The Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar said the action of Department of State Services (DSS) against the leader of the #RevolutionNow and Publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore, was a rape on the sanctity of the court.
Sowore who had been detained by the DSS since August when he was arrested on allegation of planning a forceful takeover of government through his scheduled nationwide protests tagged #RevolutionNow.
He was released on the 125th day of his detention, Thursday and barely 24 hours after, Sowore was rearrested in court, Friday by DSS operatives.
Reacting to the in statement issued by Atiku Media Office, the former Vice President said “I am in extreme anguish of spirit having watched the unfortunate drama that played itself out at the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja, in which agents of the state not only caused a commotion in court in order to frustrate a judgment of a court of competent authority.
Waziri Adamawa explained that “Never in the history of Nigerian democracy has a judge been treated in such a disdainful and brazen attack on not just her person and office, but on the entire judiciary. This is unacceptable. It is a rape on the sanctity of the court. Nigeria is not a dictatorship. We are a democracy, no matter how inconvenient this fact is to the powers that have forced themselves on us.
He continued “I call for an immediate inquiry to be set up to identify those responsible for the maltreatment meted out to Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu and the desecration of her court, and indeed the Nigerian judiciary. They must be sanctioned to the highest extent permissible by our laws.
“I further call for all law enforcement agencies in Nigeria to immediately respect not just the court order made by Justice Ojukwu, but the order of any court in Nigeria, on any detainee, be it Omoyele Sowore, Sambo Dasuki or Ibrahim Zakzaky, among others.
“We cannot have a situation where our government is quick to obey foreign court orders and even quicker to disobey domestic court orders. This is symptomatic of a mindset that is servile to foreign powers and brutal to Nigerians.
“Without the rule of law, there can be no rule at all. Power in Nigeria still flows from the people, not from the barrel of a gun. I call on all men and women of goodwill not to keep quiet or sit on the fence at times like this”.
