That is inevitable when reform fails to come from within. If gold rusts, what would iron do?
Barely one year after the President Muhammadu Buhari administration was inaugurated, a friend asked me in the course of a discussion on the anti-corruption war: “how many persons has Buhari jailed?” This was supposed to be a rhetorical question in that it is not the business of Buhari to jail. It is the duty of the police and other prosecutorial agencies to press corruption charges against people suspected to be corrupt while the courts decide their fate. I did not fail to remind him that Buhari had probably learnt his lesson from the criticism of his dictatorial regime when he was head of state in the 1980s; hence his unusual patience on the matter now.
My friend’s question was a cynical dismissal of the anti-corruption war. Yet, it is obvious that Buhari is not necessarily the problem with the anti-corruption war. Our courts are. So, the question should have been directed at the judiciary, instead of Buhari. We all know, sincerely speaking, that we cannot make any headway with the way many of our courts have been handling corruption cases. Of major concern are cases involving politically exposed persons with very deep pockets.
We have been inundated with stories of judges hawking injunctions and judgments; depending on how fat the pay is. One former governor has been on perpetual injunction from arrest for years! Justice Kayode Esho (of blessed memory) had warned, before his death in 2012, that we had ‘billionaire judges’ in the country, especially among those who delivered judgments and rulings in election matters. Only God knows how many people have suffered from the resulting miscarriage of justice. Yet, no country can develop where there is so much unpredictability in the justice system.
It is against this backdrop that we must see the October 7 midnight arrest of seven judges in the country suspected of corrupt practices. Those arrested included two justices of the Supreme Court, Sylvester Ngwuta and John Okoro, as well as five other judges, including the suspended Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeal, Ilorin Division, Justice Mohammed Ladan Tsamiya; Justice Kabiru Auta of Kano State High Court, Justice Muazu Pindinga, I.A. Umezulike and Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja. The eighth judge who could have been arrested was the Rivers State Federal High Court judge, Justice Mohammed Liman, who allegedly secured the help of the state governor, Nyesom Wike, to prevent his arrest. Barely 24 hours after threatening to arrest more judges, the DSS picked up Justices Bashir Sukola and Ladan Manir of the Kaduna State High Court on Wednesday.
Naturally, some concerns have been raised, especially about the way and manner the security operatives carried out the arrests. Some have said the DSS has no right to invade the judges’ residence at midnight; some say they do not have the right to break into their homes; some ask: why the weekend arrests? Some even gave the impression that judges cannot be arrested simply because they are judges. In all of these, what is important is whether the arresting authority has a search warrant. The answer in this case would appear to be in the affirmative. The question of whether or not the security operatives have a right to break into the home of a judge is neither here nor there. If there is resistance by the person to be arrested, do the security agents merely fold their arms? At any rate, what happens if they leave the suspect only for him/her to have ample time to destroy or move evidence from his apartment?
It is astonishing that despite the ‘shock finds’ allegedly found in the homes of three of the judges (about N93.5million, $530,087 as well as 25,970 pound sterling and 5,680 Euros) by the DSS, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) could not even wait to think through the issue before condemning the arrests. Why would a judge have so much money, and at home? It is heartwarming though that many Nigerians have condemned the association. An NBA that has remained comatose all these years when the irregularities have been going on in the judiciary suddenly rose from the ‘dead’ to condemn the arrests even as it also claims it believes in the anti-corruption war. For God’s sake, where was the association when Governor Ayodele Fayose tore a judge’s dress in court? There are a thousand and one things that could have made the NBA to declare emergency. The DSS’ arrest of judges is certainly not one of them. In many other countries, judges had been arrested and tried over all sorts of crimes. Nigerian judges cannot be different. They certainly cannot be above the law.
And the National Judicial Council (NJC) saddled with the responsibility of self-cleansing in the judiciary? The council has become more of a cult, dispensing justice sometimes in a manner that reminds one of the famous “Kootu Asipa”, (a popular Yoruba drama series) some decades back! The point is; there is no country where there are no thieves. The beauty in many other places is that when caught, the thieves, no matter how highly placed, know they will get their comeuppance in court. But not here. Our big thieves know they can get away with the most heinous crimes once the price is right. To worsen matters, some of the colluding judges rub it on our faces when they pronounce such thieves innocent or discharge them on technical grounds; or when they give them a slap on the wrist and ask them to go but sin no more.
Some of them and their senior lawyer ‘clients’ have taken us for fools for far too long by behaving as if the law itself is written in Greek or Latin, that people who are not lawyers cannot understand. Law is predictable; many of our judges have made it not to be by the contradictory rulings and injunctions that they give, even on similar matters. Many of the lawyers, including very senior ones, no longer bother about the law. Why do you need to bother about the law if you can arrange money for judges handling your case? I hear that is what some of them specialise in now.
The lawyers involved in these shady deals know themselves and one should not be surprised if they are the ones in the vanguard of the criticism of the DSS’ action. The arrest of the judges is the beginning of the anti-corruption war. And the reason is simple: judges are the people who dispense justice; they hold the power to convict and to discharge and acquit. So, they must be upright to give teeth to the anti-corruption war.
One has taken judicial notice of the NJC’s reaction to the unfortunate incident. But we do not have to be experts in law to know that all is not well with our judiciary. What has happened to the Halliburton scandal trial? To date, our big people involved are still walking the streets free whereas their foreign counterparts have since been convicted outside of the country. We are also familiar with the case of former Governor of Delta State, James Ibori, who is about completing his jail term in the United Kingdom for corruption whereas our own court wasted so much time on his case determining whether James Ibori and James Onanefe Ibori are one and the same person. One can continue to cite many other examples.
The unfortunate thing is that such technicalities are deployed to the advantage of the rich. In this same country, former Governor of Edo State, Lucky Igbinedion, was sentenced to six months in jail with the option of a N3.5 million fine by a Federal High Court in Enugu for plundering the state treasury. He was also directed to return N500 million and three of the houses he acquired with stolen public funds to the Federal Government. Why is it that it is only our rich who have the benefit of such refund? Why can’t our courts also allow people forced to steal because of the activities of our big thieves, to refund goats or cows that they stole in order to eat?
The sad aspect of it all is that where the rich are involved, you find so many senior lawyers scrambling to be part of the defence team. With due respect to Chief Justice Mahmud Mohammed, our judiciary stinks. There is no doubt about that. Nigerians’ reactions to the judges’ arrest are enough to let those deceiving them with Rule of Law know that they (Nigerians) are wiser. They are tired of people who pool wool over their faces in the name of Rule of Law (which applies only to the rich), and who would backslap themselves in the comfort of their cocktail circuits after using undue technicalities and subterfuge to ‘win’ cases and thereafter clink glasses to our collective foolishness and peril.
All we are saying is: reform the judiciary. If there are no more lawyers to find the law for the poor, as the Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi used to do, at least they should not shortchange them for the rich. The way the judiciary is today can only lead to anarchy. It is no longer the last hope of the common man. Indeed, it is the haven for the corrupt rich. It is not enough for the NJC to say it is responsible for disciplining judicial officers, it should be seen to be doing that without fear or favour. The DSS’ arrest of judges cannot in any way cow a sane judiciary.
Judges, like Caesar’s wife, must be above board.
