Falana Urges Religious Leaders To Stop Honouring Politicians Blindly
Human right lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) has identified the need for churches, mosques and traditional rulers to stop honouring politicians without first ascertaining their source of wealth.
Falana stated this at a roundtable organised by Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) in collaboration with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and held at the Citiheight Hotel, Sheraton Opebi Link Road, Ikeja Lagos on Thursday.
“Religious leaders should stop confusing our people. Our churches and traditional rulers should stop praying for thieves. This is how low we have sunk.
Femi Falana, SAN#SERAPRoundtable #endimpunity4corruption pic.twitter.com/Dl4eH1Cb8r
— SERAP (@SERAPNigeria) September 28, 2017
“Let our church stop conferring honours on criminals. Also our universities should be encouraged to join in the fight,” he said.
Participants at the event were Chief Barr. O.M Bakara- representing HRM, Elegushi of Ikate Land Mr Osita Nwajah, representing Ibrahim Magu the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission; Rabiat Umar ICPC; Chief Abayomi Sunday and Chief Moshood Onikoyi, representing Oba Onikoyi of Ikoyi & Imoba Land; Padma Igbabe Ford Foundation; Dr Dayo Ayoade, Faculty of Law UNILAG; Marijke Petri Wife of the Netherlands Ambassador to Nigeria; and Depo Adeniran, Coalition against Corrupt Leaders.
All participants committed themselves to promoting an end to impunity for grand corruption in the country by among others ensuring the effective prosecution and jailing of high-ranking corrupt officials and securing recovering of stolen public assets.
‘Terrorist’ lawyers
Falana also said “we must stop our lawyers from terrorizing our courts and judges. We must get our judges to take charge of their courts.”
The Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami (SAN), who was represented by his Senior Assistant, Abiodun Aikomo, said, “The disconnect between our prosperity and where we are is corruption.
“We have to be patriotic, only Nigerians can do something about corruption. To file paper in court, you have to ‘shake body’.
“Corruption has unfortunately attained legitimacy in Nigeria, we are all encouraging corruption that is killing us. Imagine a million citizens fighting against corruption, we have a government committed to the fight. Let us all fight it and shun greed”
