Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, has written a
2-page letter to leaders of the United Nations, European Union, United States’
Congress, European Union (EU) Parliament, governments of United States, United
Kingdom and other foreign missions, over what he described as an attempt to
truncate Nigeria’s democracy, clamp down on opposition and silence him as the
leader and highest ranking member of the opposition in the country, all in the
name of prosecuting an alleged forgery case.
He wants the international
community to decide whether or not the trial he and Saraki are facing was
justified or if it's one purely borne out of political vendetta.
Part of Ekweremadu's letter titled
“Re: Trumped up charges
against the presiding officers of the eighth Senate: Nigerian democracy is in
grave danger,” reads;
“I wish to forward to you the court summons containing the
trumped up charges preferred against my person; the President of the Senate,
His Excellency, Senator Bukola Saraki and two others. I also wish to appeal to
you to kindly find time to read through the annexures- petition by members of
the Senate Unity Forum, statements by persons interrogated and the police
report- to see if our names appeared anywhere in these documents.
You may, thereafter, judge for yourself whether the Federal
Government, acting through the Attorney-General of the Federation, has any
justification whatsoever to generate our names for trial. The list of the
accused persons appear to have been politically generated because you cannot by
the documents attached, relate any of our names to the offence for which we are
now being charged.
Moreover, the rules and principles of fair hearing have not
been adhered to because the police have not interacted with me or the President
of the Senate as at the time of writing this letter. You may also wish to judge
for yourself whether this trial orchestrated against me is not a political
trial, calculated witch-hunt, barefaced intimidation, and a clear attempt to
emasculate the parliament and silence me as the leader and highest ranking
member of the opposition in Nigeria.
Meanwhile, it could also be recalled that an attempt was
made on my life on November 17, 2015. The Nigerian security agencies did
nothing, even though the incident was duly reported. This is for your
information and reflection”.
No comments:
Post a Comment