Anambra was my headache in my 42 years career – Justice Umaru Abdullahi

You come from a family that is synonymous with judiciary. How do you feel practicing the profession of your fore-fathers? Well, it comes up naturally. And you are right to say that I come up from long line of judicial administrators. I feel quite in place really for God to make it possible for me […]

You come from a family that is synonymous with judiciary. How do you feel practicing the profession of your fore-fathers?

Well, it comes up naturally. And you are right to say that I come up from long line of judicial administrators. I feel quite in place really for God to make it possible for me to follow the footstep of my fore-bearers. It is one of the essential aspects of my life. I am also thankful to God for making it possible to conform to the standard required to achieve success in the field of administration of justice.  I feel that it is just part of me and I cherish it very well. I also appreciate all the support  I received from my colleagues, my friends and my family-because it is the culmination of this support and understanding that enable me to achieve whatever  success in my 42 years professional career.

You have been occupying one of the most sensitive positions in the administration of justice in this country. What are the intriguing challenges of that office? 

You know society evolves. So what the generation before us had experienced has probably changed in some way. Therefore one has to prepare to accept what confronts him. First, one has to measure the aspiration of the society and try to adjust so that you can be relevant. It is very important for one to be focused and relevant to the society you are serving so that you don’t derail. This, one has to do, by ensuring that you do things according to the dictates and accepted norms of the situation you find yourself. I think anybody who can be able to do that you will find that he will make significant contributions in whatever assignment he is given.

How independent is the Nigerian judiciary in the last one decade of uninterrupted civilian administration?

There is a marked distinction between the position of the judiciary during the military regime and civilian administration. Obviously, there are a lot of challenges and things that were happening during the military that are very difficult to the judiciary. In fact, the judiciary barely survived. This is because funding which is very essential for the judiciary to carry out its assignment successfully was very scarce and almost unavailable. You only get what they feel like giving you and you have to manage with it whether you like it or not.

Secondly, there are lot of interference in the way things are done. For example, when it comes to appointment the people who are assigned with the responsibility of appointments will go and do their home work, prepare their list and send it to the appointing authority. By the time the list comes back, you will find some new names added that were not originally there. And there is nothing anybody can do about it. This is one form of interference.

Also, there are certain laws that were promulgated that would take away jurisdiction of the court. That is to say you have no right to interfere so long as it touches this aspect of the law. This was very difficult for the judiciary. Therefore, you are rendered helpless as a judge; because their law, it says don’t interfere with this, it is not within your jurisdiction. These are some of the few things I can mention that made it very difficult for the judiciary to operate during military regime.

Compared to what is happening during democracy, constitutional provision has provided adequate funding for the judiciary. We don’t even have to go through the ministry of finance to prepare our budget as an arm of government. We take it directly to the National Assembly. The National Assembly will look at it and appropriate funding for the judiciary which will go to the National Judicial Council (NJC) that will disburse the funds to the heads of courts. That is a remarkable departure from what happened during the military. We have our own funding we don’t wait for anybody to come and build courts or buy vehicles for us. We build our courts; buy our vehicles and working materials. I believe the judiciary is better for it. 

 

There is also an agitation for a tribunal that will punish electoral offenders during elections. As a stakeholder what do you think about it?

You see the politicians will go and create their political problems, rather than being honest enough to sit down and sort it out themselves, they would say let us go to court and they would come and dump it on the courts. And they turn round and accuse the courts of various misdemeanours and so on which I think personally is unfortunate.

In 2003 Electoral Act, thereare provisions that people who commit electoral offences should be prosecuted. But the power of prosecution was given to the state attorney generals. That is the first mistake because the attorney general might also be a politician and those arrested might belong to his party. So, the will to prosecute them will not be there, therefore it never worked. They thought there will be an improvement when they transfer the power to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to organise the prosecution, hire lawyers and so on. That is another mistake because most of the people involved in committing these offences are INEC officials. So, they will be very reluctant in setting up any process for prosecuting their colleagues.

Personally speaking, you and some of your colleagues in the Court of Appeal have been under several accusations in the last couple of years for one political reason or the other. How exactly do you feel under such severe and intense criticisms?

I feel very sad, particularly that I know a lot of these accusations are false. This is because a lot of the politicians who are making the accusations, almost 100 percent of them are people who came to tribunals and lost elections. Naturally, they have to put their blame somewhere else. And of course, their easiest target is the judiciary. And we don’t have the wherewithal to join issues with them. They have the resources and the media by their side, so all they have to do is to persuade or do some public relations here and there, which we are not in the position. We expect the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to come out strongly to defend the judges. But, we find it a little bit different only few of them have come out strongly to support the judiciary at their moment of trial.

In fact, some of the things that are being perpetrated against the judges by the politicians are being aided by the lawyers who are members of the Bar because of what they are being paid. So, they have now abandoned their responsibilities as officers of the courts and align with their clients who are ready to pay for their services. This is the unfortunate part of it and when we make mistakes we do admit and rectify them.

