How has the judiciary fared under President Muhammadu Buhari in the past one year? Lawyers give their verdict and identify areas urgently in need of reforms. Eric Ikhilae writes.
DURING his inauguration on May 29, 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to kill corruption so that it does not kill Nigeria. He said the anti-corruption fight could only succeed with an effective judiciary. How has the judiciary fared in the last one year?
Buhari, on at least three occasions, stressed the need for judicial reforms. In his inaugural speech, he said: “The judicial system needs reform to cleanse itself from its immediate past. The country now expects the judiciary to act with dispatch on all cases, especially on corruption, serious financial crimes or abuse of office.”
At the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Annual General Conference in August, last year, Buhari said: “The law, lawmakers, lawyers, law courts and the law enforcement agencies, all have pivotal responsibilities to discharge, if the change we seek is ever to materialise.
“Corruption and impunity become widespread when disrespect for law is allowed to thrive in society. Disrespect for law also thrives when people get away with all sorts of shady deals and the court system is somehow unable to check them… As may be expected, this has left many legal practitioners and law courts tainted in an ugly way.”
At the 2015 Annual Judges Conference, he said corruption and delay in the administration of criminal justice were hindering government’s efforts at recovering looted funds and punishing the corrupt.
Represented by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (SAN), President Buhari insisted that it would be difficult for the government to tackle corruption and encourage investments if the judiciary’s challenges were not addressed.
Last February, President Buhari, at a town hall meeting with Nigerians in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, described the Judiciary as his main headache in the fight against corruption. He noted that corruption is so pervasive that it requires the judiciary’s support to fight it.
After one year in office, many are wondering what the President’s relationship with the judiciary looks like.
They also query the proposed reforms of the judiciary, asking whether the government carried the instititution’s leadership along on the realisation of those reforms.
To observers, the resolution of these issues provides a platform for a fair assessment of the state of the Judiciary in the last one year. This is because the challenges identified by the President still exist.
Delay in adjudication of cases
One year into this administration, the problem of delay in the process of justice administration still persists. It is on record that none of the corruption related cases commenced under this administration has been concluded. Most of them are, at best, at trial stage over six months after they commenced.
The delay in court process has been variously attributed to a lot of causes, one of which include the refusal by courts to adopt electronic means of recording proceedings, which informs why judges still waste precious judicial time recording proceedings in long hand.
There is also the reluctance to reform the trial procedure to allow for the timing of proceedings as is the case in election petition proceedings. This is why, in spite of the application of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015, which seeks to ensure speedy administration of criminal justice, many defence lawyers still employ ridiculous tactics to delay proceedings.
Having realised that the mood is now against granting of interlocutory stay of oproceedings in criminal trials, defence lawyers, rather than allow the process run unhindered, have now devised various means of delaying proceedings.
In some instances, as is being witnessed in the trial of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), defence lawyers now resort to cross-examining prosecution witnesses to no end. In Saraki’s case, over three months after trial began, parties are stuck with the first prosecution witness, Michael Wetkas, who has been under cross-examination for over 10 days.
Despite complaints by the prosecution that the defence was being unduly indulged, the tribunal declared that it was helpless as it lacked the powers to restrain a party or control the way it conducts its case.
There is also the problem of overcrowded court dockets, which makes it impossible for a judge to devote certain numbers of days or weeks to dealing with a particular case to allow swift justice delivery.
Judicial corruption
It cannot be safely said that corruption in the judiciary has been effectively eliminated within the last one year. It is believed among Nigerians that money still dictates where the pendulum of justice swings.
Although there have been identified cases of abuses, and for which culprits have been penalised, the argument is that it is not enough for judicial officers found wanting to simply be compulsorily retired by the National Judicial Council (NJC).
There is the contention that as it is with other members of the society, who are subjected to criminal prosecution for abuse of office or breach of trust, judicial officers, who are found wanting should also be subjected to trial in the regular courts.
Improper coordination of
prosecution
There is the general belief that after a year in office, the government that made ant- corruption and prosecution of corrupt individuals its major policy objective is yet to put in place a robust and well peopled prosecutorial team to drive the government’s anti-corruption efforts at the court.
Today, most of the corruption cases in court are handled by a few lawyers, which to an extent, contributed to the delay being experienced in the handling of most of this cases.
Judicial observers are of opinion that a situation where a single lawyer is saddled with the prosecution of over five cases in various courts at the same time does not portray the government as being ready to ensure swift and proper prosecution.
There also is the fear about the activities of the Attorney-General (AGF) of the Federation and Minister of Justice. This is because there seems not to be a proper coordination of the activities of the various anti-corruption agencies and the office of the AGF.
Many argued that the seeming lack of coordination was publicly exhibited when the AGF recently disagreed with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on the floor of the National Assembly, on the desirability or otherwise, to amend the Money Laundering Act.
They contended that where there was coordination, the AGF and the EFCC, an agency under the control of the Justice Minister, ought to have harmonised their positions on the issue before appearing at the National Assembly.
Inadequate funding
For the better part of the last two years of the immediate past administration, the issue of adequate funding for the Judiciary dominated discussions. This was to the extent that court workers, under the aegis of Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) went to court to compel the Executive to obey the constitutional provision of fiscal autonomy for the Judiciary.
Although judgment was given in their favour, the issue was unresolved until the change of government in May 29, last year.
