NIGERIAN
BAR ASSOCIATION 2014 ANNUAL GENERAL CONFERENCE (24TH -29TH
AUGUST 2014) HOLDING AT THE INTERNATIONAL
CONFERENCE CENTRE, OWERRI, IMO STATE.
“THE NIGERIAN JUDICIARY AND QUEST FOR
INTEGRITY”
Discussant:-
Yunus Ustaz Usman,
(SAN)
(Ezienyi Ndi-Igbo 1),
(Mayegun of Oyo),
Trustee, International Islamic Relief
Organization, (World Muslim League), (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia),
Chairman, Legal Committee & Member, National
Council of Privatization,
Chairman, Legal Committee, Northern Elders Forum,
Integrity Ambassador.
WHY
THE NEED FOR INTEGRITY IN THE JUDICIARY?
The
answer is obvious. Because it is the last hope of the common man and the
oppressed. Winston Churchill in his address to the parliament on Judicial
Reforms said:-
“The
only antidote to anarchy is undiluted justice. The feature of a just society is
that both the lamb and the lion live together peacefully. The feature of an
unjust society is the presence of anarchy.”
A
judiciary with integrity is the representation of God on earth as it is the
only arm of government that can ensure equality of all Homo-sapiens.
In Deuteronomy Chapter 16
verse 18-20, God Commanded Moses in these words:-
“You
shall appoint judges and officers in all your towns which the LORD your God
gives you, according to your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous
judgment. You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality; and you
shall not take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts
the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that
you may live and inherit the land which the LORD your God gives you.”
In
Surah An-Nisa (4:135), God said thus:-
“O
ye who believe! Be ye staunch in justice, witnesses for Allah, even though it
be against yourselves or (your) parents or (your) kindred, whether (the case be
of) a rich man or a poor man, for Allah is nearer unto both (them ye are). So
follow not passion lest ye lapse (from truth) and if ye lapse or fall away,
then lo! Allah is ever informed of what ye do.”
The Qur’an also says:-
“We
sent aforetime our messengers with clear Signs and sent down with them the Book
and the Balance, that men may stand forth in Justice. (Al-Hadeed 57:25)
Justice
Dahiru Musdapher, former Chief Justice of Nigeria stated at the Nigerian
Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (NIALS) conference November 2011 – in his
keynote address titled: “The Nigerian Judiciary: Towards Reform of the Bastion
of Constitutional democracy” that:
“A poor Judge (in terms of integrity)
is perhaps the most wasteful indulgence of the community. You can refuse to
patronize a merchant who does not carry good stock, but you have no recourse if
you are hurled before a judge, whose mental or moral goods are inferior….”An
honest…, able and fearless judge is the most valuable servant of democracy”.
Uwaifo
JSC has stated that;
A
corrupt judge is more harmful to the society than a man who runs amok with a
dagger in a crowded street. The later can be restrained physically, but a
corrupt judge deliberately destroys the moral foundation of society and causes
incalculable distress to individuals through abusing his office while still
being referred to as honourable”.
Law
without justice is legitimation of tyranny.
Justice
Louis D. Brandeis subscribes to this view when His Lordship said:-
“Decency,
security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected
to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizens. If the
government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites
everyman to become a law unto himself, its invites anarchy.”
Professor
Ishaq Akintola of “The Muslim Rights Concern” had this to say on Justice:
“Be
just. Justice is the soul of peace. No one can deny one and have the other.
Neither can violence or naked force bring lasting peace.”
If
a judge has no integrity, no one will ever take his judgment serious
particularly in Nigeria where some governments choose which judgment to obey
and which not to obey.
History
will be astonished at the gross levity with which some governments treat the
judiciary today. This can be discerned even from the use of pejorative
overtones in the speeches and sardonic smiles of some public officials while
addressing legal issues. It is only a judiciary that has integrity that can
save Nigeria of today from total collapse as it did during the Obasanjo era.
Without an independent, honest and courageous judiciary, our political class
will obviously make Nigeria another Mali in 2015. And they and the members of
their family will be watching us from CNN, Al Jazeera or BBC television when
the country is boiling. God forbid!
