Judges’ discipline has nothing to do with faith – J. B. Daudu
Do you see any useful result coming out from the national conference?Nothing will be achieved; there is nothing that will be discussed at the conference that has not been discussed before. There is nothing that will be articulated that has not being articulated before in one forum or the other. We have had several constitutional […]
Do you see any useful result coming out from the national conference?
Nothing will be achieved; there is nothing that will be discussed at the conference that has not been discussed before. There is nothing that will be articulated that has not being articulated before in one forum or the other. We have had several constitutional conferences right from 1967,76, 89, and also in 98 and the issues are clear. It’s a distraction, so as to fill in the gap for the present administration’s lack lustre performance in terms of governance. They (the government) opposed it from the word go. Government did not take off in terms of governance and we are on the verge of disintegration as we have crises here and there; a country where gunmen can go anywhere and shoot 96 people and people do not see any sense of national calamity. I think there is something wrong. It is happening in far away places now, some day it will happen in Abuja.
Looking at the centenary celebration, what are the real challenges facing the country, is it that of law and order?
There are just two challenges facing the country. Bad leadership and corruption. And that has rubbished any progress or development that the country may have recorded. Corruption cuts across the society from the poor man to the richest man, and bad leadership because a few people have imposed themselves on the country to rob, pillage and steal. Good thing we are even able to do a few things, may be 10 percent of the budget is going into developmental activities.
Recently two judges were sacked, where a judge is criminally liable, should it stop at suspension?
None of the two judges were alleged to have committed any crime, therefore in such a situation, it is the usual disciplinary machinery that will go on. One of them has challenged the removal in court. The track record of some of the judges that challenge their removal in court is that they often succeed. So it is best to keep our fingers crossed.
What would you recommend as punishment for crooks on the bench because people have said that it is only Christian judges that the CJN is punishing so far in her reforms?
In the early part of the century, about 2006 and arising from the 2003 elections, about six judges were disciplined for misconduct in relation to the Akwa Ibom election tribunal and when it got to the office of the then president, General Olusegun Obasanjo, he minuted that the judges should be prosecuted. It was the same judiciary that said that they (judges) were been disciplined and that prosecution was not necessary.
There should be a clear dividing line between offences that constitute serious misconduct that are not crime and offences that are crimes. Those that constitute serious misconducts that are not crime such as indolence, inability to discharge their functions properly, gross dereliction of duty, leaving their duty post and indiscretion, those do not border on crime.
But when you collect bribes to pervert the cause of justice and use the judicial process to achieve other ends, those are crimes. When you find a clear case of crime, then whoever it is should be prosecuted. But then it brings us to the real issues, that those for whom the judges work to commit crimes are those that control the machinery of prosecution and investigation; they are those who are powerful enough to stop any of those things going on, so you would not find it. Because if somebody rigs on behalf of his party, gets into power, those that were helped to bribe a judge, you don’t expect that political party to come and discipline that judge. It means that the judge is a member of the judicial wing of that political party.
Again it is not correct, and people should perish that thought, about issue of religious bias in how judges are disciplined; or if it is more of Christians that are being disciplined then it means the Christians are more of the trouble makers and indisciplined people. But the way judges are disciplined has nothing to do with their faith or their religion.
On the issue of delayed trial, what is the way out?
Some of us have the requisite background and experience in this and we tell them what to do. We told the Office of the AGF that the laws must be amended. You must leave the old system and stop adjourning cases when you start trial from day to day. The Oscar Pristorius case in South Africa is a case in point. It started last week and they won’t adjourn until the day they deliver the judgment. But we don’t want to do such a thing here.
There are so many pitfalls in starting a case and adjourning it. It means that the prosecution will never be prepared because in this case and in modern criminal jurisdictions when a case is adjourned for hearing , it means everybody is ready. In fact it is a criminal offence if you are not ready and in such places, they take their jobs seriously.
Unless we get a government that will come for eight years whose only duty is to fight corruption and use the remaining money to tackle infrastructure, then we may never make headway in this country.
By the time we start fighting corruption, insecurity and every other thing will fall into place.
On the issue of getting a President Court of Appeal (PCA), we have a case challenging NJC’s preference for Bulkachuwa and the most senior judge is also kicking?
He can kick as much as he likes. What we hear is that he has been adjudged as not fit and proper to occupy the office and if you cannot run a division of the Court of Appeal then common sense tells you that you cannot run the entire court. It is not a market place, it is a place where serious business is done. Because the issue is before the court, it is not possible for me to explain a lot on the subject matter, I will wait for the court to decide but it is a waste of time and energy for somebody to protest that he was not picked.
The issue of discipline within the NBA, can you recollect how many lawyers have so far been disciplined by the committee under your watch?
We came and met about 40 cases, we have concluded most of these cases and we have only five left and about 20 new additional cases and more are coming as the disciplinary committee is functional now.
As for the statistics, I know that we are doing our work, we deal with cases as they come and decide it on merit.
With the number of lawyers in the country, would you have the NBA disciplinary committee decentralised?
It is not possible, I used to be of the view that it should be decentralised but if you decentralise, you will bring in the Nigerian factor. Everybody in the zone will protect his own people. It would be said that the people in the North are protecting their own and the Yoruba’s are protecting their own too, so it is best to have everything done in one place. However the number of people being disciplined is minimal because it is not a large number that engage in professional misconduct.
What do you think of the continuous reduction in budget allocation to the judiciary?
Everybody is to be blamed. The judiciary itself has been seen to mismanage funds; there is also a lot of corruption within the system in terms of award of contract and this sends a wrong signal to the executive. It is still able to pay judges salaries but where there are capital projects, courts to be built and moved closer to the people, there are residences for judicial officers to be built, modern technological gadgets to be acquired for speedy dispensation of justice, now to cut the budget means that things like these cannot be properly funded.
It only follows that probably the judiciary is not managing itself properly, because it is visible what the money is been used for and I do not think that a reasonable government would go ahead slashing the budget for the judiciary.