Nigerian judges are under tremendous pressures – Okutepa

Nigeria has become a hub for terrorism, how will this affect our relationship with the international community? The essence of government is to provide security for its people and like one great philosopher put it, where there is no security life becomes short, brutish and nasty and there will be no place for industry. Most […]

Nigeria has become a hub for terrorism, how will this affect our relationship with the international community?

The essence of government is to provide security for its people and like one great philosopher put it, where there is no security life becomes short, brutish and nasty and there will be no place for industry. Most foreign nationals are afraid of coming to Nigeria because the government appears to have lost the ability to deal with the insurgence of the Boko Haram and other politically motivated security threats in the country. If we are not careful, we are likely to risk losing not only the international relationship but also the relationship between ourselves because many people are suspicious of one another.  A lot of people do not want to go to some parts of the north and some are afraid that there will be retaliation in some other parts of the country. This calls for extreme caution on the part of Nigerian leadership.  They have to redress the way they talk, the way they behave and the way they manage our security system; even the way the media reports issues of national security. There is no doubt that the insecurity will affect our relationship with the international community if the government does not wake up to its responsibilities.

Will you say corruption and impunity have been the cause of Nigeria’s under development?

Yes corruption, impunity and government’s insincerity to even fight corruption. Most governments that came into power claimed that they wanted to fight corruption, but they only paid lip service to it; because deep down within the seat of power is the headquarters of corruption.  Everything we do has been corruptly managed; no one believes that anything can be done right without corruption. The bane of our development has been corruption, corruption in every facet of our lives; in the executive, legislature and even to a larger extent in the judiciary. Corruption in terms of recruitment of personnel to manage our courts, corruption in terms of political interference with the process of decision making in the courts and the executive arm of government has not been able to purge itself of corruption. With due respect, most of our anti corruption agencies are corrupt. All they need to do to have money in their pockets is to catch the big thieves and once they do so, they ask to be settled. Nationalism and patriotism have taken flight from the common sense of all of us in this country and this can be traced to lack of good leadership. When you have a leader that is prepared to fight corruption, you will see that Nigerians are obedient people. We can fall in line quickly. Take for instance when late General Murtala Muhammed was in power, a lot of people were patriotic and careful; then the era of Generals Tunde Idiagbon and Muhammad Buhari, we had the war against indiscipline. But when someone came to power and began to talk about democracy under military dictatorship, corruption was elevated and given the name Public Relations (PR).  The government itself was an agent in promoting corruption, during the era of Speaker Ghali Naaba, a lot of Ghana must goes were brought to the National Assembly stuffed with money; nobody knows where that money is up till tomorrow . We say that the late General Sani Abacha stole money and that a lot was being recovered but nobody has accounted for where that money is. Now we see the oil probe by the National Assembly and how attempts are being made to kill the report because some the powers that be are not comfortable with some recommendations. As such, somebody must be used as a scapegoat in order to rubbish that report. As long as there is corruption, this country can never develop.

So do you think the government should go ahead and prosecute the companies that were mentioned, despite the fact that Farouk Lawan, who was chairman of that committee is caught up in a bribery scandal?

The allegation against Lawan is the reason why the government should prosecute. Otedola told the world he offered bribe but he has not been able to tell us why he did it.  If you are driving a vehicle and you have all your particulars, why should you bribe a police man to pass?  So the reason why there was bribery in the first place should be investigated; and under our laws, both the giver and taker of bribe are equally guilty of the same offense as such they both should be arraigned.  And those whose names were mentioned in the probe report should be subjected to due judicial process.  There are allegations that some people whose names were mentioned in the report had their names extracted because there were undue influences and interferences in the process of compilation, this is good information that can be used as evidence when prosecuting them to show the entire world that in this country corruption does not pay. But with respect, I do not think the government itself is sincere about prosecuting anyone because from what I heard, which I am yet to verify; attempts were made by the powers that be to even kill the adoption of that report.  One is taken aback when you see the president on national television associate with the giver of the bribe, calling him his friend, what message was he sending us? We do not need further evidence, Otedola confessed to have given a bribe and Lawan agreed to have taken the money but that it was not a bribe. To me, he has a defense, but if it wasn’t a bribe, what was it; and why did he take it and who did he contact? They said marked money was given; it is very hard for those of us well grounded in jurisprudence to believe it was a sting operation.  In criminal jurisprudence if there is such money for a would be criminal, there should be security operatives waiting to arrest the person instantly. But in this case that didn’t happen.  How do we know it was marked money? Such money should be an exhibit and in criminal jurisprudence, once an exhibit is retrieved, there must be process of preservation to avoid exchange. Nobody has been able to convince some of us that marked money was given to Lawan. Both the giver and the taker should be arraigned in court; I do not know what the government is waiting for.

A number of government officials, former and serving, are standing trial for one thing or the other, do you think the Nigerian judiciary is capable of guaranteeing them fair trial?

The Nigerian judiciary is amongst the best all over the world. Our judiciary is equal to the task if there is no interference from the executive. Our judges are under tremendous societal and political pressure not to do what the law says they should do; and the inability of some of these judicial officers to resist the temptation is as a result of the process through which they became judges and judicial officers.  Majority of the problems we have with our judicial process is the fact that even the process of appointment has been corrupted as such the independence expected of a judicial officer to do his job has been wrested from them; otherwise if they are allowed unfettered access to do their jobs, they will do it to your admiration. Even in election petition matters, if the judiciary is allowed to perform its job the way they ought to, you’ll discover that some funny decisions you find won’t be made. The judiciary is not allowed to carry out its job the way it ought to because of interference from big wigs, political class and by the way in which they themselves have subjected themselves to social influence. Before now, you rarely see judges, but these days you see them at naming ceremonies, birthday parties and even when chief executives return from trips, you see them there and most chief executives prefer to appoint people they can control. Our judicial officers are supposed to be astute in conduct and in their decisions but because of these social influences, they are corrupted and so the stream of justice is polluted and that is why it is difficult for them to stamp their feet and fight corruption.

