In his maiden interview with reporters since leaving office last November, the immediate past Chief Judge (CJ) of Cross River State, Justice Michael Edem (rtd), reveals how the state government borrowed and did not return the CJ’s official quarters, the controversy over his successor, what amendments are needed in the constitution, among others. NSA GILL was there.
What has life been since your retirement as Cross River State Chief Judge?
I did not find myself as a fish out of the water in the office which I occupied, so there is not much difference between then and now. I am still my good old self, with due respect to modesty, and I remain myself. Nothing has changed. It is a continuation of life outside office.
What were your major challenges in your time in the Judiciary?
In life, you experience challenges in your day-to-day activities. You encounter challenges, but, thank God, the challenges were not such as to cause me regret. Rather than regrets, I would say if the opportunity comes again, I would look at it in a different angle and pursue it.
Obviously, you may want to hear about challenges in terms of funds and all of that; well, it is everywhere, I will not single it out for particular emphasis.
But, as I said, the end point is that challenges did not weigh me down. Challenges did not cause me to lose my head, but my challenges strengthened and toughened me for the job ahead.
How did you manage the crisis that ensued between you and Governor Ben Ayade on the issue of succession?
As I said challenges are there to be met every day of one’s life. The issue of succession came with its challenges. I would not say the challenges came from me or that it came from the Executive.
But I would say that the Constitution offered the challenges. I resigned my fate to the oath of the office I had taken to uphold the Constitution.
So, I stood firmly and unswervingly by the constitution, and if that is translated to mean challenges or confrontation, it is an interpretation not from me.
But what I know and stood by and will still ever stand by is that our Constitution is the supreme norm, supreme law, which cannot be compromised in any way.
As the Chief Judge and custodian of the law, I don’t know, it could be likened to what we are used to, for instance, a dog biting a man.
But when a man bites a dog, The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and VOA (Voice of America) will write about it.
So, with my position, I could not have afforded not to be on the side of the Constitution and the law. So, whatever I did was not in confrontation with anybody, but in obedience and service to the constitution which my oath of office solemnly enjoined me to obey, to respect, to keep and to preserve. That is what I can say about that.
You were calm despite the Executive’s alleged open interference in your last days in office? What actually happened between you and the governor?
Thank you very much. Two wrongs, they say, do not make a right. If a mad man on the street throws a stone at you, you also bend down to throw a stone at him, then you have drawn the battle line.
A fight will ensue between you and the mad man. The question, how will the mad man or the sane man be identified? Both of them are now embroiled.
That is why if a mad man is challenging you and a way remains open for you to escape, I think it is advisable. Prof. Eyo-Ita, the founder of the West African Peoples’ Institute (WAPI) in published a pamphlet ‘Moral disarmament’says that where ever a way remains open for you to employ peace, don’t resort to violence.
Maybe my silence had been that kind of peace advocated by him. Maybe the entire entity, the entire polity could have been thrown into total confusion.
It would have been fire for fire. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But it so happened that we didn’t get to a stage where I was pushed to the wall. Of course, with human consideration, I would have bounced back, but it never got to that extent.
That is why the governor decided to cave in. He had to cave in because he had no other alternative. He caved in because I was right. Remember, he is a lawyer.
So, the Constitution and the law are not strange to him. Eventually, reason had to prevail and he did what he did and what he could have done before the matter got out of hand and before it got the interpretation of the public domain.
I think in all steadfastness, with due respect to modesty, I have in abundance the courage to say, no when you are to say no, courage to say yes, when you have to say yes. I don’t think I lost any of these opportunities to say yes and to say no. Intimidation would not be it.
Stampeding will not be it. That is the test of stability. I am a human being in his state of maturity. So, that is what really happened, if at all it was a secret, now a public secret.
What about the controversy about the Chief Judge’s official quarters?
On the official quarters of the Chief Judge, I think I have sufficiently explained that. It is nothing more than the governor approaching me that two governors were attending his Green Carnival, which took place some time ago, that the available government lodges were not befitting enough for them.
