| RE: The Iconic Gani and the Odious Nnakwe: A Clash of Rights? |
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| Thursday, 12 August 2004 | |
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Dear Prof Aluko, RE: The Iconic Gani and the Odious Nnakwe: A Clash of Rights? This is a rejoinder to your article of the above title. First, I have a problem with your title – “The Iconic Gani and the Odious Nnakwe: A Clash of Rights?” To describe Nnakwe as “odious” is to find him guilty before any court in our land has done so. It is a presumption not based on facts, but on gossips and rumours. Nnakwe must be presumed to be a decent citizen, until such a presumption is rebutted on trial through a finding of guilt based on an offence that we can truly describe as “odious”. If Nnakwe is found to be legally guilty of dealing in fake drugs or of attempting to murder Mrs Akunyili, then we can really begin to describe him as “odious”; but before then, we must presume he’s innocent as you yourself would seem to have agreed somewhere else within the body of your essay. It does not matter that Nnakwe had been arraigned in court severally before now or that his business is reportedly acknowledged as suspicious. The court deals in proofs and until a case is made against him in a proper court of law with a safe conviction, no one has a right to consider him odious. The second question that arises from your speculative title is this notion of rights clashing. What exactly do you mean by a clash of rights? Are you talking of Gani’s right to defend whomsoever he chooses as a lawyer clashing with the right of Nigerians/Nigerian state to prosecute an alleged felon? Or, are you talking of the civil rights of Nnakwe clashing with the rights of Nigerians/Nigerian state to prosecute him? In any case, I do not see any clash of rights; rather, I see a denial of rights necessitating Gani’s action. The key issue here is that the Nigerian state through the agencies of NAFDAC, the police and the security services are denying the Nnakwes their rights (irrespective of whether or not we think they’re guilty or innocent of any proposed charge the state hopes or intends to bring against them, but which it is yet to bring against them seven months after their arrest and continued detention). Thirdly, your attempt to fuse Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence with Christian theology though to an extent historically correct, it is nonetheless practically out of sync with the secular nature of today’s legal regimes in the democratic world to which Nigeria aspires. What you’ve called “Divine Principles” have no room in the matter at all because to assume otherwise is to invite all sorts of notions and beliefs into the interpretation of the issues at stake. Though I’m a Christian myself, I do understand the clear boundaries between my Christian morality and the secular law that governs us all. The point is if I’m allowed to bring in my Christian theology into law, I will have no reason to deny the Muslim or the Traditional Believer the right to interpret this same law in the image of his/her own religion, which, needless to say is a recipe for anarchy (as we’re witnessing with the practice of unconstitutional Sharia presently in some Northern states). I mean, why should the Muslim or the Traditional African Religionist accept the view of my God of Genesis as the basis for law in a supposedly secular legal order? The assumption that the God you worship is the final authority on secular law is suspect to say the least. In fact, this mentality would seem to have infected your interpretation of “Constitutional Rights” when you went on to argue that since the institution of “LAWYERING” is a wholly human endeavour, then it must be suspect! Of course, prima facie this logic is terribly faulty, because if we begin to seek professional validation from the Bible, we would be declaring virtually all modern professions “suspect”, including yours as a Chemical Engineer! What we must state clearly really is that we all do not live by the Bible; we all do not live by the Koran or by the dictates of Traditional African Beliefs. However (and this is the important point here), we all live under a legal regime that has its rules of engagement for the individual legal practitioner, for the accused and for those prosecuting, be it the state or individual persons. You actually got it right when you said the following in the portion you sub-titled, “The particular case of Lawyer Gani and Nnakwe”: “Chief Marcel Nnakwe, the allegedly self-confessed fraudulent fake drug dealer, is a human being with rights, as odious as his alleged crime might be. He is innocent until proven guilty, despite his alleged confession. His “confession” merely aids the prosecutors, and does not relieve them of their duty to prove him guilty. Since he has a divine and legal right to defend himself, any outrageous blocks put in his way, including to stay alive – illegal confinement, inability to get to his lawyers or his defence materials, or to his medicines, etc. – must be cleared. ”Next comes the lawyer Gani. Iconic as he may be in Nigeria, he is still a human being and a lawyer, and has earned his name as a controversial person. His agreement to defend Nnakwe is part of his controversial persona. He has a right to choose who to defend and who not to defend, and bear the praise (from some people) and opprobrium (from others.) You may not choose to defend Nnakwe; I may not choose to defend Nnakwe, but Gani HAS chosen to defend Nnakwe; maybe NOT his innocence or guilt of the primary accusation, but Nnakwe’s right to due process”. First, by using such phrases as “allegedly