Rivers Murder Trial: Group Calls for Suspension of Court of Appeal President

Ernest Chinwo in Port Harcourt

A non-governmental organisation, The Integrity, has called on the National Judicial Council to suspend the President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, for her involvement in the murder trial of a stalwart of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ojukaye Flag-Amachree.

In a statement issued in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, the Executive Director of the group, Livingstone Wechie, said Bulkachuwa had demonstrated partisanship in the trial by constituting a three-member panel from outside Rivers State just to grant bail to the accused person.

He said, “On behalf of my group and in line with our Justice and Citizens project, we join in the demand that Hon. Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa be suspended from office immediately as President of the Court of Appeal along with her special three-man hatchet Appeal Court Judges Panel mysteriously picked from other states to be dissolved in view of their unholy plot to ridicule the Nigerian Judiciary in their desperate bid to do nothing but entertain only an Appeal on bail application and quickly grant same at all cost to an APC scribe, Ojukaye Flag-Amachree standing trial for a capital offense of murder, in such an illegal and unjustifiable manner no Nigerian in that category has ever enjoyed.

“This singular act of the Appeal Court President is the height of judicial commercialisation, interest and show of political partisanship in Nigeria and so we have petitioned the Honourable Chief Justice of Nigeria and the National Judicial Council insisting on the dissolution of the hatchet Panel while we commence necessary legal steps to rescue the judiciary from the endangerment of this bad arrangement.”

Further details later