A young lawyer, Inibehe Effiong, has appealed to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to ensure that the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, is disciplined for promoting impunity in the government of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Effiong made the call at the 16th annual lecture of Chief Gani Fawehinmi held at the Airport Hotel in Lagos, January 15.
“An officer, a public officer who is constitutionally saddled with the responsibility of seeing to the obedience of court orders in the person of Mr Abubakar Malami, SAN, the attorney general of the federation, who by the combined effect of section 50 and 174 of the constitution, is the chief law officer of the country.
“The same attorney general is now publicly, openly and shamelessly repudiating orders and decisions of courts. In saner climes, you see an attorney general voluntarily tendering his resignation when court orders are disobeyed.
The attorney general is supposed to be the representative of the judiciary in the government. He is supposed to be the epitome of the rule of law. But what has Malami being doing. Mr Malami has consistently, since this government came into office in 2015, supported the disobedience of court orders.
“Under his watch, we have seen escalation in extra judicial killings without any action of the chief law officer.
“We have seen how IPOB members were slaughtered. We have seen how the Shiites were being killed.
“The attorney general has the responsibility to protect the rights of the citizens. But unfortunately today, the current attorney general has not only taken this responsibility for granted, he has treated his office with levity.
“For me, I find this intolerable. And I am saying that he has to be sanctioned. The reason why Nigeria has become a laughing stock, the reason why this country has become an embarrassment to the black race is not just because of corruption. But the pervasive culture of impunity where people do whatever they like and they get away with it.
“I am calling on the Nigerian Bar Association to discipline and sanction Mr Malami. Until People are punished, until people are made to pay a heavy price for supporting what is wrong, there is no way we can build this country.
“Look at the appointments of Mr President. The appointments are not only sectional, the appointments did not only contravene the principle of Federal character under section 14 of the constitution, the appointments have been clearly and consistently against all sense of national cohesion. A serious attorney general would have told the president that this is not possible.
“You have under Mr Malami people whose offices are constitutionally created like the head of the Corporate Affairs Commission being illegally removed on account of a dubious expate order. And the attorney general has aided this constitutional infractions because it is his office that is supposed to see to it that no agency of the government act in such manner.
“For me this is unacceptable. But I also make the point that beyond the executive, some of the things we are seeing. The attacks on the judiciary, some of it is self inflicted, unfortunately so.
“A vast majority of Nigerian judges are decent people. But we have seeing a situation where the judiciary has had the occasions to stand up to the executive impunity, but unfortunately the judiciary has not treated this issue with the seriousness that it deserves.
“I am encouraging our judges to be more circumspect In yielding to the the state security service or the office of the attorney general when they come before a court for example to ask for people to be detained. Our judges have the scared responsibility to ensure that those applications are merited.
“Look at the case of Shehu Sani. When you have EFCC gong to court to get a detention orders for 14 days because they claimed Mr Shehu Sani is guilty of extortion. Upon getting the order, he is now been asked to declare his assets. His office is now being raided.
“Extortion is the least crime for any serious prosecutor to prove. This is a consistent pattern of clampdown on people that disagree with this regime,” he said.
