The Abuja Division of the Court of Appeal, yesterday, cleared the coast for the Federal Government to open its case against suspended Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Walter Onnoghen, at the Code of Conduct Tribunal, CCT.
The appellate court, in a unanimous ruling by a three-man panel, declined to stop further proceedings in the six-count charge the Federal Government preferred against Onnoghen.
It ordered the CCT, which on Monday adjourned hearing of the matter indefinitely to await the Appeal Court ruling, to entertain the suit and ensure speedy hearing.
This happened on a day Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State said the Supreme Court ruling on the suit filed by the National Assembly challenging President Muhammadu Buhari’s suspension of Justice Onnoghen without recourse to the Senate would strengthen Nigeria’s democracy.
Also, some lawyers who attempted to disrupt an Appeal Court session in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, to enforce the the two-day court boycott directive of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, over the Onnoghen issue, were beaten up by litigants as judges declared that they would not be intimidated.
This is even as the Board of Trustees, BoT, of the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, backed President Buhari’s suspension of Justice Onnoghen, saying allowing the CJN to be tried by the NJC would have amounted to allowing him “seat (sic) in judgment over his own case.”
