Chief Ladi Williams needs no introduction. He is not only a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, he is the eldest son of the late legal luminary, Chief FRA Williams, popularly called Timi the Law during his lifetime. In this interview with INNOCENT DURU, he speaks about the challenges facing the judiciary in the country and the mistake he said his father made in his career as a lawyer which he would never repeat, among other issues. Excerpts:
Kindly tell us more about yourself?
I am the eldest son of late Chief FRA Williams. I have my law firm here in Victoria Island where I practise with my daughter and son. I have been in practice for 40 years. This is my 41st year and I have been a member of the inner bar, that is the body of senior advocates for approximately 18 years .
Your father was a lawyer, you are a lawyer and your children are lawyers. What is in this profession that has been attracting your whole family into it?
My grandfather was also a lawyer. Well, my grandfather was a lawyer because his own father who was a businessman wanted him to be a lawyer because he found that in business, he needed a good lawyer. The businessman’s best friend is his lawyer. These days, I dare say that lawyers are best friends of civil servants and politicians. To that extent, he must have felt that the best thing to do was to ensure that his own son read Law so that he could assist in furthering his business. He was a shipping magnate in those days. So he went to read Law in London that time and I think he was called in 1927. My father naturally took after him. I believe that he could have done Engineering or Mathematics but somehow, he chose to follow his father’s footstep.
In my own case, I started following my father to court when I was age 12. I recall one occasion in Ibadan soon after he was made a Queen’s counsel, I put on his gown, which was very long as you can imagine and his wig, which was too big for my head and I was admiring myself in the mirror in his dressing room only for my mother and my father to come in suddenly into the dressing room and they saw me. Immediately they saw me, I got scared and I quickly removed the wig and the gown but my father said I should put it back on, that he had blessed that day and that by the special grace of God, that I would wear the wig and the silk gown on my own merit and I have done just that.
When I was called to the inner bar, it was indeed the first time ever in the legal history of Nigeria that father and son who are SANs would appear in court together. Thereafter, my two children started following me to court as teenagers whenever they came home on vacation. They are qualified now. My eldest child is about 15 or 16 years at the bar and my son is about 12 years at the bar. It has been a family tradition. Already, when I look at my grandson, I used to tell his father, who is a lawyer, that the shape of his head looks like that somebody who is going to study Law (general laughter). On one occasion when I came back from the court, I put my wig on his head and he was looking at the mirror and I said to myself that history is repeating itself.
Your father was a very successful lawyer no doubt. What are the virtues you took from him and what were the mistakes he made that you would not want to venture into in life?
I think the major mistake he made was to have gone into politics. I think that you should either be 100 percent a politician or 100 percent a lawyer. I don’t see myself going into politics. That was the major mistake that he made that I don’t intend to make. He was a very intelligent man; an intellectual. Anytime he prepared a document, let it be 30 or 50 years, he would remember. He didn’t forget faces, events or documents that he prepared himself. He remembered everything to the letter and to the very end, he was never senile. A few months before he died, myself and Mr Eddy Chukwurah had to go to England to seek his opinion on a matter that was to come up in the Supreme Court, which I had to take because he was too ill to take it. Then on another occasion, the former Attorney-General of Lagos State, my learned colleague in the inner bar, Prof. Osibajo, also had cause to fly to London to see him on this local government matter between former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, over certain areas which were designated as local government areas and the withholding of funds. Again, this was a few months before he died. It all happened while he was receiving treatment in London and was able to attend to Prof. Osibajo adequately.
The matter that Mr Chukwurah and myself went for was a case involving Ikeja Hotels and Mask, a shipping company. These were complicated matters and as at that time, he was 84, going to 85 years and he had the mental agility of a 30 year- old in terms of grasping problems and giving us illuminating suggestions and ideas. He looked at the briefs we wrote and gave us his suggestions, which we incorporated. Those were the qualities that he had but those qualities were ill-suited to being a politician. These were the qualities that were needed to be a good lawyer. That was why even when he was in the Western Nigeria as the first ever attorney-general, he never used to contest elections. He entered the Lower House through the House of Chiefs. The chieftaincy title that he had at that time, the Apesin of Itoko in Abeokuta, was what enabled him to enter into the Western Regional House of Assembly. He did not get in by election and that was why when there was campaign in those days, the famous Ibadan leader, the late irrepressible Adegoke Adelabu, used to refer to him as a ‘minister without constituency’. He was in the house but he did not contest elections. To that extent, I would say he ought not to have gone into politics at all.
If you look at it now, many lawyers are venturing into politics; so why would you say it was a mistake for him to have ventured into it?
