PRESS RELEASE
The Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders (CACOL), in reaction to a media report, has condemned in strong terms, the apparent indecorous and rascally behaviours of a group of senators numbering about 40 who had accompanied the Senate President Bukola Saraki to the Code of Conduct Tribunal on Thursday, November 5, 2015, to answer to charges of false declaration of assets preferred against the latter.
The law-makers, according to the Coalition, who took their seats in the tribunal chambers in obvious bid to intimidate the Tribunal and show of solidarity with the senate president, were reported to have engaged in acts considered indecorous as well as demeaning to their calling as senior law-makers of our dear country.
They allegedly created a rather rowdy atmosphere at the tribunal as they intermittently disrupted proceedings by either shouting down presentations by the prosecution counsels or making unsavoury and yet noisy comments in the process. The situation reportedly got to an unbearable point at which the leading prosecution counsel was forced to remind them that the tribunal should not be treated like the senate floor where ‘disorderly’ behaviours are tolerated – all in the name of immunity.
It’s worth recalling that CACOL once condemned this show of shame in which senate proceedings had to be locked down or postponed each time the senate president or his wife had to, either appear before the court or to honour a mere invitation by any agency of the state.
The Chairman of the Coalition, Comrade Debo Adeniran recalled with sadness and lamented, “The other day, as many as 80 senators abandoned their constitutional legislative duty, for which they were voted and paid, to accompany the senate president to the EFCC’s office. At some other time, the same shameless and obviously ‘jobless’ senators played the ‘aides-de-camp’ to the senate president’s wife on her visit to the anti-corruption agency, on invitation to be interrogated for her roles in corruption allegations. What a show of shame and gross irresponsibility!
“Besides that, Adeniran added, “even if they had shamelessly made their appearance in the tribunal chambers, should they, as ‘distinguished’ senators of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, not conduct themselves in a most honourable manner and accord due respect to law and justice? As senior law-makers, they, presupposedly, should constitute an epitome of decency, decorum and civility and exemplary in the way they demonstrate respect for the constitution which they swore to uphold and defend at all times.”
“CACOL, therefore, calls on well-meaning Nigerians to rise up and condemn what is fast becoming a fashion by these law-makers; to be abandoning their duty post at will for sheer mundane activities that are not in any way relevant to their assigned constitutional responsibility. Nigerians voted them in and should therefore be able to call them to order whenever they appear to be overstepping their bounds. We cannot continue to have our Houses of Law occupied by lawless, indolent persons who dress themselves in the garb of outlaws,” Adeniran admonished.
Temitope Macjob
Acting Media Officer, CACOL
temitope@thehumanitycentre.org
6th November, 2015.
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