Ministerial screening: Malami justifies El-Zakzaky, Dasuki’s continued detention

.Says their detention is in public interest

.Canvasses collaboration between executive and legislature

By Tunde Opalana, Abuja

A minister -designate – Abubakar Malami (SAN) has justified the continued incarceration of the leader of Islamic Movement in Nigeria (IMN), Sheikh Ibrahim El- Zakzaky and former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (rtd) among others being kept behind bars in spite of court judgements ordering their release.

Malami, who was the immediate former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, said such persons suffer continuous detention in the interest of the public.

Absolving the Federal Government of any wrong doing in detaining Dasuki and El-Zakzaky against public outcry, Malami, who appeared before the Senate screening of ministerial nominees on Friday, said Nigerians should not throw sentiments into their continuous detention which is in the interest of the nation at large.

Substantiating his submission with Section 174 of the 1999 constitution (as amended), he said the constitutional provisions creates room for preference of public interest over private interest.

Malami was responding to a question raised by the Senate minority leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, on the continuous detention of people against order of courts for their bail.

Abaribe quoted exclusive rights of individual Nigerians as entrenched in Sections 36 to 44 of the constitution which he said are not being respected in the case of Dasuki and El-Zakzaky and others.

Malami said: “I concede as argued by the Minority Leader, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe (PDP Abia South) that a minister of justice and attorney general as stipulated by sections 36, 37 and 39 of the constitution, supposed to protect the rights of any citizen from being violated even by the state, but where such rights conflicts with public interest, the latter overrides the former.

“The office of the attorney general has exclusive responsibility of upholding the public interest above personal interest of anybody”.

He went further to cite the ruling of Supreme Court on Federal Government versus Asari Dokubo where on the grounds of public interest, the court refused him bail.

Sambo Dasuki has since December 2015 been detained at the instance of the Federal Government on alleged corrupt practices, while El- Zakzaky alongside his wife were also being detained since December 2015 on alleged treasonable offences.

Malami also advocated more collaboration between the executive and legislature at different parliamentary processing stages of bills to avoid high turnover of bills not assented to by the President.

He said: “Absence of collaboration and cooperation between the legislature and the executive, accounted for high rate of bills rejection by the Presidency from the last Assembly.

“For such scenario not to repeat itself during the current 9th National Assembly, culture of deep-rooted collaboration between the two arms, has to be put in place.

“The culture of collaboration between the two arms has to be demonstrated right from the stage of conception or formulation of a bill, up to the level of public hearing and eventual passage.

“For example, the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) was fundamentally rejected by the executive for lack of this required collaboration especially as regards the interest of host community perceived by the executive to have been compromised through provisions of the bills.”