The Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) has warned the Federal Government not to set a bad precedent for the country in the ongoing trial of the Senate President Dr. Bukola Saraki over false assets declaration. The forum which is the umbrella body of the leaders of thought in the North, warned that the Federal Government through the Code of Conduct Tribunal must not give a pre-determined judgment against Saraki for political reasons as doing so, will not be in the best interest of this country.
Former Senator and National Vice Chairman, Arewa Consultative Forum, Joseph Waku, described the on-going prosecution of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, as a premeditated trial that will bring no justice to the defendant (Saraki). Addressing judiciary correspondents after observing the court session on behalf of ACF, Waku claimed that from all indications and conduct of the proceedings, the Tribunal Chairman, Mr. Danladi Umar was being teleguided by external forces.
The former Senator, who claimed that he was sent to the Tribunal by the national leadership of the ACF, said he was not impressed with the performance of the Tribunal in the trial. His words: “I have been watching the proceedings on the television and reading in the newspapers, and I was mandated by the Arewa Consultative Forum to come here as an observer and watch the proceedings and go back to report what I have found. “My observations are that there is a premeditated something that is going on in this country. The judiciary is on trial, the country is on trial, the Justices are on trial and we are watching to see, because similar cases have gone on before and we know how they ended. “So, my observations here are those things that I have witnessed and I have to go back to the mother organizations to report my findings based on what I witnessed, what I have seen and the way I have looked at it”.
Adding: “I think that Nigeria is again moving through a trying period of Judicial process and I make bold to say that the prosecution does not have prerogative of knowledge but from the look of things, there is already a teleguided and premeditated judgment that one expect to see in future and that may not be good for this country.
“It will not be good for judicial process, it is not going to be good for democracy and it will not be in the best interest of the ‘Change’ that we are looking for”. “In as much as we are against corruption, let the legal process take its due cognizance of the facts that it is the last hope of the ordinary and common persons. That is my observation”, he concluded.
Courtesy: National Mirror
