Former President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, has cautioned the judiciary against making pronouncements that could be detrimental to the nation’s democracy.
Speaking on Thursday in Abuja at the 67th birthday celebration of Prof. Mike Ozekhome (SAN), Jonathan expressed his concern over recent court judgments related to political matters in the country.
The former Nigerian leader specifically lamented the Supreme Court’s decision allowing a ward chairman of a political party to suspend the National Chairman of that party.
He argued that this ruling is responsible for the current crisis in the Peoples Democratic Party and had previously caused problems for the All Progressives Congress.
Jonathan likened such court pronouncements to turning a cone upside down, increasing its propensity to fall. “When a cone is turned upside down, it cannot stand because any little thing that touches it will fall,” he noted, emphasizing that such judgments could destabilize the democratic dispensation in Nigeria.
He further stated that empowering ward chairmen of political parties to suspend their national chairmen is against the natural course of justice, as it allows a subordinate to remove a superior from office.
“You cannot tell me that the head of a department can expel the vice chancellor,” Jonathan asserted.
“Since that judgment was given, it has created all forms of instability. The PDP is in crisis today because of that judgment. The APC also faced the same problem at a time. Look at how other nations work; I have never seen where the sub-unit disciplines the principal,” he added.
“I am therefore pleading with the Supreme Court to review that judgment because it had turned the cone upside down,” ex-President Jonathan concluded.
His observations were made shortly after former President Olusegun Obasanjo brought him to the podium. Although Obasanjo was originally named the chairman of the occasion, he took Jonathan along with him and announced him as the co-chairman of the event.