That is not quite correct. Lawyers appear for politicians but it does not mean that they belong to their parties. For example, I have appeared for ACN before when I appeared for Mrs Abike Dabiri-Arewa. I have appeared for PDP before when I appeared for Engineer Segun Oni. I have appeared for ANPP in Sokoto State when I appeared for Alhaji Mohammed Ishau. These are major political parties. Once you mention ACN, PDP, ANPP, CPC is relatively new, so you have more or less covered the ground. That does not make me a member of those three parties. I am in a position to take brief from any one of them without being a part of them. Senior lawyers today are not really politicians. They are states men and they will take cases from anybody. Take my very good brother, Wole Olanipekun (SAN), he appeared for President Goodluck Jonathan in one of the elections. Prior to that, he appeared for the late President Umaru Yar’Adua in an election petition; yet he appeared for my good brother, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, when he was arraigned by the Code of Conduct Bureau. If there is any opposition that PDP has today, it is the ACN. I know that he is not a card-carrying member of the PDP or the ACN, he takes cases as they come irrespective of the parties they belong to and gives his best to all of them. I do the same too.
You have a very tight schedule as a legal practitioner. How do you relax ?
I start work by 7.30 am and I close at 7.30pm from Monday to Friday. On weekends, I take it a bit more leisurely by starting at 9am and by noon, I close. Thereafter, I watch the English Premier League matches, if there is any. I watch the African plays and read a few non- legal books. If I am feeling a bit energetic, I call my grandchildren to come and trouble me a bit. When their trouble becomes too much, I would call their parents to come and take them away (general laughter). That is how I spend my weekend. Then, I like taking trips abroad on vacation twice a year. I support Manchester United because I like their pattern of play. The coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, will take a player from another club and mould him in such a way that he would fit into the pattern of play of the club. Take someone like Van Persie, who he picked from Arsenal and brought him to Manchester United and he is now doing far better with Man U than when he was at Arsenal. I don’t know what would happen to Man U when Ferguson leaves.
Why is it that the law is hard on poor criminals and lenient with rich criminals? Does it have to do with the age of the Penal Code?
The law has to be reviewed but it does not have to do with common man or no common man. At the time the Penal Code which is the law that is operational in the North was promulgated I doubt if anybody used to talk about billions in our judicial lexicon. When you can hardly count N100, 000, you are now talking of billions. You don’t talk about such kind of money before independence or shortly after independence. It came into being with the discovery of oil which is now turning to be a curse on us. Nobody can ever have the foresight at the time that the law was promulgated, that there would be people that would be in position to manipulate the system and take this amount of money. The man confessed and it is not a matter of ‘you are innocent until proven guilty’. There has to be special legislation and the EFCC statute is a good starting point. This is not really money laundering per se. I don’t think he was charged for money laundering. I think he was charged for conversion of police pension fund to his own use. That was what the EFCC charged him with. The judge I believe can amend the charge in some cases and say that no, conversion carries a relatively more lenient punishment, I will regard the charge as a theft because you have taken money which does not belong to you with the intention of permanently depriving another of it. That will now bring the charges to the arena of theft which is very serious. That one can carry seven years, I believe. The judge can do that but he did not do that. If he did not do so, you can’t blame him because he had the discretion not to do so. That is why I have said ‘go to the Court of Appeal and make your complaint there’. There is no point lambasting the judge in the media.
Let us look at the issue of plea bargaining, which has become a quick way out for people indicted for corruption. Is it in our laws and are we doing it the right way?
Plea bargaining is really an invention of the United States and Britain, to some extent. It is meant to shorten trial, save public funds and make the administration of justice less cumbersome when you don’t go the whole hog of the trial. If you take the cases of Mrs Ibru, she simply gave up fighting and threw in the towel. She was given about six months or one year and a lot of properties were taken from her. She was sentenced and regrettably, that made her an ex-convict. If she had fought the case, may she would have had a chance, I don’t know. Compare it with the case of Akingbola who is being tried presently, he may or may not get off. That is why it is said that the law is an ass. If he gets off in the High Court it is left to the EFCC to appeal.
These are two scenarios and you can see how long it has taken for the trial and it is still very much on. By the time it is fought in the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court, even the present administration would have been history. The cost to the public is phenomenal. We don’t have a formal provision for plea bargaining in our criminal procedure. The National Assembly is yet to make a legislation prescribing plea bargaining in our criminal proceedings. Until that is done, I am a little bit uncomfortable that we are actually doing it before it is formalised. Well it is up to the discretion of the prosecutor and the accused person to negotiate. The judge can only go by what presented before him. He is to determine the issue of liability, issues of crime and punishment. He cannot meddle in the negotiation between the accused and the prosecutor.
Many Nigerians obviously have lost confidence in the judiciary. Do you subscribe to the fact that the judiciary has not helped in the fight against corruption?
The bulk of our judicial personnel are doing a very good job in an atmosphere that is not too conducive. So, I will not make a blanket statement condemning all judges. The problem is that the bad ones are giving the good ones a very bad name. The public perception of the judiciary today is very embarrassing to many of us who are legal practitioners. There is no point trying to convince ordinary men and women in the public that the judiciary is not that bad because they have a mind set of justices. These bad eggs have given the majority bad reputation and we now have a new Chief Justice of the Federation who has come into that seat on a very strong perception of a good moral and judicial character. The nation is looking at her. The first three months was honeymoon in the sense that it was nice to see a woman as the head of the judiciary.
