CCT chairman’s outburst
TEMPERS were probably frayed last Thursday at the Code of Conduct Tribunal as the federal government closed its case against the suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria , Walter Onnoghen, who was accused of failing to declare his assets. The prosecution counsel called only three witnesses out of the six he had intended to put on the witness stand, suggesting that the others were not even as reliable as the ones called.
But Mr Umar could also be reacting to the anticlimactic thinning down of the trial he had seemed to invest so much in, and which the public, not to say the government, had also invested with so much emotions. As this unprecedented cause celebre winds down, it will now take more than the most amazing legal wizardry, indeed a miracle, to redeem the case against Justice Onnoghen. The prosecution knows this. The CCT chairman senses this. And the Onnoghen defence is beginning to foretell this.
Mr Umar may be justifiably angry to be misquoted or for the proceedings in the tribunal to be misreported, but there is no denying that he is uptight about the relentless direction the Onnoghen case has taken. He is uptight because he has been assailed on all sides, accused of subverting the rule of law and misapplying the law, and of handling the case with a predetermined outcome in mind. No man, not even an angel, could be indifferent to such accusations.
“In the midst of all these distracting events, the essential question of whether the accused CJN actually has a case to answer has been lost in the squabble over the form and nature of his trial. This should not be so. If Justice cannot be done and clearly seen to be done, society itself is at risk of the most unimaginable chaos.
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