Fortunately,
since Justice Maryam Aloma Mukhtar’s, assumption of office as the Chief Justice
of Nigeria, Nigerian Judiciary’s integrity has been waxing stronger. She has since
assumption of office stuck to her declaration which she made at the opening of
a three-day Centenary Law Summit organized by the Nigerian Institute of
Advanced Legal Studies in collaboration with the office of the Secretary to the
Federal Government (a lawyer) on Monday, 3rd June, 2013. The Chief
Justice of Nigeria said, in part:-
“Under
my watch, there shall be zero tolerance for corruption in the Nigerian
judiciary and zero tolerance for contravention of the code of conduct for
judicial officers. Zero tolerance for unethical conducts, zero tolerance for
abuse of office and zero tolerance for subversion of political process through
collusion with unscrupulous politicians.
There shall be zero tolerance for indiscriminate abuse
of equitable remedy of injunction, zero tolerance for incompetence and zero
tolerance for indolence.” “The National Judicial Council would not relent in
its effort to rid the judiciary of its share of bad eggs’.
The CJN called on the legislative arm of government to intensify efforts at
reforming existing laws, with the aim of making them relevant to contemporary
socioeconomic and political realities.
She stressed that unless concrete steps were taken to reform obsolete and alien
laws, existing laws guiding the affairs of the country would suffer from
‘legitimacy deficit’.
Mukhtar enjoined the executive arm of government to
ensure the institutionalization and sustenance of the rule of law to deepen
democracy and ensure that “in the words of our National Anthem, the labour of
our heroes past shall never be in vain”.
I submit without
apology to anybody that the Chief Justice of Nigeria is fighting corruption in
the judiciary headlong because she is incorruptible. If the head of an
organization is upright, every person under him will follow suit.
In
the same vein, our President-Elect, Austine Alegeh, S.A.N. in his inaugural
speech after his election on Tuesday 15th July, 2014 declared:
“I
will tackle corruption and fight for the improvement of the welfare of the
lawyers in the country.”
GENESIS
OF CORRUPTION
THE
BAR
The
Bar is the gateway to the Bench. You cannot be a judge unless you have been
called to the Bar. Therefore, unless the Bar is corrupt, the Bench can never be
corrupt. You cannot blame the cub for behaving the way it does without blaming
the lion. So, if there is corruption in the judiciary, the Bar which is the
only gateway to the Bench is the gateway to corruption in the judiciary. A few
days after I had written this piece, our own Global Judicial Star, Justice
Mariam Aloma-Mukhtar, the Chief Justice of Nigeria subscribed to this view in
her speech at the Abuja Judicial Reform Conference on Tuesday, 8th
July, 2014 in these words.
“Corruption
is a cankerworm that has refused to depart. The NJC is doing its best to get
rid of it. We receive petitions and we try to hear from both sides. Some judges
appear before the NJC with about six SANs. I always say that some of the judges
committed the offence in connivance with the SANs who appear with them. Lawyers
know the judges that are corrupt and they should do their part to rid the
judiciary of corrupt judges.”
ALI
ALIA PUTANT: I remain one of those who are convinced
beyond any shadow of doubt that for Nigeria to survive, no single judge should
be corrupt or even be suspected of being corrupt, for like Caesar’s wife, the
judiciary must be above suspicion. Professor Chidi Odinkalu of the National
Human Rights Commission had this to say on our judiciary: “The comedy of errors
playing out so clumsily before a public that once held the judiciary in
spiritual awe is grinding the last remaining fragment of reputation and
authority into dust.” (See Thisday Newspaper of 8th July, 2014 at
page 16)
I
do not think that any lawyer has been so battered time without number in court
like me and as such I have no concomitant love to defend the judges, but the
truth must still be told: Corruption in the Nigerian Judiciary has been over
blown. No state in the country in Nigeria today has less than 20 High Court
Judges. Statistics shows the Federal High Court has over 50 Judges. That means
that we have over 36 x 20 + 50 High Court Judges, +70 Court of Appeal Justices.
The total number of judicial officers in Nigeria is over One (1) million.
Statistics shows that not more than a total of 30 Judges have petitions before
the Nigerian Judicial Council.
30 x 100 %
= 300 = .003%
1,000,000
1 84
So,
if only .003% of our Judiciary is corrupt, is that not favourably infinitesimal?
The world over, there is no organization that has no contradictions and grievances.
I think that it is because every citizen realizes that one bad egg in the
judiciary is too much that is why the cry is, unlike against the other 2 arms
of the government loudest. Benjamin Franklin who was one of greatest American
patriots, scientists, statesmen and diplomat who lived between 1706-1790
captures this well when he said ”It takes many good deeds to build a good
reputation but only one bad one can lose it.” There is no organ of the
government that has no bad eggs. But the allegory that one bad egg spoils the
rest is bad logic. It is the logic of the alligator. It amounts to mob psychology generalization.