self-confessed fraudulent fake drug dealer”, “as odious as his alleged crime might be”, etc, you have showed that the purported odiousness of Nnakwe is only an allegation that is yet to be proved and that his “confession” is yet to be tested in a court of law – all of which must tell you that your calling him “odious” in your main title is erroneous. More importantly, you recognize his “legal right to defend himself” and to challenge “any outrageous blocks put in his way, including to stay alive – illegal confinement, inability to get to his lawyers or his defence materials, or to his medicines, etc”. If you do recognize these, as you evidently do, why make an issue of the fact that Gani happens to be the lawyer doing this on his behalf and on behalf of some of us who feel strongly that the state cannot act this way against a fellow citizen, no matter how he/she is regarded in some quarters, as far as a competent court of law is yet to make pronouncement on his guilt? I’m sure you will want to point out that you have no problem with the fact that Gani is handling the case, as far as he’s prepared to be praised and lambasted for any action he’s taken with regard to this (as you pointed out above), but the overall implication of your stance is actually an implied indictment of Gani and that is where I have problems with you. Such implied indictment can be gleaned from your proposition that Gani collects no fee for this case (or at least not until Nnakwe is found innocent!) Why? Gani has been praised and criticized for everything he’s done from day one in the name of the law, even as he’s gone on to be acknowledged as the conscience of the nation. So, why is this particular case different in your view? Of course, it looks different to you, because consciously or sub-consciously you’ve internalized the notion that Nnakwe is guilty and that whatever Gani collects in terms of legal fees must be tainted! You think there is a need to “absolve Gani and lawyers of repute like him of any accusation of unethical money-grubbing and benefiting from the ills of accused people like Nnakwe if they are found guilty”. But why should this be the case with lawyers or with Gani in this particular instance? Would a doctor not collect his pay if an operation to save a life does not eventually save the life where a case of negligence is not in issue? Would you as a researcher not get paid if one of your experiments doesn’t produce the right result where equally a case of negligence is not in issue? How much of the money that comes to you or your colleagues for research from persons, companies or institutions do you investigate their REAL source? Are you sure of the source of the salary you’re being paid? The point I’m making is this, you EARN your money, whether as a teacher or a researcher and leave it to others to moralize about its source or to investigate it if legally required. If for instance, X Chemical Company gives your Department a grant for research and then some years from hence the company is accused or found to be making its money or a bulk of its money from contamination or by some other illegal or odious means, no law compels your Department to return this grant nor is there any law that compels the company's employees not legally liable for the offence to return their salary simply because it’s paid to them from a tainted or questionable source. Company X will answer to the law as the accused and if found guilty will be dealt with according to the law. You or your Department or anyone who’s gained from the grant or from money paid for services legally rendered to Company X would not be expected to “absolve” yourselves of any supposed guilt nor would your reputation be at stake. You are in the business of research and your reputation will only be at stake if you or your Department didn’t use the legally granted money for the purposes it is meant for. The same thing applies to the lawyers or Gani in this case. Gani’s reputation can only be at stake if he does not represent his client properly to the best of his ability and as allowed by the rules and ethics of his profession. Like you or the doctor, he’s in practice to make money amongst other things. He has bills to pay, staff to pay and a whole lot of things to spend on in the course of the case. If he chooses to do this pro bono, there are rules that should guide him, but none supposes that he has to do that to absolve himself of any accusation of “unethical money-grubbing”. His profession has its rules and ethics and except someone is specifically pointing out that Gani in taking this case has infringed any of these rules, you have no case at all. The labourer must eat from his vineyard. All that needs to be ascertained is that he actually earns it. Lawyers take up cases without knowing whether or not the court will find their clients guilty; all they can do is try their best. What you are suggesting amounts to saying every lawyer who’s taken any case to the criminal court in which his/her client has been found guilty must begin to refund that fees paid, being proceeds of crime! Where would that lead? Simply inconceivable! Now, you posted essays by Peter Parker and Alan Dershowitz, but I do not think they are of much help in resolving the issues here. In other words, your appeal to them with regard to the choice of Gani to defend Nnakwe is a misconception, as their discussions dealing on the moral ambiguity of legal representation and a the question of lawyer’s right to his/her fee from a questionable client under American law do not apply to Gani’s case, and, if they do, we are yet to actually know if for nothing else, for the fact that the case, if there’s