No-Nonsense CJN Aloma Faces Tough Task in Judiciary
“Some of us referred to her as an Iron Lady, because she was a no-nonsense judge.” With these words, an old staff of Kano State judiciary, Bashir Muhammad Yakasai, described Justice Mariam Aloma Muktar, who is now awaiting Senate confirmation as Nigeria’s first female Chief Justice of Nigeria. Muhammad, who retired recently after 35 […]
“Some of us referred to her as an Iron Lady, because she was a no-nonsense judge.” With these words, an old staff of Kano State judiciary, Bashir Muhammad Yakasai, described Justice Mariam Aloma Muktar, who is now awaiting Senate confirmation as Nigeria’s first female Chief Justice of Nigeria.
Muhammad, who retired recently after 35 years in service, had worked as a court registrar to Justice Aloma while she was a High Court Judge in Kano in the 1980s.
He recalled that even though she was firm, the Justice of the Supreme Court, was kind and listening.
“We called her the Iron Lady and a no-nonsense judge because she was strict on adhering to rules and procedures,” he explained, adding however that “she was a listening judge who will listen patiently to a junior lawyer.”
According to Muhammad, the senior Justice was transferred from Borno State judiciary to Kano State as a Magistrate, following which she rose gradually and got appointed as the Chief Registrar of Kano State High Court.
She was the first female in the history of Kano State judiciary to be appointed to that highly revered administrative position and the third in the chronicle of holders of the office, since the creation of the state.
Earlier before Aloma’s appointment as CR of Kano High Court in 1974 (to 1977), the post was successively occupied by Mr Shamsulhaq (from 1968 – 1971) and Mr Sylvester Onu (1971 – 1974).
“As CR, she was known to abhor backbiting,” recalled Muhammad. “Whenever a staff went to her to speak ill about anybody in their absence, she would order the staff not to leave, and she would invite the persons being pilloried and ask the accuser to repeat what he has told her in their presence.”
Sunday Trust gathered that her appointment as CR helped greatly to put the then nascent Kano judiciary on a steady path of development. “She was exceptionally good, organized and diligent in the discharge of her administrative duties as the Chief Registrar,” recalled Muhammad.
Justice Aloma had spent about 10 years as a High Court Judge in Kano before she was elevated to the Court of Appeal as a Justice. Before her new appointment, however, she was set to make history as the first female Chief Judge of Kano, being the next in line of seniority to the then CJ.
She was said to have moved up in the hierarchy of seniority in the state High Court to the position of Judge of Kano High Court 2, when her appointment to the appellate court was confirmed in 1987.
When four new justices were sworn in to the Supreme Court Bench on Wednesday, June 8, 2005, an important piece of history was made. One of the new names, Aloma Mariam Mukhtar became the first female justice of the Supreme Court.
She was the only female member of that apex court until March 12, 2009 when Hon Justice Olufunlola Oyelola Adekeye was sworn in as a second female Justice of the Supreme, while Honourable Justice Mary Peter Odili was sworn in on June 23, 2011 as a third female Justice of the Supreme Court.
Justice Aloma within the next few days will be sworn in as the next Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). This is because the current CJN, Justice Dahiru Musdapher, will on July 15 attain the 70 years mandatory retirement age for Justices of both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.
Justice Mariam Aloma Muktar was born to the family of Alhaji Muktar Dansalo, a successful businessman with commercial interests in Lagos and Sierra Leone. Her father, according to persons close to the family, was a native of Janguza a town, about 10 minutes drive from Kano. He was said to have got the nickname Dansalo (Sierra Leonean) from his strong business contacts in the West African country. Sunday Trust learnt that the businessman had also lived in Makurdi in Benue State.
A cousin to Justice Aloma disclosed that the senior Justice might have travelled to Sierra Leone with her father. “I am aware she attended a school in Lagos. But she had been going around with her father,” the relative said. Apart from raising his own children, Sunday Trust gathered that the businessman played the role of foster parents to many indigent people from within and outside Kano.
Aloma’s mother, according to her cousin, was a Kanuri woman from Borno. However, other people said she was of both Fulani and Kanuri stocks, with one of her parents from Missua Emirate in Bauchi and the other from Borno State. The Justice got the Kanuri name Aloma from her mother.
An elder statesman and renowned public commentator, Alhaji Tanko Yakasai, had a close personal relationship with the Alhaji Muktar’s family. He said Aloma’s father was among the first set of Northern businessmen who established businesses in Sierra Leone. “He was in Lagos, from there he moved to Accra (in Ghana) and from there he moved to Sierra Leone,” he recounted, adding “he was one of the successful Northern businessmen in the Diaspora.”
Yakasai further explained that his closeness with Aloma’s family almost saw him marrying her sister. “I nearly married her younger sister, who later married Colonel Lawan Gwadabe. The woman later died in a ghastly fire incident in their house,” he said.
He recalled that the senior Justice of the Supreme Court was serving under the Government of Northern Nigeria as a judicial officer, before she was transferred to Kano after the state was created.
He argued that her track record and the appointments she has enjoyed in her judicial career are enough adequate testimony of her competence.
