Jide Orintunsin, Abuja
The Director General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Dr. Salihu Moh’d Lukman, has faulted the opposition of the Nobel Laurette Professor Wole Soyinka and two senior legal practitioners to the lockdown order in Lagos, Ogun and Federal Capital Territory by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He described the debate as unnecessary distrsaction.
Lukman, who is also a chieftain of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), knocked Soyinka, Messers Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa SAN and Femi Falana SAN on their continued argument against the lockdown measures taken by the federal government in a statement titled “Covid-19 Emergency Timeline: Legal and Related Behavioural Discrepancies” in Abuja.
No sooner had Buhari on Sunday in a nationwide broadcast declared a lockdown on Lagos, Ogun and FCT than Adegboruwa argued that the order would require the constitutional approval of the National Assembly, a position endorsed by Femi Falana and Soyinka.
Lukman frowned at the trio’s insistence despite Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami SAN clarifications that the order was part of a national quarantine measure on the advice of Federal Ministry of Health and National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) as provided under the Quarantine Act 1990 CAP 384 LFN.
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He noted the rate at which the scourge was ravaging and the emergency timeline to seek for National Assembly approval to declare a lockdown would have rendered measures to be taken for the containment of the spread of the deadly virus ineffective.
The APC chieftain noted that the contestations by the legal experts and activists that the President should have referred to the National Assembly was unrealistic arguing that the threat of Covid-19 has not permitted the National Assembly to sit.
Maintaining that the debate around the legality of the lockdown was needless, he argued:”Everything is justifiable and there can be no cause for regret when our survival is at stake. All the energy we expend to question the legality of decisions of government to lockdown these three cities with the highest potential to spread Covid-19 virus to every part of the country may only serve to distract the attention of government from the critical issue of ensuring effective response to contain the spread of Covid-19.
“Rather that asking the question whether locking down Abuja, Lagos and Abeokuta is sufficient to contain the spread of Covid-19, we are seeking to undermine the government. Good enough, our state governments are responding in a way that expand the jurisdiction of the lockdown to cover virtually all parts of the country.
Lukman recalled that if the country can invoke the doctrine of necessity in 2010, for the present situation as occasioned by the contagious global pandemic Covid-19, same principle is urgently required now that human life is at risk, even when any meeting of the National Assembly is even a potential danger.
“This is the time when our primary survival instinct should be about saving human life. Except if we are saying that Covid-19 is not a pandemic as declared by WHO, or we are saying that isolation and social distancing are not what is required to contain Covid-19, the debate about legality of the current lockdown is just a distraction,” Lukman concluded.
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