President Muhammadu Buhari has been called upon to, with immediate effect, dismiss the Director General of Department of State Services (DSS), Alhaji Yusuf Bichi.
The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, in a statement signed by its national Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko on Monday, described the DSS action as “abominable defecation of the temple of justice.”
HURIWA’s statement said, “This invasion of the Federal High Court just like the invasion of the National Assembly by 100 hooded armed security forces of the SSS and the invasion of the residences of Justices of the nation’s Supreme court and Federal High Court are symptomatic of the increasing desire of the administration to institute arbitrariness and anarchy and then to elevate impunity and official lawlessness to a state policy which will culminate in the ultimate collapse of constitutional democracy and the emergence of full dictatorship.”
HURIWA said that there is no justifiable reason under the sun for an institution created by statute like the State Security Services or the DSS to actively invade the sacred sanctum of the Federal High Court and employ brute force to arbitrarily re-arrest two Nigerian citizens who are already on bail granted to them by the competent court of law.
The rights group said the display of crudity and wanton disrespect for the sanctity of the court system and the half baked efforts by reactionary forces aligned to the Federal administration of President Buhari to explain away the weighty issues connected with the invasion of the Federal High Court room of Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu makes the government appear to be totally cut off from reality and shows the high level of arrogance of power in display at the highest echelons of the central government in Abuja at the moment.
It added that “This attempt to paint black what is white and to deny an event recorded on video and circulated all over the World will present the government as a bunch of people who are in the business of canonizing falsehoods and adopting naked lies as the hallmarks of the current administration. This is a serious disservice to the Nigerian State and this crude tendencies will harm the international image of the Country for a long time to come.”
HURIWA’s statement is coming against the backdrop of a claim by the DSS which said in a statement by its Spokesman, Peter Afunanya, that Sowore acted a well-rehearsed script to give the world the impression that agents of the secret police arrested him inside a courtroom even as the agency said there was no attempt whatsoever to pick up Sowore from the court as widely reported by the media.