I too have a daughter, so I am on the side of women. She now has to show that what a man can do, a woman can do better. Let her go back to the days of Justice Muhammed Uwais when if you misbehave as a judge you are out. If you go beyond your code of conduct, you are out. Since Justice Uwais left office, I can’t remember really of any judge being disciplined by way of removal from office whether by retirement or by expulsion. I don’t recall any of the succeeding Chief Justices doing that. Certainly the last Chief Justice did nothing about disciplining of judges. He did absolutely nothing. The one before him was Justice Katsina-Alu, I don’t recall any judge being disciplined for anything whatsoever. Before then was Justice Kutigi, a perfect gentleman, again I don’t recall any judge being disciplined. Before him was Justice Belgore. He did not stay for too long so presumably you can say that had he stayed longer, maybe he would have followed the foot step of his predecessor. But Justice Uwais did a lot when he was there for the judiciary.
Unfortunately, successive chief justices have not taken step whatsoever to clamp down on the few bad eggs that are destroying the judiciary. We are waiting to see what the Chief Justice Aloma Muktar will do. The public is watching, the entire nation is watching. We (the general public) still hold the belief that when she gets the rhythm of movement, we should be able to see a very serious decision being taken about justices who misbehave. For those that are doing their work well, you don’t hear about them, because they are quiet, they follow the law without fear or favour. Even amongst us lawyers that are in practice, we know when a case goes before justice XYZ, we would say ‘that judge, he is as straight as a ruler. You can’t compromise him or her. If you dare to compromise him or her, she might throw the Bible at you or something like that’. Again we also have some that we would say ‘ah that one make we go settle am o (go and settle him)’ because he is very flexible. Lawyers are only afraid to speak out because they believe that if they do speak out, judges would gang up against them and they would be losing all their cases and nobody would want to brief them because they would say that lawyer is not popular with judges because he has been criticising them. This is why majority of senior lawyers don’t want to talk. That is why it now behooves the leaders of the judiciary to do something.
When you talk about judicial reforms, what changes would you effect if given the opportunity?
That is a very good question because it is a question that has agitated the minds of those of us who are in practice. The first thing I will do is to address the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. I will limit their jurisdiction to constitutional cases, criminal cases that carry death penalties or criminal cases that carry more than five years imprisonment. A matter such as divorce has no business with the Supreme Court. A matter such as probate has no business with the Supreme Court. It should suffice at the Court of Appeal because how many personnel do we have at the Supreme Court? I think the maximum is 15, 16 or 17 and they are taking appeals from all over the country. Today when you file an appeal in the Supreme Court, before it gets to be heard, I may be wrong but I am generally right, it cannot take less than six or seven years. There is a case which we filed, my father handled it, I handled it, thank God I am still alive but my daughter was the one that eventually went to argue it in the Supreme Court. Three generations. Meanwhile, virtually all the parties are dead.
The case was started by a business man, Alhaji Tijani Yagasua, he died in the course of the case. Then Chief TS Benson was a party in the case. He is dead, Chief and Mrs Ayida were parties in the case, Mrs Ayida is no more. Chief Williams died seven years ago. The case is about 15 years old and we are still having court judgment at the Supreme Court as at now. The Supreme Court may in its wisdom send it back for retrial. Which means we would start all over again. Let’s say the case is won, what benefit would have accrued to these claimants who are now dead? There is not need for procedural matters to go to the Supreme Court. Interlocutory appeals should stop at the Court of Appeal. Stay of proceedings should be given sparingly not for the asking. This is based on my experience.
Now to the Court of Appeals, the country for administrative purposes is divided into six zones as you know. Each zone should have its own Court of Appeal so that all the matters in the zone will go to the Court of Appeal in capital of the zone. For example, if Enugu is the capital of the south east, Ibadan capital of the south west, Jos capital of north central (I am just giving you examples), etc, before I go on, it does not mean that no matter would go to the Supreme Court, for example, cases between two states, Federal Government and a state should go the Supreme Court. Another thing I will suggest is that for criminal cases carrying death penalties, we should use the jury system. For other cases, three justices should sit at the court so that the views expressed by members of the public that the judge is scared of the government will not be popular again because you have three of them; when you have three of them may be two of them would not be scared of government and it would carry more weight. At the regional Court of Appeal there should be five justices sitting at a time not three. As to the personnel anybody can sit anywhere in the Court of Appeal because of our constitution that says that there shall be no discrimination against anybody on account of where you come from. You can have a judge from Sokoto, a judge from Calabar, and another from Minna sitting in the regional Court of Appeal in the south eastern state, it doesn’t matter. What you don’t want to do is to man the Court of Appeal with justices from that state or zone alone.