If I have 1,000,000 eggs and just .003% are bad, should I throw away the
remaining ones that are good simply because the .003% are among the 1,000,000
good eggs? Of course, No. I venture say that in all the three arms of every
government in Nigeria today, the Judiciary is the best. Let me tell you one
personal experience I have had. When I was a member of the Screening Committee
of the Board, it was alleged that one paper Corporate Practice had leaked.
Honourable Justice Oguntade JSC (Rtd), whose daughter was one of those who
passed and who was not one of those involved in the scandal openly supported my
motion that every student be made to resit that paper. Since that day, I
continue to thank God for giving us such people of total integrity.
That
sage of our time, Ambassador Maitama Sule, in “Not in our character” said:
“There is so much bad in the best of us and there is so
much good in the worst of us that it does not behove on any of us to throw
stones at the rest of us.”
Where
you have one corrupt judge standing today, there are over 50 corrupt lawyers
standing. For example, in 1997, during the Gen. Babangida’s era of Diarchy,
Local Government Elections and Elections Appeal Tribunals were set up in the 30
States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. Each trial Tribunal
had five (5) Members. Each Appeal Tribunal also had five (5) Members.
Arithmetically, the Tribunals had a total of 320 Members made up of only
lawyers. No single judge or Magistrate was a member. The Tribunals and the
Appeal Tribunals except Kogi State Election Appeals of which I was a proud
member were found to have openly sold justice to the highest bidders. Review
Panels composing only justices of the Court of Appeal were set up to review all
the judgments (except my own Kogi State Appeal Tribunal). Even the Kogi State
Election Trial Tribunal was found wanting! It was as a result of this
untrustworthiness of the members of the Tribunal that it was decided that
thence from, no private legal practitioner would be made a member of any Election
or Appeals Tribunal up till today. It is a shameful history.
Thus,
the Nigerian Bar Association is like a hurricane lamp that can see the
nakedness of others but cannot see its own bottom. That is why a formidable
Disciplinary Committee of Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) is desirable but I beg
that the leadership of the Bar should not use this to settle personal scores by
threatening to send every opponent to the Disciplinary Committee. I had
defended a lawyer (Evans Okuye) before the Disciplinary Committee free of
charge of recent. His client allowed him to make a set-off of the money he was
owing the lawyer from the money the lawyer collected on his behalf. He was
instigated to write a petition against the lawyer all because he had a
misunderstanding with the then President. The President just decided to send
the lawyer to the Disciplinary Committee. Fortunately, the Committee was
chaired by a totally upright person (Eri, the former Chief Judge of Kogi
State). He was discharged and acquitted with a warning against using
Disciplinary Committee to settle personal scores! The present N.E.C. has saved
some members of Kaduna NBA from just being sent to the Disciplinary Committee
for crisis of confidence in the Branch.
With
the calibre of the NBA members, one is certain that they cannot be used as the
sniff dog of NBA leadership. Obasanjo used the former leadership of EFCC as a
sniff dog against political opponents and Governors who opposed him. Look at
the Bar today. It is unlike in 1988 when we were elected under the presidency
of Alao Aka-Bashorun together with Akeredolu as Publicity Secretary, Funke
Adekoya as Treasurer, Obi Okwusogu as First Assistant Secretary, etc. It was a
one (1) year tenure and we were re-elected in 1989 into the same positions.
Unlike now, our travelling and accommodation expenses were not settled by NBA.
Only the General Secretary and the President enjoyed those privilages. Yet, we
were more committed than now. I had never absented myself from any of the NEC
meetings throughout our tenure. Infact, 2 weeks before each NEC meeting, I was
always locked up in one ramshacked hotel or inn preparing the minutes for the next
meeting by the General Secretary.
The
Government of Babangida, a military President, feared NBA. Is it the same today
when because of our irrelevance, NBA was given only one slot as a member of the
National Conference when Market Women Association was allotted 6 seats? Our
poor leadership quality and corruption have made us beggars rather than kings
in the corridors of power. I am not alone in this view, thus, Bola Bolawole in
his column titled “NBA’s ‘stomach infrastructure’ election” in the Daily
Newswatch of Monday, July 28, 2014, Vol. 2, No. 371 at the paper’s last page
said:-
“The NBA is not just another innocuous, mill of the run organization that can be dismissed
with a wave of the hand;
it is a powerful professional association that has a very big voice.
