Nigeria Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, at the weekend, descended heavily on President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government aand the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of going after key opposition figures, shortly after it took over powers in 2015.

He also indicted the Government of going after judicial officers, especially judges. He revealed how their houses were raided at night by security agents on the orders of the Federal Government.

Ekweremadu spoke at a lecture entitled “African Politics: The Dynamics and Lesson”, which he delivered at the House of Commons, Parliament of the United Kingdom (UK).

He explained how the Supreme Court saved Nigeria and its democracy, when it held that the decision of a party in it’s national convention is final and binding.

“Lately, the Supreme Court of Nigeria saved democracy in the country in its judgment on the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, crisis when it held that the decision of a party in its national convention is final and binding.

“Also, after the PDP lost election in Nigeria in 2015, the APC-led government ran riot and began to indict, arrest, investigate, and detain its opponents and individual enemies. The judiciary was its major roadblock,” Ekweremadu said.

He warned that democracy will be highly imperiled and transmute to civilian dictatorship without respect for key institutions of democracy by African leaders.

He decried the widespread coercion of the press, civil society, the judiciary, and parliaments by some African leaders, whom he said had no regard for their oaths of office and constitutional limits of their powers.

The former Speaker of the Parliament of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), regretted that “outside Nigeria, South Africa, and a few others, most African parliaments are largely caged and often reduced to rubber stamps and appendages of the executive.”

He cited the case of Cameroon where the constitution had been severally amended to keep 84 years old President Paul Biya in power since November 1982 and Uganda where the parliament recently voted to remove the constitutional age limit to elongate the tenure of 73 years old President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office for about 30 years.

He, however, commended the judiciary for critical interventions to save democracy in Nigeria’s intra-party dispute as well as the Gambian, Kenyan and Liberian presidential elections.