Sack DSS Director, Yusuf Bichi – HURIWA Charge Buhari

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack the Director-General of Department of State Service, Yusuf Bichi.

The call is coming after the DSS re-arrested the convener of the #RevolutionNow movement, Omoyele Sowore, last week.

HURIWA in a statement through its National Coordinator, Emmanuel Onwubiko, described the action by DSS as “abominable defecation of the temple of justice.”

The group 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 stated that there is no justifiable reason for the DSS to invade the Federal High Court and employ the use of force to re-arrest the publisher of Sahara Reporter, Sowore and Bakare who are on bail.

The group called on President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration to state its involvement in the invasion of the Federal High Courtroom of Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu by operatives of DSS.

The human right group further stated, “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 these crude tendencies will harm the international image of the Country for a long time to come.”

HURIWA also challenged DSS on its statement which claimed that Sowore acted a well-rehearsed script to give the world the impression that the agents of DSS arrested him inside the courtroom even though there was no attempt to arrest Sowore from the court as widely reported by the media.

The group attacked President Buhari-led administration for defending the agents of DSS over their invasion of the Federal High Court of Justice.

The Rights group said the action of the DSS officials can not possibly find any rational, empirical and constitutional support since that action amounted to a gross disrespect for the sanctity of the Judiciary which in Section 6 has the Judicial powers of the federation and section 36(5) of the Nigerian Constitution has unambiguously provided that all accused persons are totally innocent in the eyes of the law until a contrary determination has been reached by the competent Court of law and not the court of jesters or political clowns in the Nigerian Presidency.

“It is comical and irrational that the spokesman of the President of a Constitutional democracy in the 21st century can be seen arguing that a citizen who has already been granted bail by the Court of competent jurisdiction can be re-arrested over very nebulous and incoherent reasons that finds no justification in law and for which same reasons framed as criminal charges are already before the Court of law and during which pendency the presiding judge her Lordship Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu had graciously exercised her constitution power of discretion and granted bail to the accused thereby rendering his second arrest as an exercise in erection of double jeopardy,” it added.

The group condemned the current administration for rubbishing all institutions that the constitution has put in place to strengthen the practice of democracy in Nigeria just as the Rights group blamed the unbridled quest by the President for totalitarianism and dictatorial powers for the active campaign of destabilization of the Judiciary as is being carried out by the State Security Services.

President Buhari was charged by the group to desist from abusing his powers and office because political power is transient.