Stop Parading Yourself As Ekiti Attorney General, APC Tells Ajayi

The All Progressives Congress in Ekiti State has told the state’s Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Owoseni Ajayi, to stop parading himself as such.

The party said doing so amounted to impersonation and flagrant impunity to trample on the sanctity of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The APC also advised the National Human Rights Commission to ignore Governor Ayodele Fayose’s defence of his human rights abuse as presented by Ajayi. It said the lawyer is not known in law as the attorney general and commissioner of justice of the state.



 The party, through its Publicity Secretary, Taiwo Olatubosun, said in a statement on Monday, while reacting to Owoseni’s defence of Fayose’s alleged human rights abuse, said Owoseni should have represented the governor in his private capacity instead of in “borrowed robe of the state’s attorney-general to mislead the human rights watchdog”.

Olatubosun drew NHRC’s attention to the alleged violation of constitutional provisions in Owoseni’s screening and confirmation as the attorney-general and commissioner for justice, saying that all the processes leading to his screening‎ and confirmation were not known to law.

He said: “We wrote to the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice of the Federation about the illegalities‎ involved in his purported confirmation and warned that such illegalities cannot legally produce the chief legal officer of the state. “We were explicit in our letter that Section 96 (1) of the Constitution provides that ‘the quorum of a House of Assembly for such exercise shall be one third of all members of the House’.‎

One third of Ekiti State House of Assembly is nine, but seven PDP members aided by the governor were given security cover to illegally impeach the Speaker, Dr Adewale Omirin, and replaced him with Dele Olugbemi in a brazen breach of the constitution. “We also referred to the constitutional provision for the impeachment proceedings against the speaker.

The legal quorum of two-third of all members of the House of 26 members is needed for impeachment procedings against the Speaker, which is 18 members, but seven members illegally impeached the Speaker and imposed a member of their faction in the House as their Speaker who conducted the purported Owoseni’s confirmation.”

The APC’s spokesman also pointed‎ NHRC’s attention to the breach of Section 192(2) of the constitution in the purported confirmation of Ajayi as commissioner. It said there was no screening session where Ajayi was assessed as capable of holding his position. Olatubosun said for that flagrant abuse of the constitution, ‎Ekiti State, for now, does not have a commissioner for justice in the person of Ajayi and cannot be so act on behalf of Ekiti State Government.

While dismissing the governor’s defence of alleged right abuse as an after thought, Olatunbosun said Fayose would have made his complaints at the NHRC against Fayemi if he was convinced that abuses were committed by his administration.

Culled from: The Eagle Online