Akwa Ibom State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Uwemedimo Nwoko recently spoke to journalists about the state’s position on restructuring, clamour for stopping non-lawyers as police prosecutors, witchcraft stigmatisation and child abuse, among others. ROBERT EGBE was there.
There is a growing clamour to stop policemen who are not lawyers from prosecution of criminal matters in Magistrates’ Courts in accordance with the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA). Where does Akwa Ibom stand on this?
Our criminal justice law is still with the House of Assembly. I believe the present House of Assembly will soon bring it out. I don’t think we would want to adopt that particular position. At least as far it relates to the Magistrates court. Some of them are doing well.
There are also police lawyers. Even if you want to say non-lawyer prosecutors should not be allowed to prosecute, what about police lawyers? The police lawyers should be able to prosecute. They have been called to Bar. They are competent.
So, nothing stops them from prosecuting. Where the cases have certain tendencies or get complicated, the magistrate would automatically refer them to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and at that point the Ministry of Justice steps in and takes over the prosecution.
I don’t really share the view for now. Even if the non-lawyer prosecutors could be barred from prosecuting, the lawyers in the police who are prosecutors should be allowed.
What is Akwa Ibom’s position on the agitation for restructuring of the country?
Restructuring is very key for every sincere person that wishes Nigeria well. Nigeria currently is like a vehicle that has a steering in the boot and so the driver sits in the boot and cannot see the front. I also described it as a vehicle which is overloaded with opaque objects that even the driver well seated in fronts cannot see the load.
It is an overload. The present structure of Nigeria would never allow Nigeria to progress. There is no other country on the face of the earth that operates the kind of legal framework, by way of our constitution and other statutes that we have. It is the only country where the federal taxes all the taxes of the states and put in his pocket and then ask them to and come collect their own.
It is the only country in the world where component units that are identified as states wait from January 1 to 31 and then carry their briefcase to Abuja to collect their allocation – the resources they use to pay salary, pay security, provide water, construct road, provide electric power, built hospitals. The states don’t produce any money; they don’t have any means of feeding themselves.
At the end of the month, the only expectation of a whole a state to meet its needs as a state – all financial needs – is that they would go to Abuja and collect money. There is no other federation in the world that operates in that manner. The federal government now sit down, by virtue of military fiat, appropriates to itself all resources of the component units, including daily taxes and decide on where and what should taxed.
The constitution of Nigeria even distributes funds to local governments that are under the states and created by the states. By the provision of the Constitution of Nigeria, the local governments are supposed to be created by the states because they are components units of the states.
But when you go to Section 162 of the constitution the allocations meant for local government are from there and now the federal government is making a law to ensure that the local government collect their money directly from the federal government, bypassing the states and the federal government is also making laws to criminalise the state government looking into how the local governments spend their monies.
No country runs like that. We are seated and driving on four wheels and the four wheels are facing different direction. That is why we cannot make progress – the four wheels of the same locomotive are designed to face different directions.
Witchcraft stigmatisation and child abuse used to be a serious problem in some states, including Akwa Ibom. How successful has your office been in using the law to curb this menace?
It has been very successful. That is part of our Child Rights Law. The punishment is very strict and those things used to happen about 10 years ago. That law was enacted during the Akpabio administration, and ever since it has been into full implementation.
f you check through now, the social temperature as it relates to accusation of children being witchcrafts and all that, you would notice that it has virtually been exterminated. All those churches and prayer houses that used to indulge in it, the government has virtually shut all of them down, except anyone that we are not aware of.
Any place where that is done, no matter how big the church is we shut it down and prosecute the people that operates in it. If there is anyone existing one and it is brought to our attention we would immediately swung into action. At the moment, it is no more a menace that is prevalent in the state.
In 2018, Akwa Ibom lawmaker Aniekan Uko said flouting of employment laws by foreign firms was responsible for increased kidnapping in the state. Yet, Governor Udom Emmanuel refused to sign into law a bill which sought to compel companies in the state to hire Akwa Ibom indigenes. Why?
Let’s begin by putting the record straight. It is wrong to say that Governor Udom Emmanuel refused to sign the bill into law. There are certain aspects of that bill that needed relevant scrutiny, particularly in trying to relate it with federal laws.
It is my responsibility to advice the governor on bill he should give his assent. Sometimes the House of Assembly would pass a bill and when we look at it we draw attention to specifics and advise that those things should be readdressed and put in a perspective that is enforceable.
There is no point making a law that cannot be enforced or a law that is on head-on collision with existing federal laws, particular when you are talking about foreign companies and their employment quota, which has to do with migration laws, residence permit and local content requirements. It is not that the governor refused to sign the law but we have advised the governor he should look at the bill that was passed by the House of Assembly in relation to federal laws.
Our suggestion was that it needs to be readdressed and re-pass by the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly. Secondly, it not true that violations of employment related laws is responsible for kidnapping in Akwa Ibom. It cannot be. We can say very clearly without any fear of contradiction that Akwa Ibom has about the lowest crime rate in the country. Even the issue of kidnapping is reduced to two percent of our total crime profile.
