NNPC must disclose its information, says Professor Azinge

You are a member of the 29 learned men appointed by the former Chief Justice of Nigeria Justice Dahiru Musdapher to reform the judiciary. Even after the committee, submitted its report, it seems the Minister of Justice sat in his office as an appellate body over the recommendation of the committee, especially on the re-instatement […]

You are a member of the 29 learned men appointed by the former Chief Justice of Nigeria Justice Dahiru Musdapher to reform the judiciary. Even after the committee, submitted its report, it seems the Minister of Justice sat in his office as an appellate body over the recommendation of the committee, especially on the re-instatement of Justice Salami as the President of the Court of Appeal. Would you say the job done by your committee was not thorough enough?

Two issues, one I disagree with the fact that the minister vetted the work of the judicial reform committee. I don’t think it is right to say so and I don’t think he did. On the other issue, whether the committee did a thorough job, I must commend the committee ably chaired by my Lord the former CJN Muhammed Lawal Uwais, and all the other members for a job well done. I was amazed and indeed I marvelled at the energy still at the disposal of these elder Statesmen and senior judicial officers because consistently, timorously and with highest level of discipline and sense of responsibilities, they were attending meetings, pushing and all decisions supposed to be taken were taken and, at least 99, per cent of the members was  in agreement on all issues were raised. We were able to meet our time frame also and happily you must note that the report of the committee formed the basis of the 52 areas of Constitutional amendment that the immediate past CJN sent to the National Assembly for consideration and subsequent implementation for the purposes of amending the aspects of the constitution as they relate to the judiciary. It was a very thorough job.

The Salami case was not necessarily part of the terms of reference but came up when a good number of the members there were either part of the members who sat at the NJC or were in a position to address the issue, the matter came up and a subcommittee was set up to look into the matter. The subcommittee looked into the matter and took a decision, which  was ratified by the general house and it formed part of the recommendations that was put to the erstwhile CJN. Beyond that the matter moved into the political arena and whatever be the case I know that it is a matter that was considered to be subjudiced one way or the other, but all I can say is that, yes, the reform committee took a decision to reinstate Justice Salami, that was the recommendation of the reform committee, arising from a subcommittee that was set up and that recommendation formed some of the basis of other recommendations that was passed on to the erstwhile CJN. Now I believe that that recommendation was put across to the proper channel but the point is that the AGF and minister of justice was not a member of that committee and he never attempted or in any way tried to influence the decision of that committee since he was not a member he was not in a position to do so and I would not want to say that he tried in any way to whittle down the workings of that committee. It is not proper for anyone to accuse the AGF of sitting on the recommendation and in any case the recommendation of the committee never went to the AGF, so he could not sit on something that never went to him. Because the matter was already subjudiced, the matter is still sub judiced and until that matter is properly disposed off, then it is pre- mature for the Presidency to be seen taking any action on it. It is for all the parties now to work towards an amicable settlement. So many people have ventured opinions over the matter, regardless of the recommendations of the judicial reform committee; there is still a lot of merit in saying that a case in court should not be politically handled at this point in time when it is still subjudiced.

The NNPC has said that it is not bound by the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act do you agree with this?

The dichotomy is one that is difficult to understand as far as good governance is concerned and the whole essence of FOI law is to address the obvious lapses hitherto existing in an attempt to get relevant information from government institutions.

It is difficult for one to argue strenuously that NNPC is strictly speaking not as a public entity since it is a statutory corporation. One is how is a particular organization funded , secondly , to what extent is the tax payers money involved in the running of that particular organization, where do they derive their appropriation and funding?

If their funding is in any way tied to the federation account, then automatically, they are answerable to the Nigerian public and if they are answerable to the Nigerian public then automatically the FOI Act is applicable to them. I find it difficult to begin to imagine that any public organization in Nigeria would claim not to be at the beck and call of Nigerians and to that extent the FOI Act applies.

Even if we can stretch the argument that NNPC should not be so covered which I disagree with, there is a moral burden, because the whole essence of the FOI Act is to make information available in many respects, not necessarily from the negative perspective, there could be some positive aspects of FOI Act in the sense that we just want to make information available because we want to utilize that information to improve and enhance performance in the system. If it is from that perspective, you cannot claim that because you are a Statutory corporation and not a public service organization then to that extent you are not covered by the FOI Act. I disagree with that vehemently and I do not think that that postulation is correct or that the argument is logical.

More significantly, even if we say that is right, there is a moral burden for you to make information available and failure to do so means that there is something you are hiding and you cannot be servicing the public and still keep some information away from the public, then it means you are not working in the public interest, then in that instance you are not supposed to be there in the first place.  Even in some private organizations, there comes a time, where even the FOI Act can be invoked, talk less of a public corporation funded by the public, it is unacceptable and I believe it is wrong application of the law.

Do you feel that Nigeria is ripe enough to abolish the capital punishment?