Do you think birth control legislation should be used to control Nigeria’s population?

I heard the president talked about birth control but I do not know from what perspective they want this. We are Africans, before now the number of children you had determined the kind of farm you had because your children and great grand children had to go to the farm to help. But these days we do not have such things, everyone is going to school and things are expensive.  Agreed our population is on the rise but we may need to sit down as a people to see whether birth control is what is required but without subjecting it to the critical analysis of our own cultural background.

Do you think the president should be stripped of any powers to sack judges?

The president has no such powers. The removal of judicial officers is not a one way traffic. If a judicial officer is found wanting by the National Judicial Council, recommendation is made to either the president or the governor of a state for the purpose of removing that officer. The purpose of that is just to ensure checks and balances and the president has a right to say yes or no, just like in the process of appointment. In a presidential system, under the doctrine of separation of power, in order to ensure there are checks and balances on the executive, legislature and judiciary, this kind of intergovernmental relationship must be allowed to exist.  I do not think completely stripping the president or governor of the power to have a say in the removal of a judicial officer is the answer, all we need is patriotism and aiming at having an efficient judicial system.

What in your opinion can end insecurity in Nigeria?

First of all there must be sincerity.  Before now, such insecurity was not noticed. It began from the agitation in the Niger Delta and then the eastern part of the country when kidnapping began and it became a thriving business.  Some people are profiting from the insecurity we are witnessing now, in terms of the security votes; some are making millions out of the money devoted to it as such they don’t want it to stop. However, I must say the insecurity is as a result of political irresponsibility on the part of a political class.  For instance, if Boko Haram was not raised as a tool to capture power we may not have been witnessing this. The government of the day must go into serious underground political negotiation with the people who are aggrieved, they have the apparatus. They should know where they are, they live on Nigerian soil and as long as they walk on our streets, the ordinary man isn’t safe.  Innocent people are being subjected to a lot of security inconvenience, yet the security operatives have not been able to apprehend the perpetrators, all we see is road blocks yet we hear of bomb explosions every day. Where have our security operatives gone? Is it true therefore to say that our president was right when he said these people have infiltrated our security agencies? If he knows them, why can’t he take a decision and bring those people to book?  These all boils down to what we call the failure of government and leadership and we must acknowledge that they are failing in their responsibility, else we can’t progress.  But the failure of government is not the president alone, because not only him makes up the government. Government is a social contract, we agreed that certain persons should be vested with power so that they can protect us, but they are not doing so. The government must be alive to its responsibility, we must not continue to pay lip service by saying we are on top of the situation when we are indeed below the situation.  Dividing the country will not solve the problem; in one family we have Muslims and Christians, as well as different tribes. The leadership of the north, south, east and west must come together and appreciate the fact that we are all Nigerians and no matter the situation in which we find ourselves, we must live together in harmony.

Do you think special courts should be created for cases of terrorism?

I do not think we need special courts.  What we need is to designate particular judges for such cases and ask them to handle them expeditiously.  The delay in criminal trial is not a problem of the court but poor investigation. A court is not expected to go outside the evidence before it to convict an accused person.  These days our security operatives are not prepared to conduct thorough investigations of criminal elements in our society, they are compromised; if a big thief is caught today, that is an avenue for revenue for them.  At the end, the case collapses on a pack of cards not because the accused person is innocent but because no sufficient evidence has been placed before the court.  Our judiciary is very careful not to commit judicial blunder by convicting an innocent person.  It is not the creation of special courts that will solve the problem but designating a court for a particular matter, funding the court and personnel and making the environment conducive and having airtight evidence.

Nigeria’s first lady, Patience Jonathan was recently appointed Permanent Secretary in Bayelsa State, an office she said she will run in absentia. What do you think about this?

With the greatest respect to whoever made that appointment, I think that is the greatest madness I have ever seen in the history of Nigeria. People have sighted example with Bayelsa state, that wife of public officers must be encouraged to be independent, but this is insulting to the collective intelligence of all Nigerians. The office of the first lady in the order of protocol comes before the office of the vice president. Questions I expect the governor to answer is the permanent secretary of what ministry has she been made? Is she going to be answerable to the commissioner in charge of that ministry? If she doesn’t go to office, will the governor query her? A permanent secretary is supposed to be an accounting officer, how will she run whatever office she has been assigned to in absentia? What happens to the files that are supposed to be treated by the permanent secretary in consultation with the commissioner of the ministry? Or are we being told that she will be a super permanent secretary whom the governor will be answerable to? Why are we desecrating the office of the governor?  Is the president going to take another wife to act as first lady? Is the office of the first lady going to be moved to Bayelsa or is she going to run the office of the first lady or permanent secretary by remote control? People are comparing this instance to that of Justice Fati Abubakar, the wife of Abdulsalam Abubakar; but she was a judge of the high court before the husband became a head of state. Justice Mary Odili was a judge of a high court before the husband, Peter Odili became a governor. These are people who are independent judicial officers who are not answerable to a governor or president.  I wouldn’t have minded her being appointed a judge of a high court, assuming she studied law and is so qualified because then she will have the opportunity of telling her husband and the governor of any state when they violate the law. But here, once she takes that appointment, she is going to be bound by the public service rules and can be queried and if she refuses to be queried or answers the governor in a manner less than humble, then what lessons are we setting for other permanent secretaries who are not wives of presidents? We must avoid setting bad examples. This appointment is a bad example and it is intended to promote political insubordination and we must not allow it to happen.