Onnoghen: Buhari Must Extend Probe To Other Judges – SANs

Onnoghen: Buhari must extend probe to other judges – SANs

Senior
Advocates of Nigeria, SANs, under the aegis of Justice Reform Project,
JRP, on Tuesday called on President Muhammadu Buhari to extend
corruption probe to other judges.

They said the reported
voluntary resignation of Justice Walter Onnoghen should not be the end
of the corruption allegations leveled against him.

According to
them, given the gravity of the allegations against the suspended Justice
Onnoghen and his admission, the law should be made to take its course
to show that it respects no one.

The SANs called on Buhari to
subject all other judges to the same type of probe that Onnoghen went
through, so as to fish out all other judges living above their
legitimate means.

In a statement on Tuesday, JRP, which consists
of about 20 SANs, said it was important for Buhari to take this step in
order to convince Nigerians that Onnoghen’s trial was not a
politically-motivated witch-hunt and had no ethnic colouration.

The
SANs said the details of the allegations of financial mismanagement
which the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission leveled against
Onnoghen in the petition it submitted to the National Judicial Council,
and Onnoghen’s response to the allegations, “raised significant
questions about the financial practices of the Nigerian judiciary and
the various heads of courts.”

It, therefore, called on Buhari not to limit the probe to Onnoghen.

“Beyond
Honourable Justice W.S.N. Onnoghen, the JRP believes the revelations
that have been made in the course of this affair necessitate that urgent
steps be taken to identify and sanction all other Nigerian judicial
officers who are found to posses inexplicable wealth that cannot be
reconciled with their legitimate income or their asset declarations, two
of the allegations made against Justice Onnoghen.

“These steps
are necessary for a variety of reasons. First, to ensure public
confidence in the judiciary and disabuse the notion that all judicial
officers in Nigeria are corrupt and that justice is for sale.

“Second,
to disabuse the notion that Justice W.SN. Onnoghen’s travails are a
mere witch-hunt motivated by ethnic and political interests rather than
the result of a genuine concern for sanitising and reforming the
Nigerian judiciary.

“Third, to eliminate the suspicion that the
executive arm of government is using the information it has access to,
by virtue of its control over the apparatus of the state, to take
selective action only against those judicial officers that fail to do
its bidding.”

According to Punch, the SANs appealed to all
lawyers in the country as well as other members of the public not to
hesitate to forward to relevant regulatory agencies corruption
information on any judge they know.

Source:- Pmnewsnigeria