sell more Presidential aircrafts

Constitutional Lawyer and Human Rights Activist, Mike Ozekhome, SAN, Thursday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to further reduce the cost of governance by selling four more Presidential Aircrafts from the remaining nine in the presidential fleet.
He said it was good that President Buhari handed over two of the Aircrafts to
the Nation’s Airforce considering the huge cost of maintaining them, lamenting that the country spends over a billion naira monthly to maintain the Presidential fleet.
The activist made the remarks while delivering a paper titled “The Role of the Judiciary in Promoting and Sustaining Good Governance: Nigeria as a case Study” during the 2016 Annual Lecture and Gold Service Awards organized by the Centre for Democratic Governance in Africa at the Sheraton Hotel, Abuja.
He criticized the Presidential System of Government as being practiced in Nigeria, describing it as too expensive, and wasteful. He said it was a misnormal for 85 percent of the nation’s annual expenditure to be committed to recurrent expenses.
Ozekhome also criticized the sting operations carried out by the Department of State Security, DSS, and “the media trial of judges based on allegations that are yet to proven before a competent court of law”, maintaining that the process was not only faulty but unconstitutional.
He said the action was an attempt to annex and emasculate the judiciary and strip it of its powers and functions as an independent arm of government with the mandate to ensure checks and balances in the functions of the other arms of government.
The activist maintained that the role of the judiciary cannot be over emphasized in any functional democratic system, arguing that in view of its central role to the stability of the system the issues of appointment of judicial Officers and their condition of service should be taken seriously.
Ozekhome who condemned any form of corruption in the judiciary further submitted that the nation’s judiciary should be above board at all times.
His words: “one of the time tested doctrines of the principles of equity is that he that comes to equity must come with clean hands. If the judiciary must effectively carry out its role of fostering accountability, it must first be shown most unequivocally that the judiciary itself is accountable and takes accountability seriously.
“This is because, a judiciary laden with the baggage of corruption or unaccountable cannot in all good conscience, superintend over the issue of public accountability since it is the last hope of the common man.
“Consequently in a situation where the common man sees the judiciary as part of the problems, rather than the solution, the role of the Bench in fostering accountability will be gravely hampered and seriously jeopardized. Rather than see Judges as God’s representatives on earth, they will be seen as Lucifer’s earthly chieftains and emissaries” Ozekhome asserted.