Popular Lagos lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) has said that Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar-led national peace committee is only protecting the interest of the rich.
Femi Falana
He made this disclosure during a live programme on Channels Television in Lagos state.
The human rights advocate said the peace committee was on a mission to protect the rich and not the poor, The Punch reports.
He questioned the propriety on which members of the committee chose to only defend Jonathan and not others who were being tried for corruption across the country.
Falana added that the peace committee was one of the reasons why only the poor were convicted by the courts while the rich were always set free.
He said: “I read their statements and Bishop Kukah’s interviews and I am not bothered. You know why? What they did was simply a demonstration of class solidarity. Nobody is speaking for the poor. Under the current political and legal system, the rich are never harasse. So, when my lord bishop was insisting on following the rule of law in dealing with corrupt people, of course it was expected.
“What they follow in Nigeria, as one of my colleagues would say, are the rules of law not the rule of law. And do you know what the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission or the police do when they are dealing with the rich? They write a polite letter saying, ‘we hereby invite you to our office to kindly be interrogated by our officer.’ You don’t write a letter to the poor. You pounce on their houses.”
The human rights activists said Buhari’s anti-corruption war is within the limit of rule of law, adding that every government has the duty to fight corruption as stipulated by the extant law of the land.
He explained further that the former head of state also probed his predecessor, Gen. Sani Abacha even when he was dead.
He said: “Pursuant to Section 15 of the constitution, every government in Nigeria is mandatorily required to fight corruption because the provision is to defer that the Nigerian state shall abolish corrupt practices and the abuse of power.”
The committee members particularly the bishop of the Sokoto Catholic Diocese, Matthew Kukah had come under fire for faulting President Buhari’s anti-graft war and the manner he had castigated the administration of former president Goodluck Jonathan.
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