By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye
The best value sincere friends and associates of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Abubakar Malami, can inject in his career now would be to ensure that he schools himself to always speak sparingly and recognise the need to regularly deploy more time and effort to benefit from informed legal inputs before responding to very serious issues. The office he occupies is such an important and strategic one whose submissions on legal controversies Nigerians can confidently rely upon. It is always very disheartening whenever his interventions on very weighty national affairs are easily faulted by Nigerians, including even street traders and roadside mechanics.
When the 17 Southern
governors met in Asaba on May 11, 2021, and announced a ban on
open grazing behind which gun-wielding Fulani herdsmen had for several years
now hidden to commit various atrocities like brutal rapes of women and
daughters, wanton destructions of crops, maiming or killing of farmers and the
invasion and razing of communities, AGF Malami had rushed out to describe the
governors’ resolution as “unconstitutional” and “dangerous.”
On Channels TV, Malami
pronounced: “It is about constitutionality within the context of the freedoms
expressed in our constitution…For example, it is as good as saying, perhaps,
maybe, the northern governors coming together to say they prohibit spare parts
trading in the north.”
The magisterial carriage with which this obviously very pedestrian and preposterous intervention was delivered must have deepened the astonishment of many Nigerians. How can a “learned gentleman” (least of all the AGF) compare violent herdsmen who appear to derive hideous animation from wantonly destroying farmlands and visiting their owners with diverse destructions and violations to motor spare parts traders who peacefully hire shops from their owners, pay taxes to government and undertake their business in ways that do not inflict any harm on anyone?
