A human rights and good governance advocacy-led civil society, Make A Difference (MAD), has advised the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Tanko Muhammad, to hands-off cases involving the Department of State Security Services (DSS). In a statement by the Advocacy and Communication Director of MAD, Lemmy Ughegbe, the group said the CJN needs to rise to the challenge and give the directive nationwide to help protect the sanctity of the court.
MAD condemned the action of the DSS in forcing a judge of an Abuja Federal High Court to scamper to her chambers while it effected the re-arrest of the convener of #RevolutionNow protest, Omoyele Sowore and his co-defendant who were earlier granted bail by the court. Ughegbe said the action of the DSS in court on Friday surpassed the “draconianism of the darkest days of Nigeria’s military rule.”
“The gestapo invasion and desecration of the court by agents of the Department of State Security (DSS) is a sad and debasing testament of how deeply Nigeria and the people have retrogressed into darker ages worse even than the military era,” he said. “When law officers and security agents act with such barbaric impudence and insufferable arrogance as though they cannot be called to question for their action, one cannot but agree with those who say Nigeria is a zoo and we are hyenas, baboons and sundry animals in it.
“I challenge the Chief Justice of Nigeria to order the courts nationwide to suspend hearings of all cases brought by DSS until the deviant organisation purges itself of its sins and complies with all orders of courts issued against it.”