Its views are
weighty. Its interventions are taken very seriously by the powerful as well as by ordinary
Nigerians. In this
country in the past, we have seen the effectiveness of a vibrant NBA and the benefits that accrued to the society there from.
Ditto the shenanigans of a compromised NBA,
the disgrace it brought upon itself. The president
of the NBA is usually a very powerful Nigerian
by virtue of that position. Standing on the
shoulders of an organization that is older than the country itself, he is courted, despised, and or hounded by power, depending on whose side of the divide he is - Government's
or the people's.
In
this country, several NBA presidents had become Minister of Justice and Federal
Attorney-General. Some, because of their principled stand on issues of national importance, have ended
in the gulag. It is therefore to be expected that various interest groups will attempt to influence,
even hijack the outcome of NBA elections so as to deliver a winner
favourable to it especially in this era of do-or-die
politics and with the very important 2015 elections around the
corner. It, however, behoves members of the association to keep intact the sanctity
of its elections and the integrity of its offices.”
May
Agbamuche –Mbu, in her column, “Legal Eagle” of “This Day” Newspaper of 8th
July 2014 titled “E-Voting: Time for NBA to Evolve”, had this to say.
“It
has been said that millions of Naira are being spent all in the name of getting
elected, most especially in the last few years where the NBA Presidential
election campaigns of some of the candidates were said to have been sponsored
by the Federal and State governments. If that is the case how then can the NBA
advise the government on good governance?
Interestingly
enough phrases synonymous with political elections have now found their way
into these elections. Phrases such as ‘rigging’, ‘electoral malpractice’ and
‘godfatherism’ and ‘anointing of candidates’ etc. Words totally unheard of in
years gone by. Sadly if this is the trend then it will have a knock on effect,
turning the entire process into a breeding ground for corruption and no doubt
the elected official is automatically at the mercy of his/her sponsors. Our
dearly beloved association is now the butt of jokes and basically the laughing
stock of other professional bodies who in the past looked up to the NBA” (for
leadership guide).
If you send a corrupt NBA member to the Bench,
he can never change. Politicians cannot easily have access to the extremely few
judges who have become purchasable merchandise without going through some
lawyers. We have made our profession so useless today that the government has no
regard for us. Thus, Professor Chidi Onyekalu (a member of ‘Save Nigeria’ Organization) on AIT
Programme of Wednesday, 10th March, 2010 titled “The State of The Nation”
described Nigerian lawyers of today in these words:-
“You
have eighty thousand lawyers in Nigeria. If you ask each of them to give you
the interpretation of Section 144 of the 1999 Constitution, each one of them
will give you a different interpretation.”
A
former Attorney-General of the Federation had stated on air that a mere filing
of an appeal without a motion for a stay of execution is an automatic stay of
execution. Again, for example, if a president or Chairman who got a report of a
Committee presented, who later on asked the committee to resubmit another
report so that he can get “something” from the government parastatal in
question as his parting gift, can such a person recommend an incorruptible person to the
Bench? All I am saying is that if NBA is incorruptible, the bench must
consequently be incorruptible and vice versa.
It
has also been unfortunately noticed that the legislature and the Executive have
for three consecutive years been reducing the judiciary allocations by N10
billion every year. This is real. One of the brightest and most incorruptible Judicial
Stars Nigeria has ever been blessed with, Maryam Aloma Mukhtar, the Chief
Justice of Nigeria, subscribes to this view in her Valedictory Speech at the
swearing in of some S.A.Ns on Monday, 23rd September, 2013, when she
cried out in these words:-
“Statistics
have shown that funding from the Federal Government have witnessed a steady
decline since 2010 from N95 billion in that year to N85 billion in 2011, then
N75 billion in 2012 and which dropped again in 2013 budget to N65 billion.”
This
means that N10 billion is reduced from the judiciary’s budgetary allocation
every year. If this disservicing trend is not reversed immediately, it means
that in 2014, the judiciary will get N55 billion; in 2015, it will get N45
billion; in 2016, it will get N35 billion; in 2017, it will get N25 billion; in
2018, it will get N15 billion; in 2019, it will get N5 billion; in 2020, it
will get zero allocation because N5 billion minus N10 billion = minus N5
billion! Note must be taken of the depreciating purchasing power of the Naira
which depreciation has been foisted upon this country by some selfish leaders
of this country during the military era.
I should not be construed as supporting even
an atomic fraction of corruption in the Judiciary but I am convinced that we must
appreciate that our judiciary is still one of the best in the World today.
Quote me anywhere.
