Posted on: 04:07 Thu, 13 Jul 2017

Popular Nigerian constitutional lawyer, Mike Ozekhome has said that the judgement of the Supreme Court which resolved the Peoples Democratic Party leadership crisis, saved Nigeria from a one-party state.



In a statement on Wednesday while reacting to the victory of the Ahmed Makarfi against Ali Modu Sheriff, over the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party, human rights lawyer, Chief Mike Ozekhome (SAN), said Sheriff’s aim was to destroy the PDP from within and that was why he refused all entreaties to restore peace in the party.

The legal practitioner added that this was the reason why Sheriff went about criticising members of his party while he was praising the ruling party.

Ozekhome said, “Sheriff and his faction were bent on destroying it (PDP) completely. It must have made the ruling APC green with envy in terms of the Sheriff’s huge capacity to exert maximum damage to the PDP’s corporate existence.

“Have you ever seen a supposed opposition party fraternising with and eulogising the ruling party on every step taken and never criticising it, yet tongue lashing its own party? Have u ever seen where a warring faction became allergic to a settlement that would throw its party up from its nadir of doldrums?”
The senior advocate hailed the Supreme Court for the judgment, describing the apex court as the last defender of democracy.

He said now that the PDP crisis is over, the party would be able to play its role as the main opposition party and put the APC on its toes.

Ozekhome added, “The apex court of Nigeria in its unanimous judgement today did two invigorating things: first, it saved Nigeria’s destructive and annihilating slide into an autocratic and despotic one-party state where absolutism and lack of opposition were already rearing their monstrous visages.

“Secondly, it saved, unarguably, the most potent opposition, the PDP, from self -destruction and internally generated volcanic eruption. There is no doubt that the Ahmed Makarfi and Modu Sheriff factions were apples and oranges when compared on an imaginary scale of genuineness.

“One was Japanese, the other, Taiwanese in terms of originality and imitation.”