NBA DEMANDS SUSPENSION OF SSS DIRECTOR GENERAL

The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has demanded the suspension of the Director General of the State Security Service (SSS), Yusuf Bichi.

The lawyers’ association was reacting to Friday’s invasion of a Federal High Court in Abuja by armed officials of the SSS.

The officials disrupted court proceedings in their bid to rearrest Omoyele Sowore and Olawale Bakare. Both activists, arrested for planning a nationwide protest, were released by the SSS on Thursday night, about 124 days after their arrest.
They had been granted bail by two different judges but the SSS refused to release them.

The agency, however, released them on Thursday after Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu gave the SSS 24 hours to release the activists who are being tried for treasonable felony and insulting President Muhammadu Buhari.

They were, however, rearrested on Friday.
In its statement, Friday, the NBA said it is “dismayed at the exhibition of primitivity, thuggery, insane passion for lawlessness, contempt and disrespect for the rule of law by the agents of the Department of State Services (DSS) within the precints of the Federal High Court, Abuja.”

The NBA, therefore, made four demands including the “immediate suspension of the Director General of the Department of State Security from office.”
“We make this demand bearing in mind the fact that the DSS under his leadership has established itself as a brutish and irresponsible agency that derives immense pleasure from violating the fundamental rights of Nigerians and disrespecting court orders,” Kunle Edun, the National Publicity Secretary of the NBA said in a statement.

The association also called for an investigation of the SSS’ action as well as a review of the law establishing the agency.