indeed any case, is yet to come before a criminal court. For instance, the whole of Peter Parker’s piece deals with “when the party has pleaded guilty and the lawyer is reduced to merely pointing out reasons why his/her client should receive a more lenient sentence than others”. This obviously is not the case with Gani because the accused persons are yet to actually be charged to a criminal court and therefore the question of them having pleaded guilty has not arisen. Gani has therefore not been put in a position to explore the moral ambiguity being proposed by Parker. More importantly, we must note that Gani’s application does not deal on the criminal aspects of the case, but the civil aspects. The only reference to anything criminal was the fact that these persons were arrested without any mandate from any court on the mere suspicion that they attempted to kill Mrs Akunyili. The police paraded them only to come out later with a statement that the so-called attempt on Akunyili’s life was indeed an “accidental discharge” by one of her police escorts on their way from a party! So, Gani’s point is clear – the police cannot just pick up these citizens, accuse them of a crime the police later admitted they did not commit and still keep them incarcerated without any charge for seven months, even as the courts have ordered their release. It really does not matter that these are the Nnakwes. It could have been anybody. The fact is simply that the state is this very moment incarcerating them illegally and they should be released. All Gani is doing is standing up to insist on their civil rights; he’s not defending them in any criminal case as they are yet to be so charged. Now, it is possible that you have brought in Parker and Dershowitz on the basis of the so-called confession and apology by Nnakwe. If so, first note that Gani did not deal with that aspect, which is consistent with my argument that he’s actually dealing on the civil aspects of these citizens’ rights and not the potential criminal case. However, just for our purpose here, let us consider the matter. I have actually dealt with this elsewhere in an online discussion at NaijaPolitics@yahoogroups.com . I did this by reproducing and discussing excerpts of an interview Akunyili granted Newswatch in the October 28, 2002 edition of the magazine, in which she narrated what happened. Allow me to reproduce that excerpt here: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Newswatch: What has been your experience with major marketers of fake drugs? Akunyili: We have been making a lot of seizure and now have started prosecuting them. Last year and up to early this year, we have made very few prosecutions because we felt it was important to use enlightenment campaign first with few prosecutions. And eventually when we have sensitised people enough so that nobody would claim ignorance, we would now start prosecutions. We have had big catches and we are still expecting to get a lot of big catches. Like Chief Marcel Nnakwe, he is the biggest fake drugs importer and distributor, east of the Niger . We used our enlightenment campaign and traders to trace him. We have been prosecuting people and we knew he must have trained so many people. And that man's public apology and acceptance has positively worked for NAFDAC on the boys he had trained over the years. Because if your Oga comes to tell the whole country that he is sorry and that people in this business should come out of it, a good number of the boys he had trained in that area must be pulling out. And the report reaching us from the market is that many people in the fake drugs business are so afraid now that they are pulling out. And I must tell you I don't even believe that there is still a lot of importation of fake drugs into the country. Because they know that they have problem with NAFDAC. I believe that the few cases we have now are coming from the orders they placed before NAFDAC intervention. The seizures we have been making, sometimes we don't get the people for many months. Some people tell us to go to some warehouses that there are fake drugs there. And when we start asking about the owner, the informants just disappear. We did that for months and we were not succeeding. I told my staff, once we get this type of information let us collect the drugs and destroy them first. That is number one. If we leave that warehouse to insist we must see the owner, those drugs can disappear. We did that for many months until few months ago. There was a time, one of the traders came and said there was a warehouse at Ebute-Metta Street , with fake drugs. Who is the person? He did not want to say more. He said that was all he wanted to say for now. So, we went there on a Saturday morning, evacuated the drugs in three 911 lorries. Nobody came out to claim ownership. The evacuation was done morning till evening. Next day nobody came, third day, nobody came to say anything. I summoned a meeting of my directors. I said we were going to put up another administrative guideline. We were going to put up an advert that the landlord of that house must surface. If we don't find the owner of the fake drugs, the landlord should be arrested. If he doesn't come, he should be looked for and arrested. So we put up an administrative guideline that if we find fake drugs in any warehouse, if the owner does not surface, we would arrest the landlord. That landlord at Ebute-Metta was arrested and he led us to the man and my enforcement unit is working on it. We have been having problems with these big time importers and distributors. Another problem we are having is getting at them. But I know that by and large, (except if they