Opinion
By Abdul-Aziz Jimoh
PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari, whilst delivering his address at the opening of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, conference in Abuja, posited that national security must take precedence over the rule of law and the civil liberties of individuals!
My response to the noxious address of the president at the NBA Conference in Abuja.
President Muhammadu Buhari’s address at the NBA’s conference is an opinion made because of the continued incarceration of Col. Sambo Dasuki, Rtd. The president’s address was personally authored by Festus Keyamo, SAN, who had earlier expressed the same opinion publicly, positing that the Supreme Court had told him so. Keyamo was, of course, the defence counsel for Asari Dokubo, in the infamous case of treasonable felony.
It is pertinent to state that the opinion expressed by the Supreme Court in the case of ALHAJI MUJAHID DOKUBO-ASARI V. FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA (2007) LPELR-958(SC), was made against the peculiar facts of that case. In the case, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari (Dokubo-Asari) had been refused bail by the Federal High Court, the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, based on clear and specific findings of clear threats to national security found in the published words and pronouncements to wage a war against Nigeria, forcefully overthrow the then government headed by President Olusegun Obasanjo, etc. The Supreme Court confirmed the findings of the lower courts, as follows:
“Indeed the depositions in the affidavit and interview granted the independent Newspaper on 10/9/05 are ominous and very disturbing. For example the appellant granted interview to the press wherein he says that he will continue to fight until Nigeria disintegrates. Evidence available to the trial Judge and to us shows beyond doubt the threat to National Security. A close scrutiny of the charges and documentary evidence available reveals offences that are a real threat to National Security. They involve creating a situation where the government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria could yield to force or expose the public to serious danger. Indeed paragraph 10 of the counter affidavit supports that fact. It states that it would be prejudicial to National Security to grant bail. I agree. This deposition easily covers all the counts against the appellant.”
Therefore, the case of ALHAJI MUJAHID ASARI- DOKUBO V. FRN (supra) cannot by any stretch of the imagination be an authority for the continued disobedience to lawful court orders and incarceration of Col. Sambo Dasuki, who had been serially granted bail by the Courts. Mujahid Asari-Dokubo was never granted bail!
Significantly, the findings of threats to national security WAS FOUND BY THE COURTS WHILST CONSIDERING ASARI DOKUBO’S BAIL APPLICATION. It was in consequence of those findings that the Courts refused Asari-Dokubo’s bail application; and it was as a result of those findings of threats posed by Asari Dokubo that the Court of Appeal made the pronouncements that where there is a threat to national security, the liberty of the individual will be subjugated to it.
It is very important to re-emphasis that it was the courts that found and pronounced on threats to national security, NOT THE EXECUTIVE ARM OF GOVERNMENT, during the bail hearings of Mujahid Asari-Dokubo.
The political and contrived after-thought of the President, most likely foisted on him by Festus Keyamo, SAN, and Abubakar Malami, SAN, Attornet-General of the Federation, is NOT a legal precedent for the existing lawlessness in the case of Col. Sambo Dasuki. The government has participated in every bail hearing in the Dasuki case and Dasuki had been granted bail by several courts. What then is the basis for holding Dasuki in unlawful detention?
The salient question also is, has any court in Nigeria found any threat to national security in the Dasuki case? The answer is an emphatic “NO”!
In legal jurisprudence, a case can only be a precedent for what it actually decided and it was for that reason that the Supreme Court held in ALHAJI MUJAHID DOKUBO-ASARI (supra), per I. T. MUHAMMAD, J.S.C., that:
“It is worthy of note as well, that on a question of exercise of discretion authorities are not of much value. No two cases are exactly similar and even if they are, the court cannot be bound by a previous decision to exercise its discretion the same way because that would be putting an end to discretion. No discretion in one case can be a precedent to another”.
If the federal government had been honest and sincere that Col. Sambo Dasuki posed a threat to national security, why were those arguments not advanced or/and upheld before/by the courts in the various applications for bail. It is now notorious facts that Col. Dasuki had been granted bail during several contested applications in Court, meaning the government had lost all its arguments in opposing bail for Col Dasuki!
It is disheartening and symptomatic of the low depth to which legal knowledge has sunk in this country that a Senior Advocate would go to a national TV, mainstream and the social media to cite inapposite cases willy-nilly, and turn legal principles on its head, in order to satiate his political masters and engender confusion in the minds of members of the public!
On how the principle of legal precedent or “stare decisis” is applied or operates, the Supreme Court re-canonised the position and explicated the law as follows in Azubuogu v. Oranezi & Ors (2017) LPELR-42669(SC), per Muhammad, J.S.C., at Pp. 13-14, paras. F-A:
“…Courts are bound by the earlier authoritative pronouncements of superior Courts on same or similar issues they are subsequently asked to determine….”
On what basis, short of being dishonest, would a Senior Advocate of Nigeria be proffering advice to the government to continue to defy the courts over Sambo Dasuki, predicated on ALHAJI MUJAHID ASARI-DOKUBO V FRN [SUPRA]? The two situations are fundamentally at variance, for the simple fact that Dasuki had been granted bail severally, whilst Dokubo-Asari was never granted bail at any point in time! Also, findings of threat to national security were made in the Dokubo Asari’s case. No such findings have been made by the courts in all the successful bail hearings involving Dasuki! It is shameful, appalling and an attempt “AB ASINO LANAM” to situate Sambo Dasuki’s case with the case of DOKUBO-ASARI V. FRN [Supra]!
For those cowards and political lickspittles who see nothing wrong in what is going on under this regime and its flagrant disobedience to court orders; the man died in them who chose silence and complicity in the face of tyranny, oppression and impunity!
In looking for who to blame for the audacious assault on the judiciary and the Bar, Nigerians should not blame a former dictator masquerading as a democrat; after all, political hirelings write his poisonous prescriptions for him whilst he, unable to really understand the prescriptions nevertheless delivers it to his patients! Students of history of military repression in Nigeria must remember that the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the big guns of the NBA (who were also complicit in assisting Gen. Abacha to dispatch the late Ken Saro Wiwa to the great beyond! Weep not if the present Attorney-General of the Federation and Mr. Keyamo see no shame in advocating the enthronement of dictatorship by taking dubious shelter under the authority of a case decided by the Supreme Court “on perculiar facts”!
It is therefore not a surprise that elders of the Bar, who ought to have taken a bold stance and walked out of the conference in protest were transfixed, nodded and applauded!
The president is NOT the problem; the elders of the Bar are; the president merely brought their own message to them in a gale of fanfare!
SHAME OF A NATION!
*Abdul-Aziz Jimoh, is a private legal practioner and can be reached through email: abdul_1qaz@yahoo.co.uk
– Aug. 30, 2018 @ 17:20 GMT |
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