One year after, there seemed not to have been an improvement in the financial status of the Judiciary. As at today, judicial officers and workers in both federal and state courts are owed salaries.
For a government that believes in the cardinal role of the Judiciary in the realisation of its objectives, it was expected that it should see to adequate funding of the sector as a major task. But unfortunately, the government still went ahead to reduce the budget of the Judiciary for this year from N73billion to 70billion.
Ray of hope
For the Judiciary, the last one year was not entirely a bad news. There were cases that suggest that there were rooms for improvement.
Since the commencement of this administration, the Judiciary, under the leadership of the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Mahmud Mohammed, has continually employed internal mechanism to rid itself of bad eggs as a way of shaving off the general impression that, for the Nigerian Judiciary, justice is amenable to external influence.
In the last one year the judiciary, acting through the National Judicial Council (NJC) has penalised many judicial officers for abuse of office. Some of such judges include Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia (of the Federal High Court), Justice Oluyinka Gbajabiamila (of the High Court of Lagos State), Justice Idris M. J. Evuti (of the High Court of Niger State), Justice Tanko Yusuf Usman (of the High Court of Niger State) and Justice B. T. Ebuta (of the High Court of Justice, Cross River State).
The NJC, in February, barred Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia from elevation beyond the High Court bench for misconduct. The judge, according to the NJC, attracted the sledge hammer for failing to deliver judgment in a pre-election case until the tenure of the challenged occupant of the office elapsed. The council also placed the judge on its “watch list” for the next four years.
In April, the NJC sacked Justices Gbajabiamila and Evuti. It also sanctioned Justice Tanko Usman.
According to NJC, Justice Gbajabiamila was sacked after it was established that he delivered judgment in a matter before him 22 months after written addresses were adopted by the parties and 35 months after the close of evidence in the suit.
Justices Evuti and Usman were said to have been punished for falsifying their dates of birth. The NJC said it could not suspend Justice Usman because he had earlier voluntarily retired from the Bench. It ordered him to refund all the salaries he received from June last year.
At its meeting of June 1 and 2 this year, the NJC suspended Justice Ebuta from further acting as a judge and recommended his compulsory retirement from office to the Governor of Cross River State, having established allegations of abuse of judicial power, suppression and illegal/forceful takeover of a property in Calabar as contained in the petition against him by Dr. (Mrs) Ekanem Cobham.
Ebuta was said to have made an order based on ex-parte application without sitting in court. He was said to have granted the said ex-parte application to unseal her property, which was sealed on the order of a Magistrate Court when her tenant, Ugochukwu Chijioke failed to pay rent for two years.
In the last one year also, President Buhari has approved the appointment of more judges for federal courts. First was his approval in November last year, of the appointment of 30 new judges for the Federal High Court. The judges were sworn in on December 2, 2015,
He has also assented to a newly passed Bill by the National Assembly, raising the number of judges of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) from 37 to 75.
Lawyers’ assessment
For lawyers, including Dr. Ahmed Ibrahim of the Centre for Judicial Accountability (CJA), Adetokunbo Mumuni of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) and Okey Chukwuka, the assessment of the judiciary is both good and bad.
They applauded the right steps taken so far, but are of the view that there must be an enhanced interface among the three arms of government to ensure that a conducive working environment is created for the Judiciary to flourish.
They said not much has happened in the fight against corruption since the emergence of Buhari, adding that the Federal Government and the EFCC had only succeeded in trying allegedly corrupt Nigerians in the media rather than keeping their eyes on the necessary pieces of evidence to prove the guilt of those accused of crime against the state.
Ibrahim argued that although no drastic changes have been happened in the Judiciary in the last one year, there are signs that things are changing.
“For instance, with the application of the ACJA, many courts are now reluctant to grant stay of proceedings in criminal trials. Before now, criminal cases were always bugged down at preliminary levels.
“It was the practice then that once a charge is filed against your client, you first challenge the competence of the charge to the Supreme Court. After that, you challenge the jurisdiction of the trial court, also up to the Supreme Court, and before you come back, it is either the judge has retired or there is a change in government and you are able to negotiate your way out with those now on board.
“Things are changing now. You saw what the Court of Appeal told Saraki and others, that it was not ready to entertain any application for stay of proceedings. That is the mood of the Judiciary now. We should support the current efforts to reform the Judiciary,” Ibrahim said.
Mumuni, in a recent statement, urged the President to ensure that cases of corruption were well investigated and sufficient evidence gathered before they are charged to court. This, he said, will reduce delays and eliminate failures in securing conviction.
“The president leads the Executive arm of government and every other agency of prosecution are under him. What he should just do is to allow them do their work independently,” Mumuni said.
Chukwuka argued that although it is difficult to say nothing has changed in the last one year, a lot still needs to be done.
“Again, the core issue of lack of proper investigation of cases taken to court for trial has not been addressed. The EFCC, ICPC, the Police and other investigating agencies need to be well tutored on scientific ways of investigating cases. This will make it difficult for people to blame the Judiciary where supposed criminals are acquitted.
“The Executive should ensure proper funding of the Judiciary. By so doing, judges and other judicial staff will not be susceptible to corruption. Cases where judges and court workers are left unpaid for months are dangerous.
“The Judiciary should also realise that time is changing. It should not be reluctant to innovate. Why do judges still write in long hand in this era of computerisation? A lot needs to change. I believe we have all realised that and are willing to change,” Chukwuka said.
