Unity Bar project will improve the justice system –Justice Umaru Abdullahi

How can judges that have impeccable track record be appreciated while they are still serving on the bench? Well, I have being a judicial officer in this country for an aggregate of 40 years. I am not doing anything to be appreciated, I just did my job. If along the line somebody was happy with […]

How can judges that have impeccable track record be appreciated while they are still serving on the bench?
Well, I have being a judicial officer in this country for an aggregate of 40 years. I am not doing anything to be appreciated, I just did my job. If along the line somebody was happy with the way I decided a case and he appreciated me, then well and good. If in the course of my duty I stepped on toes and some people were not happy, I don’t blame them even if they insult me. My concern is I am just doing my job and to the best of my ability and God knows my conscience.
So it is not an issue of being appreciated while doing the job, but at any given time do according to the dictates of your conscience. Do this in accordance with the oath of your office to the best of your knowledge. If every judge will do that, he is a happy person. But if somebody starts bringing external matters and bringing things that in your own conscience you know what you are doing is not right, if you go along that line I believe the person will be unhappy internally. The issue of being appreciated while in service is not an issue that should bother judges at all.
How can we encourage judges on the bench to improve their services?
 Yes this project is one of the innovations of the Citizens For Better Justice Initiative (CBJI – www.cbji.org). The bench and the bar are traditionally supposed to work together through the criminal justice system. But that relationship has not been working smoothly. All the innovation that have going on have not been really adopted. This initiative I think is the first attempt to bring the two together. Because the more you encourage interaction and understanding the more you appreciate each other’s problem and the more we sit down and address it.
How will this initiative work?
The initiative is to bring members of the bar as active participants in the moving of the machine of the justice system and how it is rolling. The members of the bar who are going to participate in this have been given opportunity to make available their own perception and appreciation of how judges work, because this initiative will expect some kind of returns from people who are part of the project. They must have appeared before a judge for two to three years and they must have observed his capability, knowledge of the law, his etiquette and all the good things a judge should have and observe it to know where he is good or weak and how he does it honestly,  transparently without any ill motive.
 This initiative when we get the survey results, we will process it and use the data to come up with strategieson how to improve the workings of the Judiciary.. The survey results will be made available to the Judge and he or she  can use it to assess himself whether he is working well or not. But the whole idea is to ensure that both the bar and the bench have come up together to share more ideas. Not everybody saying I am a member of the bar I have nothing to do with the judge, No you have a lot to do.
The judge will not sit there and say that is your concern, no, no, no, he is also there. You have to make yourself available for the judge to do his work.  When he comes up with things don’t dismiss them because you are a lawyer. There is this area of mutual understanding and trust to smoothen the system. And I think it will go a long way. Because the more members of the bar get involved with this, the better for the judiciary, we just started the Unity Bar Project (UBP) in Abuja as a starting point of the project in Abuja.
Will the project be only in Abuja?
It will eventually be expanded as we expect the NBA national body to be interested and to recommend it to the states body and those actually practicing are those in the state NBA. When it moves it will help the judiciary to sit up helping the bar to sit and when there is this sitting up this will start working properly. I am the Chairman of the BOT and Mister Philip Chukwueke is the president as he brought the idea from the American Bar Association (ABA). He said the lot of complain in the judiciary is not being appreciated. This will help to remove some of the bottleneck in the administration of justice in the country. Good judiciary is a great partner in the development of the country. You cannot have a good judiciary if the judiciary is not functioning. Even business will not come. Because if the investors want their money back how and where do they go. If the system is doggy nobody will invest and the country will suffer economically.
 Our criminal justice system is a shame. I am a member of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Justice (ISFRCJ) and I have been attending their conferences. There was one I attended in Canada and I learnt that some nations are de-criminalizing offences because they have other system to deal with offenders and not jail. In Nigerian everything you do you end up in Kuje Prison or another (Laughter). And you stay there for a number of years and even if you have been convicted, you would stay for that long number of years. That is why I say it is a shame. How has been the new criminal law reform? Have you seen it? And what is the essence of the law if you cannot enforce it?  We need to have a very serious discussion on it. I don’t believe on this cosmetic type of thing.

