The Presidency, through the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, has said that Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike’s criticism of the state pardon granted by President Muhammadu Buhari to a former Governor of Plateau, Joshua Dariye, and his Taraba State counterpart, Jolly Nyame, lacked moral justification.
Wike had criticised the state pardon, saying it ridiculed the judiciary which had convicted both men of corruption.
The presidential hopeful, who spoke in Minna on Saturday, where he met with delegates of the Peoples Democratic Party, lamented that the Buhari regime is selective in its war against corruption.
He said, “I want to tell you that this government is very deceptive and they have deceived us enough.
“You have big big people, you jail them after all the court proceedings and waste of money, then you ridicule the judiciary by granting them pardon.
“How will the international community look at us with these type of things we do. Look at the amount spent in the prosecutions and you wake up one morning and messed it up all because of politics.”
He added that the state pardon was strategically done by the president towards the forthcoming 2023 general elections.
Wike said, “He obviously wants them to help him during the elections, he wants Dariye to help with Plateau while Nyame will work for Taraba.”
“If it is not for election purpose, why did he not grant pardon to the likes of James Ibori and Atuche?”
Reacting, Shehu, in a post on Facebook, faulted Wike’s criticism, saying the Governor ought to have made it known at the meeting where the state pardon was issued, which he attended, instead of airing his views after the meeting.
“I do not see the moral justification for Governor Wike’s criticism of the decision of the government to pardon Governors Dariye and Nyame at a meeting to which he was duly invited but did not attend.
“The Rivers State Deputy Governor, Dr. Ipalibo Banigo who joined the Council of State meeting virtually switched off her camera so it was difficult to determine whether she sat behind the dark screen or just walked away after first joining.
“If the Governor felt so strongly about the pardons, the right was for him or his representative to sit through the meeting and assert views. This did not do. A press release after the meeting is bolekaja politics,” Shehu said.
Apart from Wike, other prominent Nigerians including Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, Rights activist, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), Sokoto Diocese Catholic Bishop Rt Revd Mathew Kukah and HURIWA among others had slammed government over the pardon.
While Soyinka described the pardon as the end of the Buhari administration’s anti corruption war, Falana asked the Federal Government to extend Thursday’s presidential pardon granted to some top Nigerians, to people serving terms for petty offences.
This, he said, would reflect fairness and equality for all before the law.
He threatened to mobilise other lawyers against FG if other convicts, especially those jailed for petty offences are not pardoned.
Falana made the call at the 1st anniversary of late Afenifere’s spokesman, Yinka Odumakin’s Lecture and Book Presentation.
Falana said, “All petty thieves in our prisons should be released. Under Section 17 of the 1999 Constitution, there shall be equality and equal rights for all citizens.
“Section 42 of the Constitution says there shall be no discrimination on the basis of class and gender, so you cannot take out a few people on the basis that they belong to a category or section of the society.
“I can assure you that if the government did not release others, I am going to call on lawyers whose clients are left in custody to come to court and challenge the discriminatory treatment of their clients.
“Just two weeks ago, a Nigerian was jailed for stealing N1,000 in Abuja; the accused pleaded with the judge that he had no food but the judge jailed him for six months.
“When we are talking of justice and fair play, if you want to pardon some set of people, then you must also extend presidential pardon to petty thieves in the prisons.
“This is because if the big thieves are being asked to go, then they must also extend the facility to other Nigerians.”
On its part, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria accused the president of discrimination, saying, “this discrimination on the basis of political connection will adversely harm the rule of law”.
HURIWA applauded the release of the military officers most of whom were roped into phantom charges of a coup plot by the then maximum dictator General Sani Abacha.
HURIWA, in a statement signed by the national coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said the best way to begin a thoroughly professional anti-graft war was to ensure federal character in the appointment of directors for the anti-graft body.
HURIWA said it “views the action of early release from jail of these politicians who had barely served 30 per cent of their total jail terms as a confirmation of the well-known notoriety of the Buhari led administration as a harbinger of the most sophisticated forms of corruption but which administration chooses to use the instrumentality of the so-called anti-corruption crusade to whip opposition politicians to the line.
“There has never really been any crusade against corruption in the real sense of it. What EFCC does mostly is to harass students carrying expensive phones and laptops and parade them as YAHOOYAHOO. Whereas the real big-time CORRUPT politicians who are looting Nigeria dry and mindlessly are allowed to have a field day.
“It is now survival of the fittest and the most connected in Nigeria of 2022”.
