NOW THAT THE CONTROVERSY REGARDING THE RECENT 'CRACKDOWN' ON JUDGES IS OVER: WHAT NEXT?
If you have money, you can really take advantage of government in this country. There is too much noise; too much sentiments and little 'intelligent conversation'. At the end of day, everything is swept under the carpet.
Notwithstanding where each of us stood regarding the last saturday's crackdown on judges, I am sure EVERY Nigerian now worries about how to get the judges convicted, if truly they are gulty.
NOW imagine what people are talking about! Let's even assume that the arrest of the judges meets the standard of law, are we going to get them convicted with all these conversation people are having?
What conversations am I talking about? DSS has been releasing 'evidence' against the judges and here are some of them: a list of 'monies' recovered from judges' bedrooms; the fact that a Rolls Royce was found in a judge's compound, the fact that a judge has 15 cars, the fact that a judge has several properties...etc
You call these ones evidence of corruption? DSS must be joking.
In which part of the law is keeping money at home a crime? Even if you keep N200 billion in your house, that in itself is not corruption. It does not take a brilliant lawyer few days to come up with some explanations for you.
In which section of the law is owing a Rolls Royce a crime? There are a thousand and one legitinate ways to own a Rolls Royce. Could be a birthday gift from your daughter's man. Could be proceeds of business. If DSS finds 1000 Rolls Royce in a person's house, that is not proof of corruption. Even if you own all the houses in Nigeria, that is not a crime. We should stop asking people to come and explain how they got XYZ amount of money! That is the easiest way to lose a corruption case.
If this is what you guys did forJames Ibori, Stella Odua, Joshua Dariye, and others, I am not surprised these guys were not convicted. Little wonder all corruption cases don't end up in conviction. If anyone goes to court with peripheral information such as these, no judge will grant a conviction.
The proceed of corruption can be used to buy a bicycle or nothing; and that does change the fact that it is corruption. The proceeds of corruption may have been spent patapata. Meaning even if DSS found no money in the judge's houses, that does not affect a case of corruption in any significant way.
The real evidence we need are evidence of people who paid brides to the judge; the evidence of a go-between; Audio and video record of the process from negotiations to dropping of the cash to the judge. Fundamentally inciminating evidence from the judge call logs to go-betweens, and several other evidence. So far I am yet to see 5% of the evidence needed to establish corruption.
Let's stop talking about Rolls Royce or foreign currencies. That is not how to prove corruption. These are evidence that gives DSS a reasonable suspicion to effect arrest and carry out investigation; that is not the evidence to prove corruption.
I hope this will help our excitement. We always get too excited about weightless information like this. What has happened to Stella Odua, Fayose, Allynson Madueke and many others with all the figures that were put in the media. Gbenga Daniel nko? How about Dimeji Bankole? Assuming Jonathan spared them, why hasn't Buhari convicted any of them?
When the Federal Government sued Saraki and Ekweremadu for forgery, I remember stating it on this platform on my Wall that the evidence are not sufficient. Now the case has been withdrawn. A person can benefit from forgery without being guilty of it.
Guys we are too learned to allow security agencies to confuse us. Let DSS produce the real evidence.
NOW IS MY POSITION:
Let's ask DSS for the real evidence. Even if they are not producing it to the press, let them demonstrate that they have it.
- A judge travelled to Ghana or Niger to collect bribe!
-Who told them?
-Any video or audio to that effect?
-Whose bribe did the judge go there to collect?
-Any statement by the person who gave him the bribe?
-How must is the bribe collected?
-For what purpose was it collected?
-Is it about a case?
-Who are the parties to the case?
-Have you interviewed them?
By asking these questions instead of getting so excited about the foreign corrency especially and the Rolls Royce, we will help DSS a great deal.
2. Secondly let's advise DSS to go back to NJC. They should present their allegations to NJC. It is better if the affected judges are suspended or removed while they are facing prosecution. Otherwise a Supreme Court judge will leave the dock in the morning and sit to hear a case in the afternoon. That is not too good. That is why it is always better to have a judge face disciplinary action even if it is suspension before their prosecution.
I hope this changes our conversation a little |
The below is what a brilliant lawyer had to say, in-lieu of a random individual that thinks he has all the DSS files on his phone/desktop.Sometimes it is quite impossible to describe the disgust you feel in having to respond to absurd comments on your facebook wall. You see, this evening i posted my unalloyed support for the DSS in raiding houses of Judges and finding what i hear is evidence of corruption. Some people have called me names because of my position, but some of their reasons are downright heartbreaking, because these are people whom you expect to know better.
Pompey Esezobor wondered why i would hold this sort of opinion "in this time and age." But he forgot to tell me what "time and age" we are in for my opinion on this issue to be so inappropriate. Chinedu Anene was courageous enough to call my opinion "scandalous." Now, I readily forgive Chinedu Anene because he is a young lawyer. I can live with his insolent comment, without engaging him, for the simple reason that he is not worth my time. When he grows a bit older in the profession and understands the law better, I guarantee i'll find time to sit with him to remonstrate fine points of law. But not today.
