Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe
Senate Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, on Tuesday, slammed the judiciary and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) for allegedly shying away from criticising President Muhammadu Buhari when he suspended former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen.
According to Abaribe, the Senate waited in vain for the NBA and the judiciary to act in order to save the situation.
He spoke at the Rule of Law Symposium at the ongoing NBA Annual General Conference in Lagos.
Abaribe maintained that the law did not allow the President to unilaterally remove the CJN without recourse to the Senate.
He said, “The question we ask is, with apologies to Wole Soyinka, if the Bar association is a tiger, where is your ‘tigritude’?
“And the reason we ask this question is simple: we find the bar association blowing muted trumpet when the judiciary is under pressure.
“In the matter of Onnoghen, we waited for the Bar association, nothing happened; we waited for his fellow judges, nothing happened and everybody was looking at us.
“And what were we waiting for? The law is very clear that you can’t remove the Chief Justice without coming to the Senate. Yet, it happened and nothing was done.
“The law does not give the Senate any right to go beyond the Constitution and the Constitution is very specific.”