It was Frederick William Robertson who said, “There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy, hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny” and I completely agree.
Unfortunately, these three vices, not one or two, are exactly what define the All Progressives Congress (APC) and emphasise the need to not show mercy to its characterised intransigence in spite of its avowed rhetoric of change. Talk about hypocrisy, duplicity and tyranny and APC pops up at your very before.
So much has been said lately by the APC, through its Rivers adjunct, about the nominations of two Rivers sons into the Ethics Committee of the National Judicial Council, a constitutional body surreptitiously being primed for imminent destruction by the hands of tyrannical governmental establishments in a bid to completely compromise the substructure of constitutional democracy in Nigeria and superimpose what can best be described as a democratic diarchy by military fiat.
The concerned gentlemen are Hon. Justice Iche Ndu (Rtd) and Okey Wali (SAN). The basis for the aggravated angst against their inclusion as members of the committee is simply that they are Rivers people and said to be ‘friends’ of the Governor of Rivers State. In fact, APC is even more infuriated by the membership Okey Wali (SAN) of the recently inaugurated Rivers State 50th Anniversary celebration Committee, populated by distinguished sons and daughters of Rivers State including Agbani Darego and others, that they readily point to as evidence of his affinity to Governor Wike; including his being Governor Wike’s lawyer, and on the basis of that should stand disqualified from being members of the Ethics Committee of the NJC.
As for His Lordship, the Honourable Justice Iche Ndu, not much is said of him except that the entire trouble that the judiciary in Rivers State was bedevilled by, which prompted the closure of courts for over a year, was placed squarely on his shoulders and not at the doorsteps of the former Governor of Rivers State, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, whose refusal to accept the nominee of the NJC as provided by law, was the Genesis and Revelation of the judicial imbroglio in Rivers State. Who would forget that in a hurry?
What the APC is not saying, is that neither Okey Wali, SAN, a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association and accomplished lawyer of repute nor Justice Ndu, a former Chief Judge of Rivers State, now meritoriously retired, have been compromised by acts carried under their hands in the entirety of their individual careers.
What the APC is not saying is that the NJC Ethics Committee is a 27 member committee, of which 2 members are not just insignificant to derail the outcomes of the committee’s assignments but also makes the promoters of the logic of that possibility, mischief makers.
But APC’s protest smacks of inordinate hypocrisy. This is the same Party, whose leader, the current President of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, has violated every piece of legislation providing for Federal character in the appointment of Nigerians to political offices. A Party that produces a President who justifies his lopsided appointments in favour of his kinsfolk on the basis of not wishing to work with unknown and untrusted hands; who sets out to appoint his family relatives into the Federal Cabinet and populates other related appointments with men of his tribe, now turns around to oppose the inclusion of distinguished Rivers Sons into a committee that exemplifies the diversity of the Nigerian nation and charged with duties they are competent to discharge? What defines hypocrisy and duplicity better than this? What speaks of tyranny better than this effort and the grand agenda to emasculate the judiciary and her internal bodies in a bid to loosen the restraints on the pervading lawlessness and give free course to illegalities?
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