THE National Judicial Council (NJC) could have spared the judiciary the “embarrassment” of having two Supreme Court justices, a high court judge, and others arrested by the Department of State Services (DSS), a legal expert said yesterday.
Eminent professor of international law and jurisprudence, Prof Akin Oyebode, said only the NJC could explain why judges found to have engaged in corruption were not handed over to anti-graft agencies for prosecution.
“You have to ask the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) why he has not taken that path. If they (NJC) had acted promptly, maybe we wouldn’t be where we are. That’s the DSS’ alibi. It’s a claim. I’m not privy to the proceedings of the NJC. I can only go by what I read.
“So, the onus is now on the NJC to exculpate itself. Because they laid the ground; if you ask me, whether inadvertently or complicity for this odious spectacle. It’s not a fine day for Nigeria. It’s an embarrassment,” he said.
Oyebode believes corrupt judges should not only be eased out through dismissal or retirement as has been the practice, but should be prosecuted.
He said: “Judges are not above the law. The revered Lord Denning said: ‘Be you ever so high, yet the law is above you’. So, judges themselves are under the law,” he said.
But, according to him, the manner in which the DSS went about the judges’ arrest was wrong. The Muhammadu Buhari’s administration “shot itself in the foot” and made Nigeria “an object of odium within the international community”.
To him, a corrupt judge should first be removed from the Bench, and then prosecuted to prove the alleged offence beyond reasonable doubt.
”One of my children who is a lawyer and in practice asked me: ‘Daddy, what do you have to say about the fate that has befallen the judiciary?’ I said: ‘I’m nonplussed, but if you want my gut feeling, the Buhari government has shot itself in the foot by this indefensible, reprehensible conduct’.
“How come Ghanians were more circumspect in the way they handled corruption in the judiciary where nearly 30 judges were sent packing? No big noise. How come we always never seem to get it right?”
On his abhorrence for corruption in the judiciary, he said: “Recently, I gave the Dele Kasunmu Lecture in this campus (University of Lagos) entitled ‘The Integrity of Law’. I had alluded to creeping corruption in the judiciary and that noxious fumes of corruption were being smelt in the sacred precincts of the temple of justice.
“I even referred to the statement of the CJN in his address to paralegals not to commit the mortal sin of corruption. I suggested there was the need to sanitise the judiciary. The suspicion of untoward behavior among our judges is nothing new
“Nigeria has moved far away from the attitudes of the judges, like the late JIC Taylor, the late Justice Oyemade of Western Nigeria, the late Kayode Eso, the late Chukwudifu Oputa and those great judges no longer with us. It seems that they carried along to their graves the ethos of the profession.
“A judge that is on the take (trying to profit in a personal and usually financial way from a situation), for me, has committed a cardinal sin in practice. If gold rusts, what would iron do? You can’t talk about the integrity of law without talk of integrity of the practitioners.
“I know that some judges are corrupt. We’re human after all and are subjected to temptation. So, judges that are caught, let them be burnt at the stake or fall at the guillotine. No tears should be shed for any judge who has been caught misbehaving, because they’ve broken all the canons.
”Any judge that is found wanting should be separated from the judiciary because of the corrosive influence of corrupt judges on the rule of law, the judicial system and the confidence of the ordinary masses of the people.
“Judges are like representatives of God on earth. They can even sentence people to death. We gave them such powers because we repose confidence in them. If you look at the architecture of a court, the judges sit at a higher level than the rest of the court. They are elevated both physically and philosophically.
“So, these allegations should be proven before a competent court and proof should be established beyond reasonable doubt that those acts of malfeasance actually occurred,” he said.
On whether the judges can still continue to sit, as they are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
Oyebode said the NJC, chaired by the CJN, cannot be reformed in isolation to make it more effective.
His words: “The whole Constitution we’re operating is a lie. We have a semi-unitary state pretending to be a federal state. We need to upturn and overhaul the constitutional modus operandi. We have to wash with cynical acid the Constitution that we have now.”
