{"id":9617,"date":"2018-06-06T21:50:46","date_gmt":"2018-06-06T21:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=9617"},"modified":"2018-06-06T21:50:46","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T21:50:46","slug":"buharis-award-of-gcfr-to-m-k-o-abiola-illegal-ex-cjn-belgore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=9617","title":{"rendered":"Buhari\u2019s award of GCFR to M.K.O Abiola illegal \u2014 Ex-CJN Belgore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <strong>Premium Times<\/strong>.<br \/>\nThe award\u00a0of Nigeria\u2019s highest national honour on late Moshood Abiola\u00a0is illegal, a former Chief Justice of Nigeria has told PREMIUM TIMES.<br \/>\nPresident Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday evening named Mr Abiola, winner of 1993 presidential election that was annulled by former dictator Ibrahim Babangida, a holder of the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic, GCFR, 20 years after his death in 1998.<br \/>\nAlfa Belgore, CJN from 2006-2007, said the national honours cannot be awarded posthumously, much less the GCFR, which is the highest honour in the land.<br \/>\n\u201cIt is not done,\u201d Mr Belgore told PREMIUM TIMES by telephone Wednesday night. \u201cIt is for people living.\u201d<br \/>\n\u201cThe only thing they could do is to name a place after him, but national honours award, no,\u201d he added.<br \/>\nMr Belgore, chairman of the 2016 national honours committee, also said he \u201cwas not consulted\u201d by the Buhari administration before the decision was taken.<br \/>\nMr Belgore said under the 1963 National Honours Act, only soldiers or other servicemen could be awarded posthumous medals for their bravery.<br \/>\nThe president also declared that Democracy Day would be celebrated on June 12 to further honour the memory of Mr Abiola.<br \/>\nThe move has received mixed feelings, with supporters of the government seeing it as a welcomed move while critics dismissed it as a desperate political calculation ahead of 2019 elections in which Mr Buhari has declared he would run for second term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Premium Times. The award\u00a0of Nigeria\u2019s highest national honour on late Moshood Abiola\u00a0is illegal, a former Chief Justice of Nigeria has told PREMIUM TIMES. President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday evening named Mr Abiola, winner of 1993 presidential election that was annulled by former dictator Ibrahim Babangida, a holder of the Grand Commander of the Federal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":9618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}