Victor Umeh

A foremost Igbo-socio political group, Committee 21, saturday slammed the Enugu State Chief Judge, Justice Innocent Umezulike, over his injunctions on the  National Chairman of All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA), Chief Victor Umeh, describing the judge  as ” a procured judicial undertaker for APGA and a moral burden to the distinguished bench.” Rising from an urgent caucus meeting in Lagos , C-21, in a statement signed by Mr. Collins Steve Ugwu, the Media Adviser  to the president of the group, Senator Annie Okonkwo , said it was deeply worried and disturbed at the content, context and intent of Umezulike’s  recent  injunctions against  Umeh.

It stressed that the decisions of the judge amounted to a naked abuse of the time-honoured   processes that bequeaths faith and impartiality on the judiciary as the home for the oppressed, and hope for the down trodden.

“Here is a Chief Judge who granted a questionable ex-parte order against Umeh on July 25, granted extra-ordinary open-ended extension of that order in July 31, and on October 8, hammered an interlocutory injunction on the same man without as much as paying ordinary attention to the man’s loud protests to his manifestly compromised neutrality and fairness,” the group noted. “Could the conflicting pronouncements and arbitrary interpretations of Hon. Justice Umezulike in this matter meet the standard of impartiality of the blind lady with the sword, or is he at liberty to orchestrate a lower template?”

The group however called on the National Judicial Council (NJC) to quickly checkmate what it described as travesty of  justice, warning that “a compromised judiciary from the height of a chief judge is a fatal password for anarchy and self-help, which Nigeria cannot afford now or latter.”