drop the businesses,) we will get them. We have a systematic, and sustained, planned surveillance for markets, shops, hotel outlets. When we go on surveillance and find fake drugs in shops, we ask them: where is the receipt with which you bought these drugs. They will give you a receipt and the receipt you will discover is mere sales invoices which carries no address. This sales invoice does not have name, addresses. So, we put up another administrative guideline few months ago. That if we go on any surveillance and find that type of receipt, we will evacuate all drugs in that shop and destroy them, genuine or fake. It means that the owner of that shop is colluding with fakers. Newswatch: What is the situation with Marcel Nnakwe now? Akunyili: The situation with Marcel Nnakwe is very interesting. Marcel has had four cases with NAFDAC before I came into office. His goods were seized in 1996, he was taken to court. His drugs are still there. They were not destroyed. Because when a case is in court we cannot destroy drugs. Then in 1997, he was caught again with imported fake drugs. He was taken to court again. His case is still in court. I think it was 1997 he was caught, twice. Then in 1998 or 1999 he was caught again. So each time he was caught he was taken to court. So he had four court cases in court with NAFDAC. And he had four big consignments on each occasion. They are still in the warehouse. And you can imagine what must have become of those drugs from 1996 till date. Newswatch: Is he in detention? Akunyili: No. The law did not say so. That is the problem with the present law. We are succeeding because we are working with administrative guideline. If we are using the law, like Marcel Nnakwe, the law did not say that if he was caught he should be locked. So, he is still in court with NAFDAC. I tell you what happened. Those drugs, like I said, are still there. But the traders promised me they were going to bring him out in Onitsha . Actually before I went there, I had to solicit the help of traders in Onitsha . I went to solicit the help of traders because even if they are not qualified pharmacists, they are on ground, they are the wholesale distributors of drugs in this country. Manufacturers sell to them and everybody; most people go to buy from them. Therefore, they are on ground. And the best thing to do was to teach them how to handle those drugs and to use them to eradicate fake drugs from the markets and shops. That is what is important for now. Next time we can go to phase two. Before the traders helped us to bring Marcel, for NAFDAC to clip his wings, Marcel had been known since early 70s to be a fake drugs importer in this country. Even while I was still in the university, we all knew the name even though not physically. His son eventually came to study pharmacy but didn't finish. The son was moving with cars in the university. Can you imagine a student controlling all following him? You knew how they follow big men. That was how they moved in the university. And everybody knew this is Marcel Nnakwe's son. So, everybody in NAFDAC knew this man was a faker of drugs and importer. But he was too big for them. To me a criminal can never be big. A criminal has no power. My strategy was to ask Onitsha traders to prove to me that they are not all criminals. The responsible ones among them must show me that they are working with NAFDAC by making Marcel Nnakwe to come. Because they had already before then showed us the warehouses of Marcel in Onitsha . Five warehouses. Of course, we seized the five of them. We took inventories of the drugs. All the drugs failed the analysis test. We saw chloroquine tablets containing about 40 mls instead of 200 mls. Ampliclox about 52 mls instead of 580 mls and so on. Horrible results we got from laboratory. We got hold of all the reports, came to Onitsha . Because, the traders had assured me that they would bring him that day. So, how the traders planned it, I didn't know. But they brought him. When they brought him that was the day we wanted to destroy drugs in Onitsha , and I know that by law we could not evacuate his drugs and destroy them without his writing a letter of consent for forfeiture for destruction. So the traders helped me and I now said Marcel " look at the result of all your drugs. Your drugs are fake. And you know we are still in court with you over four consignments. We can work on this and finish it now. These particular five warehouses in Onitsha , we want to evacuate them for destruction. So, sign." Already, their chairman, everybody was on ground. He wrote the letter, and he signed. As soon as he signed I told my workers to move. And they evacuated the drugs to the field. When they were evacuating the drugs, I knew God was doing His work. I quickly jumped out in the field, I said listen, it is not enough for you to sign this letter. All the traders were behind me, so that gave me boldness. Then I said you must apologise to Nigerians, because you have cheated many people here. He said under camera? I said if you don't apologise now, we will bundle you to Lagos , we handcuff you and when you get to Lagos , you are going to be televised even with more cameras. So let's televise you today once and for all. When the pressure was too much from NAFDAC, the traders and others, naturally, there was no way he will continue to fight. He now started saying that he apologise to the people of Nigeria on behalf of himself and his family. And at the end of it all, we went to the place and destroyed all the evacuated drugs, in the presence of all the traders in Onitsha . Traders from Idumota, Lagos were there because we invited them and pressmen were also