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By Nasir Kura
National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Mr Adams Oshiomhole said the United States of America, United Kingdom and other foreign powers should stop interring in the country’s internal affairs because it is not a colony.
Fielding questions from State House correspondents after a meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and APC senators and senatorial candidates at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, Oshiomhole said the country must be allowed to handle its internal affairs, especially the suspension of Mr Walter Onnoghen as the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).
He said: “The thing is that Nigeria is not a colony. I think we all have to be careful. We must defend the sovereignty of our country. We welcome collaboration, we welcome peer review, we can compare notes, we welcome people who are interested in sharing experiences with us whenever the need arises, whether it’s capacity building, making useful suggestions on how we can continue to improve on our electoral process.
“Those are very valuable contributions that we appreciate. But Nigeria is not a colony. We will not accept any foreign interference in the internal affairs of Nigeria. When they dismiss judges in Europe.
“Judges have been dismissed in the United States when they are found guilty of corruption, the Western world cannot on the one hand, when it suits them, describe Nigeria as fantastically corrupt and when a corrupt judicial officer is being charged, people want to interfere.
“What anybody can insist on is, is anybody being framed? Is the suspended CJN guilty of the allegations made against him? Or is it something being cooked out from nowhere? Now, if a Chief Justice of the Federation admits that he has breached the law, if a Chief Justice of the Federation admits that he has several foreign domiciliary accounts, even though he also admits that by nature of his office, he is not s trader, what is he doing with accounts in British pounds, US dollars and in Euros and to the extent of forgetting that he has those accounts?
“If he has such memory failure about the size of his number of accounts as to fail to declare them, you and I know that not even ignorance is an excuse in law. So, where are we being hypocritical? And at a certain level of responsibility, it’s not even about legal technicalities. It’s about the moral weight, the moral burden you carry.”
The APC chairman said foreign powers should stop making Nigerians feel as though they’re at the mercy of any other country.
“The future of Nigeria is in the hands of Nigerians and our laws clear. Our laws are meant to be obeyed. If Nigerians thought that anybody other than the president and the vice president or a governor and deputy governor have immunity, it should have been so written into the constitution,” he said.