DISCRIPANCIES
BETWEEN THE JUDICIAL OFFICERS AND OTHER COURTS
A situation where judicial officers get their salaries and
allowances directly from the federal government while magistrate’s and others
inferior courts paid pittance by the state government may make the lower court
corrupt. A hungry person can easily be compromised. Section 162 (9) of the 1999
Constitution which provides:-
“162 (9) Any amount standing to the
credit of the judiciary in the Federation Account shall be paid directly to the
National Judicial Council for disbursement to the heads of courts established
for the Federation and the States under section 6 of this Constitution.”
must be strictly adhered to.
A
situation where the executive keeps money allocated to the judiciary may force
the judiciary to go cap in hand begging the executive for funds with which to
pay salaries, and execute capital projects. It can force the judiciary to
waiver as “he who pays the piper dictates the tune”. Again, the allocated
moneys should be paid directly to all the heads of courts as this will make it
easy to hold any head of court who is not executing his capital projects on
time responsible for his inactions.
OTHER FACTORS THAT MAY
CAUSE LACK OF INTEGRITY IN THE JUDICIARY.
i)
ZONING
IN FEDERAL JUDICIAL APPOINTMENTS
One of the factors contributing to lack of integrity in the
judiciary is zoning whereby juniors are made to supersede their seniors and merit
thrown to the dogs. In judicial appointments, if the senior is not found
wanting, under no circumstance should his junior be made his senior.
Frustration, feeling of abandonment, can force an upright person to fall by the
way side. It may also make the favoured to lose integrity because who pays the
piper dictates the tune.
ii)
FIXED
TENURE FOR ALL HEADS OF COURTS
The present situation whereby one is a chief judge for 10
years and above and he does not want to move to the appellate court creates corruption.
It makes the chief judge for life to tend to favour the power that be. There is
nowhere in the 1999 Constitution where it is stipulated that a chief must be a
chief judge for life. I venture say that it is not easy for the judges to check
the excesses of their chief judges. If a chief judge wants to continue on the
bench after the fixed tenure, then he goes back as any other judge and not the
chief judge.
iii)
APPOINTMENT
OF MAGISTRATES AS RUDIMENTARY
PROMOTION
Undoubtedly,
most of the magistrates have been inundated with cases of bribery than any
other arm of the judiciary. They have the civil service orientation. They
should never be elevated to the high court bench as a reward for being the good
boys by the Executive. Magistrates are not coined out for higher Bench
appointments. It is a totally different orientation. Hence, in England and
U.S.A. magistrates are never appointed High Court Judges. In England, in
particular, all High Court appointments, are made out of Queens Counsel (equivalent)
of our own S.A.N.s. Infact, lawyers are elevated to take silk purposely to be appointed
High Court Judges.
iv)
POOR
PERQUISITES OF OFFICE
The
conditions of service of the magistrates are still pitiable. There is still
need to improve the conditions of service of magistrates. They decide most of
the criminal cases. It is too tempting for a Judge whose salaries and
allowances cannot support his family to reject a N10 million bribe.
v)
FEAR
OF RETIREMENT
I
am not unaware of the provisions of subsection (3) of Section 291 of the 1999
Constitution which provides:-
“(c)
in any other case, shall be entitled to such pension and other retirement
benefits as may be regulated by an Act of the National Assembly or by a Law of
a House of Assembly of a State.”
I
still submit that the entitlements of the judicial officers under this
provision are not enough for the enactment of subsection (2) of Section 292 of
the 1999 Constitution which provides:-
“(2) Any person who has held office
as a judicial officer shall not on ceasing to be a judicial officer for any
reason whatsoever thereafter appear or act as a legal practitioner before any
court of law or tribunal in Nigeria.”
There are many reasons for
this:-
i)
Those salaries and allowances provided for
under Section 291 are not enough to sustain a judge and his family after
retirement.
ii)
These entitlements are normally not paid as
at when due.
iii)
A judicial officer who is a workaholic may
not live long once he is out of his erstwhile busy schedule unless he can be
kept busy doing what he knows best. The first question to ask is this: why do
we even have retirement age for judges? My little experience in litigation is
that the older a judge is on the Bench, the more experienced, more tolerant and
more just he is. In both Britain and America whose system we borrowed, judges
have no retirement age. Lord Denning was still sitting at the age of 93 and
delivering sound judgments. The first black to grace the American Supreme Court
(Lord Marshal) who lived between 1755 – 1835 was a Justice of the Supreme Court
from 1801 – 1835 (35 years in the Supreme Court Bench). Uwais and Belgore,
Chief Justices of Nigeria who retired about 8 and 7 years ago respectively
still look younger and are still at their mental alertness than many of us in
this hall today who claim to be in the age bracket of 60 years or so. Why did
the constitution have to force such best judicial assets out on retirement
simply because they were 70 years? The irony of our situation in Nigeria is
that we import bad foreign policies and cultures hook, line and sinker and
abandon the good ones.
