Nigeria in a season of anomie, ACN says

The country has stealthily but steadily entered into an era of impunity and anomie under the watch of President Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s leading opposition party, the Action Congress of Nigeria has observed.

In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary Alhaji Lai Mohammed the party alerted the nation to the growing disdain and deliberate but consistent assault on our revered institutions by Dr Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency.

According to the party no institution is today immune or safe from the rampaging forces of impunity of the present administration and regrettably no thanks to the deluge of problems and hardships wrought on the citizenry by the sheer incompetence and haplessness of the administration. Nigerians are slowly but dangerously accepting this culture of impunity and anomie as a way of life.

“Because under the watch of this administration, massacres, assassinations, poverty induced and needless deaths as exemplified by people dying in hundreds scooping petrol from burst pipes or fallen petrol tankers, hunger, insecurity, kidnapping armed robberies have so numbed people’s nerves to the point of paralysis that they can no longer see the more potent dangers posed by President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, that is the destruction of all our revered institutions, the judiciary and the legislature”.

According to the party, the arrogance, insouciance and contemptible manner with which President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration has treated the case of Justice Ayo Salami the suspended president of the Court of Appeal, has dealt a near mortal blow to the independence of the judiciary from which it may never recover unless men and women of courage immediately rise up to rescue the institution.

It should be clear to all and sundry now that all the travail of the suspended President of the Court of Appeal was a cleverly woven script by the Presidency for its self-preservation. How else do you explain that the same President who in less than 48hours acted on the recommendation of the National Judicial Council to suspend Justice Ayo salami notwithstanding the fact that there were several cases pending in court challenging the action at the time will now make a volte face, thumb its nose at the recommendation of the same body to reinstate the suspended president of the court of appeal on the grounds that the matter is subjudice. Was the matter not subjudice when he acted on the NJC recommendation to suspend him, the party queried

In the opinion of the party the real casualty in the entire saga is not Justice Ayo Salami but the judiciary and the people of Nigeria because as of today the powers of the NJC reside in President Goodluck Jonathan.

With the judiciary effectively cowed, His Imperial Majesty President Goodluck Jonathan is now closing in on the legislature as according to the party any discerning observer of the polity knows that the resolutions of the National Assembly are today treated with utmost disdain by our imperial presidency.

It is irrelevant and beside the point that our National Assembly today especially the House of Representatives has not lived up to expectation, but that is no excuse for the deliberate assault of the doctrine of the separate of powers by president Goodluck Jonathan. It is now common knowledge according to the party that when the House of Representatives relying on section 89(d) of the Constitution invited President Goodluck Jonathan to appear before it to explain how his government is failing to tackle the worsening security situation in the country, the President’s Advisers- in- mischief have under one pretext or the other justified the President’s refusal to honour the invitation.

“ May we remind President Goodluck Jonathan and his advisers- in- mischief that section 89 (d) of our Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power to summon “ANY PERSON” in Nigeria to appear before it. Of course what President Jonathan by this singular misadventure is telling Nigerians and the whole world is that he is not only above the law but he is the law. Who says we are not back to era of Louis X1V of France who infamously pronounced “ l’etat c’est moi.”