So, he pleaded with me to allow them to have the accommodation. The place was furnished with state-of-the-art (equipment). So, since he came pleading rather than using executive fiat to snatch it from me; rather he came in a very matured manner, I saw reason. The reason being that it was going to be a temporary measure, that after the carnival programme, they would vacate it.
What happened to your personal staff?
Then about my personal staff in the quarters, he also gave us security reasons the governors should not be around any other person apart from their aides. They were relocated. I also saw reasons, but I would have been worried if the reasons were not strong enough, that was why I caved in and accepted his reasons.
Being a gentleman’s appeal and no set of human beings could have been more gentle than the governor. I did not doubt him. I believed him that he is a man of integrity and a man of his own words.
So, my staff were relocated. He paid for their relocation. Eventually, the event came to an end, so that status-quo would need to be changed. Having waited without hearing of any change, I decided on my own to write to the governor, first that during the legal year, we would like to use the quarters as part of the events.
Nothing happened. Getting towards my retirement, events of that magnitude and splendor, we still needed the quarters. This time, I wrote again making two letters. He never reacted.
The matter became as worrisome to the NBA (Nigerian Bar Association) Calabar as a body, they came to me. They were poised for action. I calmed them down and that was why the Bar, contrary to expectations, did not make any issue out of it.
Now most of them are turning around to blame me that I was the one who calmed them down, and I said, well, in the circumstance I found myself, there was nothing I could do than to honour the governor of the state.
Do you think your successor can gain access to the quarters now?
My successor is ready and, of course, she’ll make an approach. If my successor wants to go in there, since I’m not in control anymore, I’ll have to approach the governor and ask for the keys -because it’s my place to surrender the keys to my successor and not his. He would have to make the keys available to me.
If what happened here (in Cross River) happens in other states, would you advocate the amendment of the Constitution?
If I had seen something wrong in the Constitution as it is, I would have called for its amendment or alteration. You don’t just amend or alter the Constitution for the sake of altering it.
That should be the rationale for altering it. In respect of the issue we are discussing, I do not see anything wrong with the Constitution, because the Constitution is quite clear.
It talks about the next most senior Judge in the state and that does not require any form of interpretation or require consulting a prophet to prophesy what that means.
What advice would you give to the political class concerning undue interference in the Judiciary, not necessarily only in Cross River, but across the country?
If the constitution remains as it is, my advice is that it must be respected, it must be honoured no matter who is involved. It doesn’t matter whether the entire heavens fall.
But if it is altered and, as far as I have not seen the alteration, I would not like to speculate or talk on hypothetical issues.
Would you say the Judiciary in Nigeria enjoys independence?
You know, money answereth everything. Some people say money is the root of all evil. Financial independence of the judiciary, I think, would go a long way towards changing the judiciary’s status.
So, you’re advocating financial autonomy for the judiciary?
Without such independence, the judiciary would always find itself cap in hand going to the Executive to get what it could have got by itself. You know he who pays the piper dictates the tune.
In the process, some issues, which should not have been, would come to be. So, the way out is complete financial independence, but that does not mean that brick walls must be built between the Judiciary and the Executive.
That link, that Siamese relationship, would still remain, but on a more respectable note.
The only autonomy that would go quite a long way in solving the problems of the judiciary will be financial.
The other autonomy (watertight autonomy) – you know – the three arms of governments, are like a sort of tripod: If one leg is not there, the tripod will fall and whatever is put on it will equally fall.
So, there should not be that watertight autonomy.
The autonomy that would make meaning and that will put the Judiciary where it should be placed, is financial.
Like I said, money answereth everything; if you are financially autonomous, you cannot stand the risk of maybe doing what you should have not done, contemplating what you should not have contemplated because you are in financial stress.
I think watertight autonomy is not it, but financial autonomy is it.
What is your take on the Executive being reluctant to obey some court orders. The Federal Government has in recent times allegedly flouted many court orders.
My take on this has been handled by the Chief Justice of the Federation, the Hon. Ibrahim Tanko. He has decried in a low small voice all this disobedience of court orders.
Without courts, a state of anarchy is enthroned, without court orders we would return to Thomas Hobbes’ state of brutishness, nastiness and, of course, brutality.
I do not see anything very difficult in obeying court orders because court orders are not as much as you will be required to bend a palm tree before you could obey it.