The position of the Nigerian Institute of Advanced Legal Studies NIALS is clear and we feel that it is time for us to abolish death penalties in our laws. We took a position on this based on comprehensive research we conducted on the matter.  We have had series of round tables on this and also in our own evidence based research. We have come to this inescapable conclusion that death penalty even as a proposed deterrent has not served its purpose in Nigeria nor elsewhere.

We have been able to marshal out statistics to that effect. We have also been able to catalogue all the parts of the world where death penalty has been abolished and other parts of Africa where it has been abolished, we have written to all the Attorneys General and all the governors calling on them to forthwith implement the abolition of death penalty.

Our position is clear that it has not been able to achieve any objective in crime prevention, crime reduction, as the case may be as far as it affects some heinous murder among others. Secondly we have also noticed that state and federal governments wittingly or unwittingly, seem to have placed a moratorium on this matter which is if people are confirmed to die by execution, the State governors and the President who have the final say on this matter, did not in all instances direct that the order be implemented . For a very long time we have noticed that for about 10 or more years in Nigeria we have not seen any person executed by hanging until the person dies. Ordinarily the order of any court at any level, the High Court, Court of appeal or the Supreme Court should be carried out with dispatches? What this means is that even the polity itself as evidenced by the action of the leaders- either the President or the Governor share the view that it would appear that this execution by hanging does not serve any meaningful purpose. To that extent there is no point pushing it further. It is now customary for people, even in the course of making Laws to indicate that, even terrorism or kidnapping should attract death penalty. The stringency of the penalty or punishment does not necessarily suggest that it has any indication that it can deter people from committing a particular crime.

Even in terrorism, what do you stand to gain by thinking that once you put death penalty it has sanction that it would stop people from embarking on terrorist activities? Before you moved to death penalty, people have moved to suicide bombing , so what are you going to achieve with death penalty, these people  are not even interested in your law, what they are interested is “we are prepared to die “. If they are prepared to die, killing them ultimately does not seem to solve your problem. It is when you get them alive, what do you gain by killing them, these are people that you have to psychologically brainwash, or if they are already brainwashed, you take them away from their brainwash, rehabilitate and convert them by showing that the act of terrorism does not pay, but if you just capture them and kill them , then you are trying to make them more dangerous even in their heinous and nefarious activities.

The same thing for kidnapping, if you make kidnapping punishable by death, then you are risking the lives of the people who are being kidnapped, because as a kidnapper I feel if and when I am apprehended, that I am likely to face the death penalty, the major thing in some instances is that I should waste the human being and then find my way, I would not even go into negotiations. So we have to be very careful of the pros and cons of even thinking about the death penalty for certain offences because either it will make the business more dangerous and it will risk the lives of so many citizens likely to be affected from it and death penalty has not even succeeded in deterring people from committing those offences that attract death penalty ultimately.

Many people have suggested that law should be made a second degree course in which you would have obtained a degree first before studying law, do you agree with this?

Time changes everything, in the last 15 years, if somebody canvassed that opinion I would have disagreed but at the moment I am among the people who canvassed this idea. I am in a better position to say so, not that there is a drop in standards, the standards are still high, the standard of legal education is really high in this country nobody can doubt that fact but for the number of people that have saturated the profession. At the moment we are more than 100, 000 lawyers in Nigeria to 167 Million people is nothing to write home about and still not enough but we should not look at it from that ratio proportion basis but I know that 100,000 lawyers at this point in time for this nation is on the very high side. It is too much. What this means is that not the standards of education but the standards of the lawyers in terms of where to fit in, in terms of engagement, employment seems to be non-existent and now it seems that lawyers are ten a dime. It would appear that much value is taken away , all the years spent in the University training these people and because they zeroed onto taking education right from secondary school means that there is still  sometime nothing to fall back to.

Nigeria should be thinking of a group of lawyers who obviously must have taken a first degree, such as in medicine, history, pharmacy, education etc who can take advantage of their first degrees, believing that it is important for them to have a legal background will go ahead and read law by the time they come out, if for any reason they find it difficult to make do with law, they can fall back to economy, pharmacy, medicine as the case may be , I believe that it will add more  value to legal education and scholarship, if we now adopt this as the basis of legal education, you must have finished one degree before the other. More importantly, you have for us to also start diversifying our approach to legal education. A straight jacketed approach to legal education may become obsolete, perhaps we should start thinking of a way of blending law and economics and so on, so it will no longer be law alone, even if you come out with a first degree in law and economics it means you can become very versatile in the sense that if you cannot fit into law, there are some aspects of economy that you can do. But these are supporting discipline that you can always fall back to in the event that you are unable to make the best out of law. In other climes now, you have masters, law and economy, masters’ law and sociology and so on even at the first degree. It means as you are pursuing a law program you are also pursuing an economics program me as well and they are well blended. I think that we must re-think at the moment and the earlier the better.