Professor Chidi Odinkalu is a Nigerian lawyer and human rights activist and senior legal officer with the Africa Programme of the Open Society Justice Initiative based in Abuja, Nigeria. He was Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, NHRC. He attended Nigerian Law School and was called to the bar in 1988. He was admitted to the Bar on November 3, 1988. He obtained his Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a Barrister and Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Nigeria and also the Chairman of the Governing Council of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission, NHRC. Prior to joining the staff of Open Society Justice Initiative, Odinkalu was a lecturer of law at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts; senior legal officer responsible for Africa and Middle East at the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights in London; Human Rights Advisor to the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone, and Brandeis International Fellow at the Centre for Ethics, Justice and Public Life of the Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

He has received wide publicity on diverse subjects of international law, international economic and human rights law, public policy, and political economy affecting African countries. He is always consulted to advise multilateral and bilateral institutions on Africa-related policy.Institutions that consults him include the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, and the World Economic Forum. Odinkalu is credited with leading the Campaign against Impunity (CAI), to press for accountability by former Liberian President, Charles Taylor between the years 2004 to 2006. The campaign yielded result with the transfer of Charles Taylor to the custody of the UN-supported Special Tribunal for Sierra Leone in April 2006. He is also a leader of the FoI Coalition whose efforts were credited with the enactment of Nigeria’s Freedom of Information Act in May 2011. He maintains extensive networks across Africa which he built over several years of working for human rights and social justice on the African Continent. He is associated with several non-governmental and academic institutions both within and outside Africa. Odinkalu is a member of the Human Rights Advisory Council of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs and the boards of the Fund for Global Human Rights and the International Refugee Rights Initiative. A member of the Executive Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) since 2005, he was also the Co-ordinator of NBA’s Practice Section on Public Interest and Development Law (SPIDEL) between the year 2006 and 2010. He is a Trustee of the Human Rights Institute of the NBA (NBA—HRI). In this Interview with The New Diplomat’s Abuja Bureau Chief, Augustine Osayande, he speaks on the recent raid on the houses of some judges, rising cases of abduction and forceful marriage of teenage girls, challenges of safety and security, worsening human right abuses and how it affects foreign investment.

What is your view on the recent raid by DSS on the homes of some judges in the country?


I don’t know whether to call them DSS or SSS. I prefer not to call them DSS, I call them SSS because that is their statutory name. You don’t change the law by a subsidiary instrument. I think it is important to start with acknowledging that we do have a problem in the judicial system that needs to be addressed and it affects everybody, it affects the credibility of delivery of justice.
 I think the way the SSS is going about it is terribly inept. It is criminally lawless and it does not in any way help the process of trying to bring to account people who have been accused of judicial corruption. It is entirely unacceptable, there is no way any respectful person will look at what the SSS has done and suggest it is acceptable. Government does not exist to encourage ‘mob justice’ and the idea that “we have judicial corruption,(therefore) lynch all judges” just doesn’t make sense. When government begins to seek help as an agent and you know that there no justice, that is a crime.



What then is the best method of curbing judicial corruption in the country?

T
here is no best method, you ensure there is accountability. No society should tolerate judicial corruption. It is a terrible thing, it pollutes every stream reason of justice system and so I accept that. But we got to understand that it is something serious and we got to allocate resources and attention span in dealing with it. Dealing with it means ensuring there is accountability, not just retiring people who are accused of judicial corruption but bringing them to justice and submitting them to checks, that means. Now the best SSS has done (even if they have justification for what they did) was to destroy the evidence to make it impossible to bring anybody to account seriously for judicial corruption and what we have now is propaganda and propaganda is not helpful.
If you want to do this, you have to establish a team that is going to act across departments, across agencies, a multi-agency tasks force or task group with high level skills for investigating this kind of white collar crime and with a broad spectrum of possibility of ways in which they can intervene. The kind of conduct I have seen and the way they conducted this does not suggested to me they got the nerves within the SSS to do what is required.



Some believe that without this kind of approach, they will not be able to gather the needed evidence to prosecute the judges.


What is this kind of approach, violent and lawless ineptitude? That is not an approach. That is just violent, lawless ineptitude. That is cheap populism. It is unprofessional and it cannot be encouraged. What Nigerians are calling approach is the law of fire, gasoline, the matches, the lynch mob. That is not justice, it is not an approach, it is lynching. If people want to say lynch all judges by all means then let it be clear and before that we have to also lynch all the politicians. Look at it, they said they collected about N93 million and some other currency from the house of God-knows-how-many but I know they did not count any money and I know that is not verifiable. But let’s assume that is what they did and if I go to the houses of one politician in this Abuja, I will get multiples of that, right, so we would start lynching them (politicians) and there would be lots of bodies to lynch. That is not appropriate, but let agree that is what we want to do and we do it.



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FTC again

That is quite a profile he has amass for himself.

"Government does not exist to encourage 'mob justice' and the idea that we have judicial corruption (therefore) lynch all judges, just doesn't make sense".

I hope Buhari will read this.

Prof proffer solutions

Or keep quiet

Omo c qualifications.....God uplift me more than dis cuz i really envy dis man qualifications....


Nice one frm prof. Buh where d money DSS say dem collect 4 d judges house... ..

sarrki:
Prof proffer solutions

Or keep quiet

He did on third paragraph.

Thinking...he can't b fired by Buhari...and going by the current trend if his tenure expires he sure will not be reappointed...so it seem good to speak out now so he can claim some position in history...but wasn't he the same person that tended to justify the killing if ipob...hmmmm....still thinking

Sharming95:
FTC again

On a Monday morning abi

sarrki:
Prof proffer solutions

Or keep quiet

Did you read it? Mr zombie

tinkinjow:
Thinking...he can't b fired by Buhari...and going by the current trend if his tenure expires he sure will not be reappointed...so it seem good to speak out now so he can claim some position in history...but wasn't he the same person that tended to justify the killing if ipob...hmmmm....still thinking

His tenure is already long expired. He was d former chairman of the Human Rights Commission.

sarrki:
Prof proffer solutions

Or keep quiet

A zombie like you will always have contrary opinion in the face of reason.

Even if he caught Buboo sexually assaulting his wife a zombie will still insists that ''he's exorcising demons" from her.

What is 'descending'? We have long descended.

Or is Prof speaking from Togo?

sarrki:
Prof proffer solutions
Or keep quiet

but you have never said this thrash to ur darling doghari and apc blaming gej everyday..hypocricy is truly a nigerian.
Smh

@op,the truth really hurts to evil ppl.