What really is the Judges Performance Evaluation Report (JPER) and what is it trying to do?
I am a member of the NJC and I am also a member of that committee for assessing judges. Nigerian judiciary has come a long way, but somehow even some of us within are not happy with what is going on, because of the shortcomings of humans. In a human society people put in their best and some half way and some will not put in anything. When you have a combination like this, in this country as at August last year we have a total of 1,020 serving judges at the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, High Court, Federal High Court, FCT, State High Courts,  Sharia Court of Appeal and State Customary Courts of Appeal. Those are the superior courts of records. We now have 1,030 because there were some new appointments to the federal high court and so let us say 1,050 roughly.
Obviously out of this, they cannot all be on the same level of expectations really. There are some good ones – corruption is a difficult thing to prove. I am not saying there aren’t any corrupt judges; there are, but majority of Nigerian judges are honest, good and learned. But the system under which we operate causes a lot of dislocation in the sense that as a judge you are supposed to have staff, court, chambers, library and clerk.
 These are people you cannot do without. Some are efficient, some can even mess you up because the number of cases you have in your court daily is handled by your registrar. He prepares your course list for the day. If they overload you with cases for the day there is no way you can go through all of them. You can only do few and what happens to the others? You have to adjourn them.
 On the day of the adjournment there are other cases and the cases keep on piling and piling till it reaches a level where it will become stagnant. And the performance will be poor because if you have your registrar put 10 cases on your course list and you are able to call only three if you have to hear evidence and make a list along the line you cannot make more than three cases per day. Then you have to reserve judgment and do additional research before you pass judgment.
There are lots of things and only the judge can feel. But people from outside say the judges are not working. Of course there are some lazy ones. These lazy ones are the ones that are causing the problem. Maybe they have everything they require to facilitate their efficient work, but they are not the types that are prepared to do the work.
 Now this is where the problem comes in. So the judiciary itself is getting worried because there are complaints from everywhere – lawyers, litigants, even people who care about what is happening – that things are not moving, judges are not working so that is how the assessment committee came into being. 
The National Judicial Council (NJC) committee felt people have been complaining too much and time has come when something has to be done. They set up that committee.
The arrangement initially was that each judge must write four judgments in three months. The chief judges (CJs) who combine court cases with administrative work are supposed to have two judgments even then because you go out to attend conferences and see how other nations are moving very fast. They no longer write in long hand but have proficient stenographers and so on to take their proceedings and the judge just makes few notes and at the end of the day everything is placed before him. He has a chart and the computerization has been put in place, which makes things happen very fast. In this country there was a good attempt to computerize and bring in this new innovation, but somehow actually we did not catch up.
 Lagos and some few states have adopted the system. Then we felt we have to adjust the number of judgments so we raised it to six judgments in three months. And the chief judges write two or three. Some of them came out complaining that the NJC is pressing them to write more judgments, but what about the quality. A judge complaining that they are being pushed I think means something is wrong with the system.
You don’t put the whole blame on the judge. From an insider, some of these judges, traditionally members of the bar, are supposed to be officers of the court. They should render their services and their expertise to arrive at fair justice.
 Unfortunately we have some problems there. Some of the delays that you see happening are caused by members of the bar. They come to court unprepared, they don’t care about their clients and all they do is to ask for adjournment. If the judge said he will not grant them, the lawyer will start complaining that he is denied the right of fair hearing.
 A lot of things have being brought in by the members of the bar even though there are good ones with conscience that are doing their work properly. But there are large numbers of them who are really abused. Most of the blame sometimes is caused by a counsel who will take five briefs in one day in different courts. And when a court has fixed a date for hearing, instead of him to come he will send somebody, maybe a junior and the junior will say he had not been briefed. And you cannot go on with the case. Or he will write a letter asking for adjournment or that he is sick.
What is your impression on the Judges Performance Evaluation Report (JPER) a system for the promotion or punishment of judges. Do you think that there is need for an independent body of lawyers or the users of court for some judges to be given excellent or lower mark?
Initially, it was just for rating as NJC wrote queries to the judges when they found their performance was consistently low. Why is your own not performing? They came up with a lot of things that they have no courts, libraries, they share court rooms with other judges among others; some of these things are real.
 The only judges that have everything in place are federal judges in Federal High Courts, FCT High Court, Court of Appeal, Supreme Court and some few states. Most states have problems as one judge sits in the morning and another in the afternoon and he comes out already tired.
These are some of the things you have to appreciate, some of them may want to do the work, but the constraints and the challenges – like problem with court staff – and in addition to that they have problem with the lawyers. When NJC issues a judge a query, he answers and when we take it to head of courts that this is what your judge has said, he responds that the government cannot give him any money and he goes cap-in-hand begging for money from the state governor.
That has happened many times, there are so many things in the system that may ground the system if we are not careful. Once you get the first query and then a second query, of course you can be rest assured if they is going to be movement or promotion from a lower court to a higher court and your name is there, you will find it difficult to pass through. NJC is doing something good but some of the judges say they are being pushed too hard, but I don’t think it is too much.

 Do you have any regret as a former president of the Court of Appeal?
I think I have achieved to my satisfaction a lot of things that anybody could hope to achieve in his career. I am a very lucky judge as the longest serving president of the Court of Appeal.

 What do these developed countries do instead of sending offenders to jail?

The monitoring system is a provision of a decent place where they you can sit down with the offender and ask him and understand his problem. If it is drug you take him to a place where he will be treated and taught some trade and by the time he finished treatment he comes out with a trade, you have taken him out from crime. But when you take him to prison by the time he comes out, he becomes a handed criminal.

How do you see the anti-corruption war of President Muhammadu Buhari and the alleged disobedience to court order?

We all know in our hearts that Buhari is doing the right thing. Mind you, he has only touched a small portion, he is still on arms deal and has not touched NNPC, NPA, Railway, CBN, banking and so on and people are already complaining that he is doing this and that. I think we should love this country more and appreciate him and give him the full support he needs. Actually it infuriates me for people to say he is doing this and that. To me what he is doing is perfectly acceptable.