there. And we are going to be carrying out more and more destructions. These people in this business that use drug money, we are going to catch them one by one. It is just that we have a lot of frustration in getting across to the persons and so on. But now that we have said we will arrest the landlords whose houses are used to store fake drugs, it will be easier. Now that they would be held responsible, they will no longer allow fake drug dealers to use their houses. When they don't have any place to keep the drugs, then they have no options than to stop the importation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, what point am I making with the excerpt above? It is simply that the so-called “confession” and “apology” cannot stand in any court of law, because by Akunyili’s own account it was obtained with threat and under duress. In spite of the above though, just so we do not lose sight of the issue we are discussing here, which is Peter Parker’s morally ambiguous situation, let me again point out that these people have not been charged to a criminal court and Gani is not engaged in any criminal defence, but applying for the civil rights of these citizens to be upheld, which is what he does day in day out on behalf of Nigerians. If today they’re charged to a criminal court and Gani comes to court to defend them on the criminal charge(s) and in the course of this Marcel pleads guilty, Peter Parker’s proposition would then be applicable. Right now, it’s a non-issue. Nonetheless, if Peter Parker’s proposition eventually becomes the case, I would advise that you look at his last two paragraphs in that essay to get an idea of what the crux of the matter is and how this is usually resolved in an adversarial legal system like the Nigerian one in which Gani practices: “… However, if I was a criminal lawyer, representing the worst murderers in the country, and I was convinced that a client was one of them, I would want to refuse them service. Of course, for lawyers, this means going without an income, albeit one that may be tainted by payments made possible by the proceeds of stolen goods, money laundering, drugs, etc. I consider that for a lawyer to refuse to take on a case as they see little merit in it or believe that they are being lied to by a client is one of the most noble things they can do. It is also honourable for a lawyer to say to a client that their case is not very strong, and that it isn't worth wasting their own and the court's time contriving fancy excuses in order to obtain a lighter penalty that may not really be justified. “The last sentence is likely to raise hackles, as there is a view that legal representation, even of a person who lawyers consider has a shaky case is a right. Do surgeons operate on the lungs of a patient who has been a three packet a day smoker for forty years? Of course they do. The person has disregarded medical advice, and doesn't have a good chance of survival, but is still operated on, thanks to Medicare or private health insurance. After all, a lawyer's suspicion that a client is lying may be unfounded, and it is better to give them the benefit of the doubt, and take on their case”. What Parker points out here is the same thing some of us (including you) have been saying repeatedly in the course of this debate, which is that there is a personal choice or freewill by any lawyer to decide the kind of case he/she would wish to take on. IN HIS PERSONAL CASE, Peter Parker wouldn’t want to represent “the worst murderers in the country” (as per his example). But note again that he’s talking about a situation in which it is established already that these are “the worst murderers in the country”, not just by mere gossips or rumours. In other words, he’s talking about “when the party has pleaded guilty and the lawyer is reduced to merely pointing out reasons why his/her client should receive a more lenient sentence than others”. But Parker recognizes that his moral choice here is PERSONAL and that indeed that choice does not make the choice of another lawyer who chooses to represent these murderers any less moral. Parker is clearly able to distinguish between his personal morality and social morality as embedded in the law which grants the accused persons a right that we all must respect, which is a right to legal representation. In fact, he makes a better argument for this social/corporate morality when he transposes the dilemma to the doctor operating the lung cancer patient who’d refused medical advice! In other words, there is a moral duty of a social and legal nature to defend these persons because after all “a lawyer's suspicion that a client is lying may be unfounded, and it is better to give them the benefit of the doubt, and take on their case”. On Dershowitz, I note that you’ve said he reminds you “most of Gani, as he has defended or advised alleged wife murderers like Claus Von Bulow and OJ Simpson, religious crooks like Jim Bakker, white-collar criminals like Leona Helmsley and Michael Milliken, and rapists like Mike Tyson, to name a few” . Let me point out this isn’t a proper comparison. Most of those you’ve mentioned here are actually convicted of the crimes they were charged, but in Gani’s case, apart from the fact that he’s not exactly known as a criminal lawyer since most of his well known advocacy is in constitutional law, even in this particular case, Nnakwe is yet to be convicted by any court. Besides, a look at the issues Gani is dealing with here would reveal that they’re mostly civil rights and constitutional issues as it pertains to this case and it may well be that when the state finally charges the accused persons in a criminal court, Gani