iv)
The former South African President De Clark
became the Vice-President to Nelson Mandela. Honourable Justices Bubo Ardo and
Mamman Nasir voluntarily left the apex court to be chief judges of North
Eastern states and Presidents of the Court of Appeal respectively. Honourable
Justice Umaru Abdullahi left Court of Appeal to become the Chief Judge of
Katsina State just to nurture the newly created Katsina State judiciary then.
So, what is wrong in a former judge appearing before other judges as an
advocate?
Justice Owen of Plateau State High Court
attempted to do so upon his retirement in the 1980s. He was prevented and perhaps,
that gave birth to the entrenchment of subsection (2) of Section 256 of the
1979 Constitution and Section 292(2) of the 1999 Constitution both of which
provide:-
Section
256 of the 1979 Constitution:
“Any person who has held office as a
judicial officer shall not on ceasing to be a judicial officer for any reason
whatsoever thereafter appear or act as a legal practitioner before any court of
law or tribunal in Nigeria.”
Section
292(2) of the 1999 Constitution:
“Any person who has held office as a judicial
officer shall not on ceasing to be a judicial officer for any reason whatsoever
thereafter appear or act as a legal practitioner before any court of law or
tribunal in Nigeria.”
This
is because the 1963 Constitution did not prohibit a retired judicial officer
from going back to private legal practice after retirement. It did not even fix
any retirement age for judicial officers. It left everything to the
legislature. Thus, Section 124 (1) of the 1963 Constitution provides:-
“Subject to the provisions of this
section, a person holding or appointed to act in the office of Chief Justice of
Lagos or any other judge of the High Court of Lagos shall vacate his office or
appointment when he attains such age as may be prescribed by parliament.”
I
therefore suggest that Section 291 of the Constitution which forces judicial
officers to retire compulsorily at certain ages be deleted. If a judicial
officer wants to retire voluntarily, he is free to go.
DESECENDING
INTO THE ARENA
When
trial becomes a “question and answer session” between the Judge and a counsel,
both the litigant and the counsel as homo-sapiens will be tempted to think that
the Judge had been compromised. Lord Denning, MR observed in Re: Metropolitan
Properties Co. (FGC) Ltd. (1968) 3 ALL E. Report 304 at 310:
“Justice must be rooted in confidence and that
confidence is destroyed when right thinking people go away thinking that the
judge was biased”.
In
every English High Court session I had watched, hardly unlike ours, do you hear
this question and answer session between the Judge and the lawyer. One of the
greatest jurists of our time Eso, JSC subscribes to this view in his
valedictory speech delivered on Monday, 24th day of September, 1990
where His Lordship said: “A courtroom is
a theatre. The judge and counsel are actors (not master and servant).” You
can never convince the litigant in that type of session that the judge is not
against him right from the word “go”. The summary of it all is that you can
never ever have a judiciary with 100% integrity until you have an NBA with a 100%
integrity. Cedit questio.
WAYS OUT
1. Only incorruptible
people should be called to the Bar and elected as NBA officials particularly,
the President because NBA recommends its members to be appointed judges.
2. The names of all
judges to be appointed should be published in 5 different dailies calling upon
anyone who has objection to any candidates’ appointment to send same to the
NJC.
3. All court
proceedings, like in United Kingdom today, should be televised live.
4. Every appeal should
be as of right up to the Supreme Court.
5. National Judicial
Council and Disciplinary Committee members must contain only people totally
classified as Godly and totally incorrupt and this can be done by publishing
the names of all the members in 5 different dailies for seven consecutive days
for people who have observations on any of the proposed members to send his/her
objection to the Body of Benchers.
6. There should be no
constitutional impediment restraining any retired judicial officer who wants to
go back to active legal advocacy from doing so.
7. Section 292 (2) of
the 1999 Constitution which prohibits every retired judicial officer from
appearing as a legal practitioner before any court of law or tribunal in
Nigeria should be deleted forthwith.
8. Every judicial
officer must remember that no human being can escape the law of Kama.
