The whole Sowore drama was avoidable if the DSS had demonstrated faith in and respect for the judiciary.
Sowore was granted bail, which the DSS grudgingly complied with after some standoff with the court. The next thing, the court adjourned the trial till February 11. The DSS planned to rearrest him immediately to deny him the freedom occasioned by his bail.
On his part, Sowore and his supporters, knowing how they struggled to get the DSS to comply with court orders, tried to avoid re-arrest by refusing to leave the court premises. A standoff ensued, with his abductors adamant to pick him inside the court premises. His lawyer reached a deal with the DSS that his rearrest should only happen outside the court.
Meanwhile, his captors were given ample time to investigate and file charges against him and still blundered to come up with charges that are considered bailable by the court.
This charge-bail-rearrest justice is no justice at all. Stalling on Sowore’s bail orders and re-arresting him is an attempt to change the facts on the ground, to distract us from his captors inability to file credible charges against him after 45 days of duly approved period of investigation.
This is beyond Sowore or the propriety of his protest movement. It has far reaching implications on our individual freedoms. Any one of us could be arrested, and our bail orders refused, just because some agency or individual arbitrarily consider itself above the law. Any future president or any security agency under any future president could raise the bar of executive impunity beyond the level left by their predecessors.
In the days when we were the opposition, we would react to this with all the outrage it deserves while those in PDP grovel to rationalize their impunity. Today the table has turned. Those who opposed impunity yesterday (because they are on the receiving end of it) are today in government observing self-censorship, while those who defended impunity yesterday but are on the receiving end today have lost the moral right to protest.
That brings me to the illogic of those who think any act of impunity by the Buhari administration is a validation of Goodluck Jonathan. Jonathan was a terrible president and no amount of impunity by his successor will invalidate the arguments in favor of his ouster. His supporters should learn to live with that. President Buhari’s own mistakes should never discount Jonathan’s.
Experiences like this should serve as a lesson to all of us. That no one can remain in power forever and that we cannot condition our fidelity to the rule of law on our politics. Instead of our fidelity to the rule of law to be defined by our politics, let our politics be defined by our fidelity to the rule of law. Because, what everyone needs is a law that guarantees our rights and freedoms irrespective of who is in power. It is either we have a rule of law that protects us equally and at all times or we have no rule of law at all.
By Ahmed Musa Hussaini