may not be the lawyer to defend them there. The above apart, Dershowitz’s essay is not exactly championing the cause of a fee-less advocacy when the client in question is questionable. More crucially, his discussion is America-specific. That is why we get references to the Bill of Rights, the 1984 Comprehensive Forfeiture Act, the illegality of “contingent fees” in some American states and the decision of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Even his final reference to the US Supreme Court in Caplin & Drysdale v United States is of no value to us in this discussion, because the issues there and in all other references he made have only tangential or speculative bearing to Gani’s present role in the Nnakwe case. I think we should focus on what Gani is doing, not what we assume he’s doing. Gani has not gone to court to defend a criminal charge brought against Nnakwe; he has, as is consistent with his well-known advocacy principles, merely written to international bodies to prevail on the Nigerian authority to follow the rule of law and to respect the civil liberties of these Nigerian citizens being handed a raw deal by the Nigerian state. The persons in this case just happen to be the Nnakwes. This man and his son have been in detention now for seven months without any legal mandate to that effect from any court in Nigeria or elsewhere and without being charged for anything; they were brutalized, dehumanized and paraded publicly by the police as those who attempted to kill Mrs Akunyili, only for the police to later issue a report saying the supposed attempted killing was actually an “accidental discharge” from one of the guns of Mrs Akunyili’s own police escort after a night of boozing and partying! The Federal High Court Lagos and an Abuja Chief Magistrate Court at least have ordered that the detained persons be released on bail, the condition of which they’ve met, yet both orders have been ignored. The authorities holding them have not challenged those orders in any court of law, but just sit there, simply refusing to obey them! The man and his son are in a bad state of health. Marcel Nnakwe is hypertensive and a diabetic, his son, Nnamdi is asthmatic and in spite of court orders that they should be released to get medical attention, these same authorities are acting dumb. This is what Gani is concerned with. Mr Nnakwe and his son may be anything, but the state cannot be allowed to continue doing this to them or to any citizen for that matter. Gani’s advocacy here is consistent with his whole moral posture. Ordinarily, this is a battle that the rest of civil society and other advocacy groups ought to pursue, because a right denied to one is a right denied to all; but no, we want to sit out here and question anyone with the courage to challenge impunity, like Gani, because we suspect or believe that the Nnakwes are dealers in fake drugs, even without any court of law delivering a verdict to that effect. Why aren’t we asking the right questions? If Mr Marcel Nnakwe is as notorious as being painted by Akunyili, why haven’t they secured a conviction against him? Akunyili talks about trailer loads of incriminating evidence seized from him and the fact that he had been charged to court four times before his latest arrest, so why haven’t they convicted him? Is it not true that this same Nnakwe was taken before the Miscellaneous Offences Tribunal by NAFDAC and that the case was actually struck out for “want of diligent prosecution by NAFDAC”? Now does the narration of Mrs Akunyili in that Newswatch interview not raise disturbing questions of impunity and lawlessness on her part? She obtained alleged evidence of this man’s criminality, but rather than take this to court, she forced him to sign “a letter of forfeiture of these drugs for destruction” and rather than arraigning him to answer for this dastardly act in a proper court of law, she felt an apology “to the good people of this country” was enough! The fact is NAFDAC while having the power to arrest and prosecute, has no power to be judge and jury or to determine what constitutes the right punishment for any offence under its mandate. These still have to be determined by the court. What the Director-General is more or less confessing to here is (I) destruction of evidence and (II) obstructing the course of justice! She cannot use “administrative guideline” as substitute for law and expect us to clap and cheer! Finally, from Akunyili’s own account, it is glaring that the so-called confession or apology was obtained by duress and threat, which prima facie rules such confession out, yet out there the lynch mob holds this out as justification to spike Nnakwe. But, we cannot afford trial by media for such serious crimes as those concerning fake drugs. If the Federal Government is serious, let them charge the Nnakwes to court for specific offence(s) and let them prosecute this diligently while ensuring respect for their fundamental human rights. For now, it is clear that if anyone is acting in obviously odious ways, it is NAFDAC, the security services and the persecution experts in Abuja. Gani is only trying to return us to humanity by questioning why the state should act in such a manner as to deprive a citizen his/her civil liberties without reason, be that citizen Nnakwe, Abubakar or Jemila! Akunyili may well be doing a great job, but she has to follow the rule of law. The NAFDAC is too strategically important to the country for us to condone such medieval and arbitrary approach to regulatory enforcement she seems to be championing at the moment. STAY BLESSED!
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Posted by Robot| 24.04.2008 15:06