Date Published: 08/26/11

Our interest in Salami is Rule of Law and Justice

The Peoples Democratic Party of Nigeria PDP, has asked the Action Congress of Nigeria to declare her interest in Salami in the raging controversy concerning his crude and unjustified removal from office as president of Court of Appeal.  

Now our interest is in Rule of Law, justice, equity and fair play. Eight out of twenty four National Judicial Council (NJC) members excluding the president and vice president did not form the quorum to recommend the removal of Justice Salami. Two: The NJC that refused to probe Justice Thomas Naron’s blunder in Osun tribunal suddenly found their voice in the criminal removal of Salami. By section 292(1) of the Constitution and the Oaths Act the president or any other person for that matter cannot remove the  
CJN, PCA, Chief Justice of the Federal High Court of FCT, Grand Khadi of Sharia Court of Appeal of FCT, President of Customary Court of Appeal of FCT without getting 2/3 of the Senate to endorse the move. Again the fundamental question is this: could the 8-man NJC members out of 24 have recommended the removal of Salami if Edo, Osun and Ekiti guber election cases had tilted to PDP? What would have been the situation in Sokoto State today if the CJN, Katsina-Alu did not interfere in the case?

When Jonathan won in the South West did ACN go to Court? Is PDP challenging guber elections in Ogun, and Oyo States won overwhelmingly by ACN? Is President Jonathan  
afraid that the 2011 Presidential elections case will come before Justice Salami?  Is GEJ afraid of Salami? Did he win the Presidential election fair and square throughout the federation?  Our support for Salami is to protect the integrity of our electoral process, judiciary and Nigeria from a criminal gang in PDP who seek power without responsibility. Our renascent democracy was not won on a platter of gold. Thousands of Nigerians died to achieve it and we cannot sit down and see the hard earned democracy being rubbished by a criminal gang that do not know how we got here.  

Everybody is kicking GEJ’s removal of Justice Salami without due process and all of them cannot be wrong. It is only the PDP that is supporting the illegal act. Rule of law and justice are very important issues you can ignore in a democracy to your own peril. When these are threatened you have deep constitutional crisis, anarchy and consequently system collapse.  

GEJ acted in a hurry to endorse the decision of partisan 5 members of NJC. He can stop the unwarranted heating of the polity by reversing the purported removal of Justice Salami. The time to do so is now.