Any community in Akwa Ibom State that feels aggrieved by employment procedures adopted by the companies operating in the territory the best thing to do is to bring it to the attention of their representatives and the government woukld automatically address it. So, definitely it would not be justified to put the the issue of kidnapping whether in Akwa Ibom or any other place on breaches not complied with employment laws of the country.
What is your take on the view that Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) should appear only in superior courts of record of law? Is it desirable or out of tradition?
It would be very strange. What the appellate courts, which are the Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court, as the final appellate court, do, is merely reviewing the cases as structured, packaged and presented at the trial court, which is the High Court.
So, where a case is done, constructed, engineered, where a foundation of a case is laid that puts the case in proper perspective and help the court of law to do justice to the parties is at the High Court. So, any suggestion that the Senior Advocates of Nigeria or person of that previledged rank should not be part of the foundation of the case, where the justice of the case is done, is preposterous. And it does not even align with common sense. Very few cases should be going to the Supreme Court. A little more can be going to the Court of Appeal.
People should be able to look at their cases, the merits and demerits, the value of the case, and possibly end it at the High Court. And it is therefore very concrete, essential foundation of every case in terms of packaging, presentation, raising of evidence, presentation of witnesses and all that are done at the High Court.
That is where there is need for the senior advocates to put in their experience. And again, it is even to the advantage of the profession that the younger lawyers should have the privilege and opportunity of understudying the senior advocates right from the High Court before they get to the Court of Appeal and to the Supreme Court to learn. It is a tutelage process and if they don’t have the senior advocates at this foundational level at the High Court, how and where would the junior ones learn?
There doesn’t seem to be as many SANs from Akwa Ibom State, compared some other smaller states in Nigeria. Is your office doing anything to encourage lawyers resident in Akwa Ibom get to the exalted rank?
As a senior lawyer, even before becoming Attorney General, and now as Attorney General of the state, I have had course to discuss with senior lawyers and elders of the bar and young lawyers. I have had the opportunity of letting them know we cannot afford to continue to see the SAN as something that is not for us but others.
There are very good and brilliant lawyers in Akwa Ibom but because of the lack of focus on their part before now they could not aspire to the rank. By this time, so many of them would have been senior advocate of Nigeria. So, I have done that.
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Even right now as an Attorney-General I have used my office to enhance practice of a lot of people who look forward to becoming senior advocates of Nigeria. I have given them cases that can take them up – cases that can bring up their record.
That is basically is the much I am doing now, even as I am aspiring, because you never can say who gets it first. It does not matter who gets it first. I am encouraging all competent lawyers, even the junior ones, to do the very best they can to boost their record.
Akwa Ibom was recently recognised as the second best human rights friendly state in Nigeria at the 2019 Human Rights Conference organized by the United States Consulate in Lagos. Your office, in particular, was commended for this. How Akwa Ibom did achieve this feat?
Definitely it was a deserving award. It is a well-earned recognition because even as I am talking I wasn’t even aware of it. I was told there was such a recognition. We intend to follow it up and get it properly on record. It is to the credit of the governor of Akwa Ibom, Udom Emmanuel.
There is absolute respect for the rule of law in Akwa Ibom State and there is also high premium placed on fundamental rights of citizens and every resident of the state. I make bold to say that if you go round the whole of Akwa Ibom State in all the courts – both federal and state courts – you would never find a single case of somebody filing for fundamental rights on ground of government infringement.
I am not talking about police, which is not under the control of the state government. What I am talking about is that the government of Akwa Ibom State has never deliberately or consciously done something that infringes or threatens the fundamental rights of anybody in this state. We can brag about that. Sometimes there are things that happen within the state that the government is not aware.
I had a situation in 2018 where it was brought to my notice as Attorney-General. Somebody filed a fundamental rights application for the release of two persons that were found to have been detained at Ikot Ekpene prison for up to two years without trial. I just read an application for their release and I was alarmed. I called my DPP (Directorate of Public Prosecution) and asked him.
We were not aware. What actually transpired in that case was that a policeman in rural area had a report of stealing of a goat and the policeman in the course of investigating the case charged the persons to court and the suspect got remanded by a magistrate. The case file was never sent to the DPP. After that the police dropped the case file and the prosecutor was transferred.
The woman who allegedly owned the goat was no more interested in the case, so the two persons were abandoned there. The police could not forward the case file to the DPP and the Attorney-General’s office was not aware. The day I read that file, the following day I drove myself and the DPP to Ikot Ekpene prison and we got them released that day.
I did all the paper work and went to the court and got him released. So, we were not aware of the matter. That is why it is necessary that visits to prison are done from time to time. I do not know how unlucky they were because within the period the chief judge had visited the prison up to three, four times – the previous chief judges before the current one had visited and so, I do not know how their case was not brought to the attention of the chief judge, who could have released them.
I have such cases and so many of such interventions. But the point is that wherever there is a threat to the fundamental rights of anybody within Akwa Ibom State government steps in through my office to ensure that such threat is nipped in the bud.
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