That is why there is the system of appeal. But, whether we like it or not, the judiciary has done a lot of work that stabilise the society, stabilise the polity and the nation as well. With all the feuds that were generated by the elections, by the politicians and political parties themselves we don’t know where we have been todayif not of the judiciary. Just because the politicians are vocal and have the resources, we were made to look as if we are the criminals that committed all the crimes.

Can you share one of the major challenges you come across in the course of your professional calling that still lingers in your memory?

Yes, that is the Anambra episode. In 2003, there was a senatorial election in Anambra state. Three senators contested the election. They were declared winners and given certificate of return. About three days later, the resident electoral commissioner called a press conference and announced that two senators that have won elections and given elections were not the people that won the elections. He withdrew the certificates of return and gave to two other people who never contested the elections. That was the beginning.

Then the two people who contested elections and won went to the tribunal and won their cases. The two people who didn’t contest the elections appealed the decision of the tribunal and went to the Court of Appeal. I set up a panel of five to hear their appeal. Unfortunately, one member of the panel was sick and couldn’t participate and the other one travelled abroad for medical check-up. Only there were therefore left. And I didn’t want the appeal to be frustrated or adjourned. I said ok, constitutionally, the quorum of the Court of Appeal is three. So, three of them took the appeal.

Normally, when we finish taking an appeal we normally hold a conference, where everybody bring out his ideas, opinions and authorities. Then, it is this conference that will decide which way the appeal will go: whether to be allowed or dismissed. They held their conference and agreed the way to go. They asked one of them to write the lead judgement.  He went ahead to write the lead judgement; but two days before the judgement day, two of the members went to meet with him and said we have to look into this matter again. He said no. He was absolutely sure that when they held the conference that was the correct position they took and he stood by it, therefore he was not changing his mind. They tried to persuade him he refused. They left him.

On the night before the judgement was to be delivered nobody gave him another judgement. He started asking them that he didn’t see their judgement because if you agree that someone would write the lead judgement, the others can write their little contributions. If there is an issue they want to highlight they can highlight them. Some can only even say I agree and that is all. Up to the morning they were going to deliver the judgement, he asked them they said he shouldn’t worry. So, they went into court. Normally, the majority judgement will be the first to be delivered. If there is any minority decision it will be the one to come last.

Even when they went into court he still raised the issue: Is my judgement going to be the lead judgement? They told him to go ahead and deliver his own judgement; he said but I didn’t see yours! As the senior judge among them, he announced to the court that he was the one that wrote the lead judgement and he was going to deliver it. And he went ahead to deliver his judgement and it was then that they brought out their judgements. When the leader was reading his judgement there was a little bit of restiveness because people started seeing where he was going and the court became restive. Before he went half way, people rushed to the Bench. So they have to vacate and run out of the court except the leader who remained seated. He eventually walked out. I was in the office when the registrar called me from Enugu and said that there was problem.  He said it has to do the judgement. I said what was wrong with it? He said there was a riot. He said the judges were chased out of court. I said where is Okpene, who read the judgement?  He said he left the court premises. He said some mob had tried to beat them up in the court. I asked him whether they were going back to deliver the judgement, he said no. I called some of my colleagues and told them what happened and asked them what we should do. They said since there was no formal judgment delivered, the only way out was to set up a new panel to go and re-take the appeal. We decided on that and I set up a new panel. I tried to get Okpene to ask him whether they could go back he said no, they would not go back to that place.

My crime in this case was the setting up of that panel to re-take the appeal. The people who were illegally given return tickets wrote a petition against me, against the new panel and three other judges who earlier had arrived at a decision which would have been contrary to what they wanted. They included in the petition, about nine of us that we had perverted the cause of justice. They wrote to former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Obasanjo called Justice Uwais, who was the Chief Justice of the Federation (CJN) telling him that he received a complaint against some judges of the Court of Appeal and he was going to set up a panel to investigate the judges. Justice Uwais told him that you couldn’t do that because that is the work of the National Judicial Council (NJC). He told him that the only thing he could do was to forward the complaint to him, who would in turn place it before the NJC who has the constitutional right to investigate. He did that.

Also, the two senators who won the elections and whose certificates where withdrawn wrote a petition against the other two judges but he (Obasanjo) didn’t do anything about it. Fortunately, they forwarded it to Justice Uwais who placed the two petitions before the NJC for investigation. So, two panels were set up to investigate the matter. Nine of us were investigated on one hand and the other panel investigated the two other judges. That was a very gruesome time for me because I was presiding over the presidential petition at that time. I had to leave the hearing of the petition to go and attend to the panel investigating us. After the investigations, NJC absolved all the nine of us. In the other panel, the two judges were found guilty and recommended to be removed from office apart from the judge that wrote the lead judgement. The two of them were sacked. That was one of the unhappiest moments in my life, because throughout my career I have never being issued with a query, let alone to be investigated on something that is out of place.  I don’t think I will ever forget this experience in my life.