SANs drag Fayose, PDP to NHRC for Invading Ekiti Court

Two Senior Advocates of Nigeria- Norrisom Quakers and M.J. Onigbanjo- have dragged the Peoples Democratic Party and Ekiti State-governor-elect, Ayodele Fayose, to the National Human Rights Commission over alleged violation of their rights to practise as lawyers.In a petition   dated September 29 and jointly signed by them, they claimed that the September 22 and 25 attacks on the Ekiti High Court by some suspected political thugs constituted   threats to their lives.



Quakers and   Onigbanjo, who are the lawyers to the litigants   challenging Fayose’s eligibility to contest in the June 21 governorship election, addressed their petition to the Executive Secretary of the NHRC, Prof. Bem Angwe.

The National Judicial Council had at its emergency meeting on September 16 asked the Inspector-General of Police, Suleiman Abbah,to investigate the attacks on the court and prosecute those behind it.

The Nigerian Bar Association had also said it would send an investigative team to the state to unravel those behind the incident and bring them to justice.

In their petition,   Quakers and   Onigbanjo urged the rights commission to use its wherewithal   to investigate the attacks on the court.

They said the NHRC should unearth “those behind this shameful display of banditry and gross violation of human rights with a view to prosecuting and bringing them to justice.”

The petitioners accused the PDP of organising the political thugs that invaded the high court premises on September 22 and attacked Justice Olusegun Ogunyemi.

The attackers reportedly regrouped on September 25 to disrupt   the hearing of a petition challenging the election of   Fayose.

Quakers and Onigbanjo described the   September 22 incident as “barbaric and barefaced violation of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of the claimants (litigants), claimants’ counsel, the judge and other officers of the court by thugs who were organised by the PDP.”

Part of the petition reads, “We are therefore apprehensive for our safety and that of our legal team’s lives, the dignity of our human persons, our right to practise our profession and our clients’ rights as citizens of Nigeria to seek redress in the court of law.

“All the foregoing rights mentioned above   clearly violated by the instigated mob, whose objectives included ensuring that the court did not deliver its scheduled ruling at 12 noon and or conduct any other business thereafter and to bully, intimidate and instill fear in the court in an attempt to obstruct justice to the point where the court would be too apprehensive to subsequently hear the case prior to the swearing in of Fayose on   October 16,2014.

“Should this unfortunate display of desecration of the hallowed temple of justice which is supposed to the last hope of the common man be allowed to persist unprosecuted, we all would be recorded for posterity as the people who sat with arms folded while miscreants and hooligans took over and controlled the administration of justice and overall balance of the society.”