10 July 2009
Abuja — Leader of the Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force (NDPVF), Alhaji Asari Dokubo yesterday approached a Federal high court sitting in Abuja with a request to invalidate the amnesty granted by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua to Niger Delta militants.
He is claiming that though Mr President has the powers under section 175 of the 1999 constitution to grant amnesty. He said such pardon is for convicted criminals and not for political agitators like himself.
He said since most of the militants whose names appear on the list of the beneficiaries of the presidential pardon have never been charged to court for any offence known to law or convicted of same, he said President Yar'Adua misapplied his constitutional powers and therefore the pardon so granted is null and void.
He is inviting the Federal high court to pronounce on the validity of the said amnesty.
Hear him on the amnesty package: "First, I have never commited any crime in my life for which I've been convicted, so under section 175 of the 1999 constitution, the President of the Nigeria State cannot grant me a pardon, and as such the pardon he is trying to grant me is null and void.
"The government of Nigeria State brought me to court, unjustly jailed me for almost 22 months, they went fishing for evidence and finally they granted me bail without my appearance in court.
"And if the government does not want to pursue the case, the established mode of resolving that, is for the government to discontinue my prosecution. "It will be wrong to criminalise me by saying that they have offered me amnesty, because by so doing if I accept the amnesty I would have agreed that I was a criminal and that was why I accepted amnesty".
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 Vanguard. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
