and ill-motivated.
“We must not rush to forget that the judiciary is the finest and most robust institution that has developed over time since independence without interruption by the military. It is noted for finding its feet even during the draconian days of military decrees. To dismiss this institution as it has been done is preposterous. It is an attempt to always bring down our institutions, and this is one taken too far.
“Urging the judiciary (judges) to do justice to all election petitions brought before it for adjudication with a caveat to ‘name and shame corrupt judges’ and in fact create ‘a hall of shame for them’, is an attempt by this coalition to set the unsuspecting populace against the judiciary by feeding them with the preconceived notion that the judiciary is compromised and thus creating a fertile ground for anarchy when judgments from the election petition tribunals do not favour their puppeteers. This ploy of attempting to arm-twist the judiciary has never worked, and it also will not work this time too.
“The question that readily comes to mind is who is or are the sponsors of this coalition, and what do they intend to achieve by their unwarranted insinuations? It is a known fact that judges are disciplined by a specialised body known as the National Judicial Council. The threat by the coalition to name and shame judges is curious and at the same time laughable because, apart from their obvious sentiments, one needs to ask the parameters they are going to employ to determine which judge is above board and which one is not.
“Their reckless labelling of our judges as corrupt without any shred of evidence to back their less than spurious claims are based on emotions and subterfuge and are calculated to blackmail the judges into toeing the lines of their preferred outcome of cases before the election tribunals,” he said.