“If she did not perform well, she would not have been promoted to the Appeal Court and the Supreme Court. You know the process of appointing judicial officers is very rigorous. Anybody who is confirmed as a Justice of Appeal Court or Supreme Court must have merited that position,” he said.
He said his experience with her judgments had proved her to be “thorough, fair and just,” stressing that she has all it takes to transform the nation’s judiciary if confirmed as the Chief Justice of Nigeria. “I believe she is a woman of vision and I also believe that if you give her one to two years, you will see marked difference. She has much time to bring some innovation to the system, particularly now that people are complaining of delays in judicial process,” he explained.
He, however, pointed out that Justice Aloma is coming at a time when Nigerians are accusing the judiciary of not helping government in the fight against corruption. “We look forward to her confirmation by the Senate and I believe Senators will do justice to her, being the first female to be nominated for the position of the Chief Justice of Nigeria. I believe and I hope that the Senators will show maturity and decorum in dealing with her case, so that she will not be subjected to unnecessary harassment. I believe, Senators being senior lawmakers will treat her case with decorum and diligent,” he said.
Challenges before Aloma JSC
Justice Aloma, according to Hassan Liman (SAN) is an upright and straightforward judge. “I knew her from the 1990s in Jos, from the Court of Appeal where I practice. She is courageous and does not tolerate lawyers playing to the gallery.
Another lawyer, Sebastine Hon (SAN) said that she is very mature in her conduct. “She should be counted as a plus because we have had experience of women who have excelled in various fields. The mere fact that she is the first lady to reach the Supreme Court which is part of her pedigree, we believe strongly that the judiciary will be better off”.
Born in Kano on November 20, 1944, Aloma Mariam Mukhtar was called to the English Bar (Middle Temple) in November 1966 and she enrolled at the Nigeria Bar on 26th June, 1967. She started her career as a pupil State Counsel in the ministry of Justice of Northern Nigeria in 1967and was later appointed magistrate Grade 1 in North Eastern State Nigeria in 1971.
Hon. Justice Mukhtar’s career on the high bench has always been a history of first: She becomes the first female Judge of the high Court of Kano State on January 1, 1977. On September 24, 1987, she was appointed a Justice of the Court of Appeal, and thus became the first female in Nigeria to be so elevated. Others have since followed in her glorious footsteps. Now she has blazed another momentous trail as the first female Justice of the Supreme Court.
On the court of Appeal bench, she demonstrated an excellent and erudite grasp of issues and the law which became evident in some of the landmark Judgment she delivered. Cases that readily come to mind include Hassan v. Atanyi (2002) 8 NWLR (Pt. 770) 581; System Metal Ind. Ltd. v. Ehizo (2003) 7 NWLR (Pt. 820) 460; Lawan v. Yama (2004) 9 NWLR (Pt. 877) 117 and Ansamber v Bank of the North (2005) 8 NWLR (Pt.928) 650 to mention just as few.
Hon. Justice Mukhtar has been a Bencher since 1993 to date. She is a life member of the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) and a fellow of the Nigerian Law School, amongst other illustrious accomplishments.
When she was appointed to the Court of Appeal as first female, not a few judiciary watchers predicted that she was going to be the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. However, Hassan Liman (SAN) said that in repositioning the judiciary, Justice Aloma must ensure that the right people are appointed as judges.
“The procedure of appointment as suggested by the NBA, whereby wider consultation with lawyers to get recommendation in appointing judicial officers to higher levels, is important because it is the lawyers who practice in the Courts that know the judges. The NBA should be involved in the appointment of judicial officer,” Liman said.
Part of her challenges when sworn in as the first female Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), according to Sebastine Hon, is the fact that the Supreme Court is over bloated with cases and the number of Justices are few, compared to the appeals that get to the Supreme Court. He suggested that interlocutory appeals should not go to Supreme Court. According to him, if such appeals are passed to the Supreme Court, there should be a law that one justice of the apex court is enough to dispose of interlocutory appeals, so as to reduce the workload of the justices of the apex court.
“We should have regional or State Supreme Courts for the various States as it is in the USA from where we borrowed the presidential system. Under such arrangement, state matters will terminate at the State or regional level and only constitutional matters will get to the Supreme Court. Because this has not been achieved, there is so much pressure on the Supreme Court.
“She should be able to push for a Constitutional amendment through at the National Assembly as CJN to ensure that these things are done. These are institutional changes. Another issue, which should be done immediately is that the Supreme Court Rules are overdue for review. They are out dated; they are not meeting up with the current realities, especially given the background of so many cases going to the Supreme Court. For instance, you still allow somebody 70 days to file a brief after his records have been settled when the Court of Appeal has lower number of days for so many things to be done. There are other lapses here and there, which need to be corrected and updated so that we have better dispensation of justice. If she takes these steps, there will be some improvement in the administration of justice in the country”, Sebastian Hon said.
Meanwhile there remains the issue of corruption in the judiciary as well as the issue of the welfare of judicial workers since the reform of the outgoing CJN Justice Dahiru Musdapher was not conclusive.