Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied By Withholding Report Of Judicial Panel Of Inquiry By Abia State Government.
Saturday (Nkwo) 29-03-2025.
Centre For Equity And Eradication Of Rural Poverty is compelled to raise concern over bizarre withholding of Report of Abia State Judicial Panel of Inquiry that was inaugurated on June 26th, 2023 by the Government of Abia State, and headed one Ifeoma Duruoha-Igwe.
Many had had cause to believe that in setting up the Panel, the State Government was only being eager to show its desperation to pursue a course in bitterness and primitive Vendetta against its perceived enemies, especially those who had served in the previous Government.
The Ifeoma Duruoha-Igwe-led Panel has since rounded off its assignment and submitted whatever report it could have made to the State Government, on 4th October, 2024.
Centre For Equity And Eradication Of Rural Poverty strongly believes that for a Panel that wasted Abia State Resources for about One Year and Six Months before submitting its report, the State Government should accord the indigenes and residents of the State some degree of respect by wasting no further time in publishing the White Paper that should accompany such a report.
It is obvious the State Government has been indulging in a kind of hide and seek game by not releasing the White Paper. It is also possible the Panel was unable to find enough ground or even any reason at all to nail the perceived enemies of the Government who had served in the previous Administration. Hence, the State Government has become timid, ashamed of itself and has resolved not to release the White Paper on the Report of the Ifeoma Duruoha-Igwe-led Panel.
The said Panel was grossly irresponsible and had no respect for the Rule of Law. Orders were given to the Panel by Courts of Competent Jurisdiction in Abia State but the woman who presided over the Panel refused to obey the Orders. The Panel was so primitive and lawless that it refused to issue Certified True Copies of relevant documents to Defendants.
It operated like it was in such a society where Jungle Justice was the other of the day, with illegal detention of innocent persons.
The implications of Abia State Government hiding under any flimsy cover, probably of cowardice, to withhold a Report of its vindictive Panel that must have gulped State’s hundreds of Millions of Naira are many.
In the first instance, it confirms that the State Government was only interested in witch hunting and intimidating its imagined enemies. It is also a proof that the persons the State Government deployed huge resources of the State trying to victimize were, after all, clean and decent individuals, and that makes the State Government ashamed of itself, having wasted Government resources in mere futility.
Furthermore, the lawlessness exhibited by Abia State Government through the Ifeoma Duruoha-Igwe-led Panel is capable of scaring away Investors who will not have confidence in the State Government since it is a Government that has no respect, whatsoever, for the Rule of Law.
Centre For Equity And Eradication Of Rural Poverty respectfully calls on Abia State Government to release the long awaited White Paper on the Panel of Inquiry it had inaugurated on 26th June, 2023, just less than one month it came into existence.
