Buhari certificate saga cannot be an issue – JB Daudu

Some people have suggested that the Nigerian Law School should be unbundled, do you agree? It is not as simple as that. You have a situation where it is attractive to have private institutions offering the teaching at the law school level. However, there are impediments. The backlog is caused by indiscipline. Every law faculty has […]

Some people have suggested that the Nigerian Law School should be unbundled, do you agree?
 It is not as simple as that. You have a situation where it is attractive to have private institutions offering the teaching at the law school level. However, there are impediments. The backlog is caused by indiscipline. Every law faculty has a quota but you find out that some faculties brazenly exceed their quotas and the NLS is not by its projections equipped to take everybody as everybody cannot go and read law.
 Therefore if they had listened to some of us as to the safety net to be placed on quality control, law for Nigeria should be a post graduate cause: the second degree, so that when you finish your first degree and you are minded to study the profession. That is why we have so many lawyers and 90 per cent of the lawyers called to the bar in the last 10 years don’t practice law as a profession. And we still want to call more lawyers.
 So as attractive as it may be to have private institutions, the objectives of producing lawyers have not been met in Nigeria. The objectives are to have some legal basis to advice and serve the public the way lawyers serve their society but you find out that 90 per cent of the lawyers have no interest practicing the profession from the day they are called to the bar. Some say that it is their parents that forced them to read law.
How would you react to the Buhari certificate saga?
It is not an issue and it cannot be an issue because before now it ought to be a pre-election matter for his focal contestants in the APC to go to court and say that his nomination was invalid because he does not possess the qualifications to get him nominated and that is intra-party. This whole talk is empty hot air and politics. Let him contest the election, INEC has cleared him, his name appeared on the list, there is no provision to appeal against INECs list, the next port of call is the election tribunal. If he is unable to prove that he went to primary school and he suddenly rose to be a general and went to the War College which to me is like a PhD programme then the law will take its course. But we should not be distracted by people who are not addressing issues –  how to reverse corruption, how to deal with infrastructural problem, how to curtail the excesses of politicians in the country. People are not addressing that, they are saying that the man does not have the certificate. They should wait until the time has come and go to the election tribunal and challenge it.
How did you see the judiciary in 2014 and what are your expectations for it in 2015?
I have my problems with the Nigerian society generally. The judiciary is exposed to quite a number of temptations and has its own problems and it is working hard to overcome those problems relating to funding, infrastructure, man power. Because there are expectations in the society, it has the problems of its own internal bad eggs. So when you take all these things together, all you just do is to pray for the judiciary.
You have raised the issue of the election tribunals, but the tribunals are yet to be constituted less than a month to elections, could it be a problem of funding or the judiciary workers’ strike?
No it cannot be a problem of funding. Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) strike is based on some political manoeuvres by the political class; any altruistic union member would not jeopardise the nation’s democracy on a very shaky pedestal like the issue of funding. Their salaries are paid, they are funded to the best of our abilities, money may not be routed through the head of court but we are in a constitutional process. So why truncate the process, people should have gone to court to determine pre-election issues but the courts are being shut so candidates that were superimposed in different chairmen’s offices instead of those who won primaries cannot challenge it. So you have upstarts going to contest elections. Politicians are saying let me be the one to contest election and when we get to the other bridge we cross it. But why should JUSUN allow themselves to come under this cloud of controversy? The President of the Court of Appeal has no access to her office, so she cannot constitute tribunals. Maybe it is a political devise and the only person who benefits from it is the ruling party.
Your NGO – the Rule of Law Development Foundation, advised JUSUN to call off their strike but they have partially called off the strike. What next will you do?
The point is that they cannot force governors to comply with the judgment of the Federal High Court, because there is a Supreme Court judgment which says the exact opposite of what the FHC judgment says.
But there has been no appeal against the FHC judgment?
There is a SC judgment stating the law. Which the governors are bound to apply. Where there is a SC judgment and a FHC judgment, as Attorney General I would advise the governor to ignore the FHC judgment. If the JUSUN did not know they should  their limited knowledge of the law being Registrars but then they needed to have taken legal advice.
What is your take on the non-violence pact signed recently by the presidential aspirants?
The  non-violence pact is good on paper at least people will be held accountable for the positions they have taken, if suddenly your party in which you are a leader runs amok and begins to inflict violence on innocent people, that would be a starting point. But the violence as I have analysed it is becoming the favorite method of rigging the 2015 elections because INEC appeared to have blocked a lot of loopholes. So a lot of people resort to violence to make coming out on election days unattractive and by so doing you disenfranchise people. There is already talk by a large section of the country that they will return to their homeland whether they registered there or not before the elections but that would be a wrong idea, Nigeria belongs to all of us and we should stay where we are and protect our rights wherever we are.
So the non-violence pact is a good thing, but what would address the issue of violence would be the readiness of the security agencies, the willingness of Nigerians to defend their mandate and the finding of solution by INEC to the issue of lack of distribution of the Permanent Voter’s Cards (PVCs). If by next week INEC discovers that it still has over 50 per cent of the PVCs in its possession it should allow everybody to come and vote even with their temporary voters card (TVCs).
Can INEC postpone the elections?
You cannot postpone the elections because date has been taken. We voted 2011 election under the 2010 Election Act with the TVC, since there is restriction of movement and the ballot papers have been changed, since the TVC also contains biometrics, then people should be allowed to vote with their TVC. That is the only solution to the present impasse.   
A lot of Nigerians would be disenfranchised if the elections were to be held today because of the low distribution of the PVCs.