The National Judicial Council (NJC) on Monday declared its satisfaction with President Muhammadu Buhari’s acceptance of the voluntary retirement of ex-Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen.
In a statement on Monday by its spokesperson, Soji Oye, NJC described the president’s acceptance of the retirement as being in line with Council’s recommendation made to the President on the 3rd April, 2019.
The statement partly reads: “The NJC held an “emergency meeting today to take formal note of the acceptance of the voluntary retirement of Hon. Mr Justice W. S. N. Onnoghen, GCON, as Chief Justice of Nigeria by President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR.”
“The president’s acceptance of the retirement is in line with Council’s recommendation to the President on 3rd April, 2019.
“Council at the end of its deliberations, thanked the president for the acceptance which was in the best interest of Nigeria,” Mr Oye said.
“President’s decision to accept the voluntary retirement was in the best interest of Nigeria.” It is the retirement that Buhari has now accepted,” the statement added.
The embattled former CJN Onnoghen it would be recalled was before his retirement arraigned and tried by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) for alleged false assets declaration, after he was controversially suspended from office by President Muhammadu Buhari on the order of the CCT.
Onnoghen thereafter wrote a retirement letter in April after he was asked to do so by the NJC which probed a complaint that he abused his office by not properly declaring his assets.
Few days after he wrote his retirement letter, the CCT ordered that he be sacked from office and not allowed to hold public office for the next ten years surfaced.