The orders are made by the court and the court is a rational being because it has the interest of the corporate existence of the country at heart, the individuals and, of course, the government and so, it does not go out of its way to make an order that would create any useless consequence or chaotic consequence or an impossible order, no.
No court would say until you turn stone into water, that is impossible. It is only the will, the zeal, the desire to obey (that is required). Obeying court orders doesn’t take anything from you, it doesn’t make you not to be what you are.
It is an ingredient that fertilises a democratic setting and we are in a democratic setting, a nascent democracy. We are not in the fascist regime of Adolf Hitler.
Orders are made to regulate, orders are made to remove friction, orders are made to strengthen and smoothen the relationship between the governed and governors.
I think it should be obeyed unless there is a superior reason it should not be obeyed or it is possible to cause chaos. I see no reason why it should not be obeyed to the letter.
Recently, the Department of State Security (DSS) was alleged to have invaded a court in Abuja, in a bid to arrest Sahara Reporters Publisher Omoyele Sowere, who is on trial. What is your reaction to this?
I will make a guided or reserved reaction because the matter is under investigation. The highest authority has said that the issue should be investigated. I would like to reserve my comment.
Throughout your tenure, there was no reported case of corruption among your staff and Judges. What was the magic that you used to achieve this feat?
Well, the magic is this: whenever we had Judges’ conference, we always tried as much as possible to mention the negative involved in any act of corruption. No matter how small or big it may be, corruption is corruption.
Corruption involving N1million is the same thing as a corruption of N1 billion. That we should always try to live above board.
Temptations will be there, but the test of your manhood; the test of your maturity and responsibility; the test of your compliance with the Oath of Office which you took will always stare you in the face as a reminder.
I have been doing that and to the glory of God, it paid off; that is why you made that observation.
What would say about this school of thought that there are two kinds of laws in Nigeria, one for the poor and the other for the rich?
I have not taken it into consideration.
What area do you think should be amended or abolished in the Constitution?
Well, from experience, it is not the Constitution itself that is faulty. Shakespeare says: “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” The implementation and the implementers’ approach and attitude may cause the negative aspect of… the Constitution.
Normally, the Constitution is not a one-man or woman affair. The Constituent Assembly was not populated by anybody picked on the street. They were tried, trusted and committed persons.
We used to call them the wise men. Well, subject to human frailty or favour, they would have come out with something enduring to stand the test of time.
To me, if the Republican Constitution were to be still on, the 1979 constitution would be implemented to the latter. Of course without any addition or subtraction by the mood of the moment, the whims and caprices of those in power; it would still serve effectively.
You must have to take notice of the fact that the law in itself is not stagnant. There is that evolution and as it evolves, something should be done to up the evolutionary needs.
I am not advocating that the Constitution should never be amended once it is enacted, but let it be such that the fault is inherent in the Constitution and not by act or omission. Those implementing the Constitution may have been misinterpreting the constitution. So, that is my own take on the issue of amending or altering the constitution.
As the need arises in the society, the Constitution may require amendments; but too much amendments or alterations will make it lose its aim.
Can you throw more light on bail jumping?
The court exists in the midst of social equilibrium. The court takes into consideration whatever order it gives, in conjunction with the prevailing circumstance, otherwise, the court is very objective.
What is important is going to court the day it is adjourned to; go to the court, you will continue to enjoy your bail. Even if the case lasts for 10 years, the court would not stop the bail order, no. You can only cause the court to revoke the bail, if you refuse to appear in court.
If you are granted bail, you have entered an undertaking to be appearing for your trial from the beginning to the end. But if you fail to appear, then you have broken that undertaking. It is a broken covenant and nobody can break a contract or undertaking and receive a pat on the back.
The consequences are there; in the case of an accused person, the bail will be revoked, no matter the piety behind the appeal to allow the bail to run, and if the person is brought again before the court, once beaten twice shy. The court would have to take into consideration the antecedence.
How did you receive the first bail condition? He breached it? Did he jump it? So, does he now deserve another favour? No, he has eaten his cake and would not have it again. In that case, the court would be quite justified to refuse bail until the trial comes to an end.
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