Femi Falana, senior advocate of
Nigeria (SAN), says he has never asked President Muhammadu Buhari to suspend
the rule of law in fighting corruption.
Falana’s statement followed a
2016 interview now making the rounds where Niyi Akintola, another senior
lawyer, said Falana and himself rose in defence of Buhari at an event in
Washington, US.
Akintola was responding to a
question about the raid on the residences of judges when he said all the
president needed to do was to call the lawmakers to suspend the rule of law
because fighting corruption requires drastic measures.
In 2016, operatives of the
Department of State Services (DSS) had raided the residence of some judges.
“We were in Washington DC, United
States of America and for six days, the issue of corruption in Nigeria came to
the fore. It was not limited to Nigeria. Femi Falana and I stood up for our
president and his modus operandi in faraway Washington. It is not that we love
some of his tactics but we thought that a drastic problem requires a drastic
solution,” Akintola said in the interview.
He added that “all our president
needs to do is to go to the National Assembly, call the state Houses of
Assembly, more so now that governors are telling him to declare the state of
emergency on the economy. He can bring in the issue of corruption and ask that
we suspend the rule of law for one year because a drastic problem requires a
drastic solution and Femi Falana supported me.”
But in a statement, Falana said
he was surprised because he never attended any meeting with Akintola in
Washington.
“I was flabbergasted when my
attention was drawn to this publication last year. I was compelled to
dissociate myself from the views ascribed to me in the interview on the grounds
that Chief Niyi Akintola SAN and I have never attended any meeting together in
Washington before,” he said.
“Having consistently campaigned
for the defence of democracy, rule of law and human rights in Africa for over 3
decades I have never joined Chief Akintola SAN to advise the Buhari regime to
put human rights in abeyance under the pretext of fighting corruption.”
Falana had asked then that the
judges arrested should be granted bail and charged to court immediately.
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