His appointment as chair of looters’ trial monitoring committee should shame his conspirators
Those who conspired against Justice Ayodele Salami in the tail end of his career in the judiciary must by now realise that, really, it is not over until it is over. They must have thought it was finished for the distinguished jurist; but God has proved that He is the only one that has such prerogative. Interestingly, the leader of those who played acting God over the Salami matter has himself been swept into oblivion. So, for Justice Salami, weeping may endure for a night, light cometh in the morning.
That light shone brightly for all to see when on September 27, the National Judicial Council (NJC) named the retired Court of Appeal President as the head of a 15-member committee to monitor courts’ handling of corruption cases. The committee, named: The Corruption and Financial Crime Cases Trial Monitoring Committee (COTRIMCO), is also expected to drive the NJC’s” new policy on anti-corruption war. NJC’s Director of Information, Soji Oye, in a statement, said the decision on the committee’s composition was taken at the NJC’s 82nd meeting in Abuja.
Other members of the committee are Chief Judge, Borno State, Justice Kashim Zannah, Chief Judge of Imo State, Justice P.O. Nnadi, Chief Judge Delta State, Justice Marsahal Umukoro, Chief Judge of Oyo State, Justice M. L. Abimbola. Others are the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr. A.B Mahmoud, SAN, former NBA Presidents, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, Mr. Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, Mr. J.B Daudu, SAN and Mr. Augustine Alegeh SAN as well as Dr. Garba Tetengi, SAN, Mrs. R.I Inga, representative of non-governmental organisations, representative from the Federal Ministry of Justice, representative from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, as well as Secretary of the NJC, Mr. Gambo Saleh.
The committee’s primary functions include; “Regular monitoring and evaluation of proceedings at designated courts for financial and economic crimes nationwide; advising the Chief Justice of Nigeria on how to eliminate delay in the trial of alleged corruption cases; giving feedback to the council on progress of cases in the designated courts, conduct background checks on judges selected for the designated courts; and evaluating the performance of the designated courts”.
Justice Salami ordinarily does not require any elaborate introduction, especially among the politically conscious Nigerians who saw how the immediate past ruling party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) serially perverted the course of justice in the land in the better part of the 16 years that its men reigned. But because ours is a country where people forget so soon, it is pertinent to give some introduction so we can better appreciate the cruel and unjust manner in which Justice Salami was unceremoniously made to end an otherwise glorious career.
His travails started when the Court of Appeal which he presided over upturned the 2007 gubernatorial election results of Ekiti and Osun states that had been awarded the PDP candidates, Segun Oni and Olagunsoye Oyinlola, respectively and gave judgments in favour of the then Action Congress of Nigeria’s (ACN) candidates, Dr Kayode Fayemi and Rauf Aregbesola, respectively. Justice Salami then became an enemy of the PDP. The truth of the matter was that the PDP never won the elections that brought their candidates to power in the elections as the polls were marred by fraud, massive rigging and violence.
As we know, there are usually two kinds of thieves: the penitent ones who truly regret their actions, and the die-hard criminals that are the children of perdition. For the latter, even if you catch them with their hands in the cookie jar, they still continue to deny that they are thieves. The PDP harboured a lot of such characters, whether male or female. Even from what we have been hearing and seeing so far, the few females among them appear greedier than their male counterparts. They stole more than is enough for their third and fourth generations who have no need to use their hands to work or their heads to think over what to eat, drink and make merry.
But nothing I have said should be taken to mean that there are no thieves in the other political parties, including the All Progressives Congress (APC). But the focus on the PDP for now is quite understandable: it was the ruling party at the centre for the first 16 years of our return to civil rule.
Indeed, one of their own just so acknowledged the corruption among its members; so, those who might want to crucify me for merely restating what a former PDP chieftain said should think twice. Mantu, a former deputy senate president, his mantle in his hand, is asking for the forgiveness of Nigerians over the massive looting that his party big-wigs did. He claims he is born again. I do not know whether he has truly repented of the atrocities that his political party, the one that prided itself as the biggest party in Africa, which also harboured the greatest thieves on the continent, committed. That is for now in the realm of the spiritual.
But, whatever it is, the man has further lent credence to what we already know: that PDP not only harbours a nest of killers as Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka once said, it is also a den of robbers. Or, what do you call a party that people joined as mere church rats and left as rich as dwarves? Someone some years ago said a similar thing when he told us that some people entered Government House today in bathroom slippers and left the next day in golden shoes. So, the question is: what product was the PDP selling or producing that could have brought its leaders such meteoric riches? The Yoruba race saw this aspect of the then ruling party in those elections then and was too sophisticated to be hoodwinked again after the first mistake, to vote in such a party in the politically articulate geo-political region.
The last straw for Justice Salami however was a pending judgment in the Sokoto governorship election result that he alleged the then CJN, Justice Aloy Katsina-Alu told him to withhold for political reasons. He said Justice Dahiru Musdapher was a witness to the matter. Anyway, while neither denying nor accepting that he was, all Justice Musdapher said was that he could not remember the occasion. This was what the Goodluck Jonathan administration eventually used to nail Justice Salami. The government said he lied under oath and one thing led to the other until Justice Salami was suspended. It is a long story, a recap of which could eat up the entire column space.
Suffice it to say that even when the NJC said that he be recalled from suspension, the government refused to toe this path, having made up its mind to teach him and other judges who would not dance to the tune of the government a bitter lesson. Justice Salami eventually retired.
His appointment as chair of the looters’ trial monitoring committee vindicates Justice Salami and vitiates the position of his enemies who made him exit the judiciary almost unceremoniously, after years of glorious service to the cause of justice and the nation.
The Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen, has recently been taking some decisions that can promote the cause of justice as well as endear him to the vast majority of Nigerians, particularly on the anti-corruption war. One of such was his designation of special courts to handle corruption cases. Knowing full well that this may not work unless there is proper monitoring to ensure that the courts handle the cases expeditiously, without giving room for legal shenanigans (that have so far been exploited by our rich thieves in cahoots with their senior lawyer friends), he set up what some commentators have described appropriately as the committee on looters’ trial. But, like many other Nigerians, I am expecting what would probably be the icing on the cake: shifting of the burden of proof to the accused instead of the prosecution. If you suddenly became stupendously rich after a stint in the public service, you should be able to tell us the source of your wealth so that other Nigerians can learn from your example. That would be a veritable way of banishing the pervasive poverty in the land. We need to get some of these big thieves jailed so that the rest of them on the streets would know that what is good for them is to stop insulting our sensibilities with their ill-gotten wealth.
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has however raised a germane point which Justice Onnoghen should address. The body alleged that some members of the Salami committee are counsel to some of the looters that the committee is mandated to monitor their cases. This is serious and the membership should be reviewed, if so. Otherwise, such counsel would end up constituting a clog in the wheels of the committee’s progress.
The point is that; our judges know themselves. Those who hawk judgments and their senior advocate customers know themselves. Even some ‘eaglet’ lawyers know which judge is corrupt and which is incorruptible. So far, Justice Onnoghen seems set to beat the reforms some of his predecessors had done. But how far deep down into the heart of the matter he is prepared to go will distinguish him from the rest.
