President Goodluck Jonathan (4th-left), Minister of Agriculture, Akinwunmi Adesina (middle) and other officials, cutting a cake at the launch of dry season farm support programme at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, last Monday. Photo: NAN.

Lawyers in Port Harcourt who yesterday  joined the  street protests against the administration of Rivers State Governor Chibuike Amaechi have received knocks from the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), faction in the state loyal to Chief Godspower Ake.
The party, which described the protesting lawyers as “deviants” having disobeyed the directives of the Nigerian Bar Association, (NBA), Chairman, Lawrence Oko-Jaja,  added that their call for the resignation of Mr. Wogu Boms, the state Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, has further betrayed their source of protest.
In a statement yesterday, in Port Harcourt, signed by the PDP State Publicity Secretary, George Ukwuoma-Nwogba the Ake-led faction of the PDP accused the lawyers of working for the Grassroots Democratic Initiative, (GDI), which it said had been commissioned to overthrow the administration of Governor Chibuike Amaechi “by all means possible.”
“The leader of those protesters is a well-known GDI member, sympathiser and one of its legal counsels and so, sees nothing good in neither Governor Amaechi nor Boms. He was one of those who spoke in favour of the failed coup d’état of July 9, 2013 on the floor of the Rivers State House of Assembly. The use of the absence of a Chief Judge for the state, for the protest was a mere smokescreen”, it added.
“Because they have found Wogu Boms a bedrock in the Amaechi administration who has declined their overtures to betray his principal for a ministerial appointment, they now want to bring him down using hugely corrupt-minded lawyers, questionable ‘civil society’ and human rights groups.
“That lawyers would denigrate the wig for mere spoons of porridge would make legal guru, Frederick Rotimi Alade Williams, turn in his grave. QC, SAN, foremost Nigerian lawyer who was the first Nigerian to become a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, turn in his grave.
“The lawyers who embarked on that show of shame have re-written lawyers’ chapter of respect in opprobrium,” the PDP said.
According to the PDP, Wogu Boms is a gift to the Rivers State Judiciary whose actions and advice to the Rivers State Government in respect to the matter of the appointment of State Chief Judge has been purely professional and political.
“What the protesting lawyers only achieved was denigrating the wig and gown by joining street urchins and often rented miscreants to march on the streets for peanuts. We had assumed that lawyers were learned enough to know civility and decorum,” PDP said.
On the grounds for the protest, PDP drew the attention of the lawyers  Section 271(1) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, which it noted, they have over-flogged, arguing that there is an invisible, grammatical lacuna that empowers a governor of a state to either accept or reject a recommended Judge for appointment into the office of a chief judge.
“There are cases in Nigeria’s recent past where states’ governors rejected recommended judges for appointment as States’ Chief Judges. Lawyers in such states never took to the streets.
“It was the same National Judicial Council, (NJC), they are singing of its correctness which compromised recommendations made to it on the recall of the retired President of the Court of Appeal, Hon. Justice Ayo Salami.
It is a governor’s prerogative to affirm or reject a nominee to the office a CJ just like the NJC snubbed all wise counsel on the Salami matter.
“If there was any room for conflict in the subsisting sections in the Nigerian Constitution, Amaechi should not pay for such an error since he was not the writer of the Constitution. Makers of the Nigerian Constitution must be taken to be wiser than those protesters.
“We would suggest that rather than disturb the peace of Rivers State, those GDI-sponsored lawyers should visit the National Assembly to insist on an amendment to the section,” the PDP added.
The party said “in fact, a House of Assembly may also turn down a request for confirmation of a nominee, and that had happened in recent times in Nigeria. The lawyers ought to have known better before going to display how partisan they have gone.”
The PDP warned against further attempts to truncate the peace of the state, denouncing the Rivers State Police Command for again displaying its partisan colour in providing protection to the lawyers whom it said, “were paid to cause breach of peace.”