To the many others who commented, please be assured that I respect your views. But here is my answer:
Judges are not immune from arrest or prosecution for corruption. Section 36 of the Constitution categorically states that any person may be arrested "on reasonable suspicion of having committed a criminal offence" Judges were not made an exception. In the wisdom of drafters of the Constitution, only the President, Vice-President, Governors and Deputy-Governors enjoy immunity from prosecution. Judges do have some sort of immunity though. But it is immunity from civil law suits by litigants for anything done in an official capacity by the Judges. But I'm sure nobody can argue that corruption is one of the official acts of a Judge. You may want to see the House of Lords reasoning in Re: Pinochet on how you lose your immunity once your act cannot be construed as an official act.So please, Judges, like everybody else, have no immunity from prosecution for corruption and certainly CAN BE ARRESTED.
I have heard arguments that they should have been referred to the NJC. This is quite a stupid argument to make, considering that the NJC is just an administrative disciplinary organ of the Judiciary and has no prosecutorial powers for crimes. This is far beyond the NJC. Yes, the NJC can recommend the dismissal of the Judges but that certainly does not foreclose their prosecution.Someone even talked about the judiciary being an arm of government and should not be interfered with by the executive. How bland an argument!! I wish they had referred to the law they were relying on to make this argument. Anyways, enforcement of the law will always lie with the executive, and the DSS is a law enforcement agency of the executive arm of government. Unless we are to argue that laws cannot be enforced against Judges, in which case i would just give up.
Someone said it was wrong to have raided the Judges' home at night without warrant. Who said this anyway? I think that person cannot be a lawyer. I'll tell you why. In the US, there is the legal principle called the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine. This doctrine states that evidence obtained illegally cannot be admissible in Court against a suspect. So if you effect an arrest or obtain evidence illegally, no matter how damning that evidence is, it will not be admissible in the US Court and your suspect or accused will walk away a free man. The belief in US is that if the tree is bad, then the fruit, that is the evidence, must necessarily be bad too. Now when this doctrine was argued before the Nigerian courts, guess what the Judges decided? Yes, they decided that no matter how unlawful the process of obtaining evidence was, it would be admissible to convict in Nigeria.
Consequently, no accused person can ever go free because he was arrested in the night instead of the day, or that he house was searched without warrant. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SUCCESSFULLY MAKE THAT ARGUMENT IN NIGERIAN COURTS!! It is how our Judges interpreted the law. The chicken has only come back to roost!! Are we to change the law the Judges upheld as right just because it's back to bite them?
Even then, let us not forget that in 2009, in this same USA, a sitting Governor of the State of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was arrested in a dawn raid by FBI agents, quite like what the DSS did, on corruption charges. He was eventually impeached and convicted of the corruption charges. Well, that was America where issues of corruption are taken very seriously. We think differently in Nigeria.
I remember Ricky Tarfa's issue began like this. As a joke. Over 90 SANs went to put an appearance for Ricky Tarfa "in show of solidarity" on the first day of his arraignment, until the man himself filed an affidavit stating that he actually gave a Judge, before whom he had cases, money for 'burial." The next date of the case, the number of lawyers showing "solidarity" dwindled dramatically. Who would have thought that a SAN would do such things? But it happened. In Nigeria. It is happening everyday in fact.
The sorts of bribery going on in the Judiciary is simply mind-boggling. Oh well, how do you suppose Ibori was set free by Nigerian Courts for the same crimes he was convicted of in UK courts? How do you suppose Peter Odili procured a perpetual injunction to free him from prosecution for corruption? Corruption in the Nigerian judiciary is as filthy as the Augean stables. Perfunctory cleaning will not do. Like Hercules, we will need to divert the flow of rivers through the judiciary to clean its mess.
One thing I, Fidel Albert, will not do, i will never join the NBA in any solidarity strike or protests on this issue. I will never shield anybody accused of corruption. When you are persecuted for no cause, only then will i come to your defense. And my reason is simple. I am that lawyer who has no life outside of my work. I burn my candles on both ends to prepare for cases. Because of this, i don't have many friends or a buoyant social life. It then pains me when i have to lose a case, not because my argument was not correct, but because the Judge was bribed. It pains me even more when the Client thinks it was my fault.
This is why appellate Courts in Nigeria now hand down Judgments that inferior courts refuse to follow. Because they sometimes simply turn the law on its head on very clear and obvious points. Believe it or not, stare decisis is dead in Nigeria. Why are there so many conflicting decisions of the Court of Appeal? Where did inferior courts get the effrontery to dissent and depart from Supreme Court decisions?
I recently read a UK decision where someone had tried to argue that the same issues were already pending in Nigerian courts and so should not be re-litigated in the UK.
It was so sad the way the British Judges smirked at the argument and immediately dismissed it and continued the proceedings in the UK. They did not for once think that pendency of the same issues in a Nigerian court was a serious constraint to their jurisdiction because, according to them, the Nigerian courts would take forever to resolve the issues and there was no assurance of the integrity of the system.So they proceeded with the case in UK anyway! That was a sad indictment. But, it is understandable for a UK Judge to think this way of the Nigerian Judiciary with all sorts of tales of soddy dealings with Judges because no UK Judge has EVER been sacked for corruption in the history of their judiciary. They simply do not have those kind of characters on the English bench deciding people's fate of a daily basis.
Lucky English!
Now let's continue our talk on Nigeria. Do you remember Wamakko's case in the Sokoto Gubernatorial elections? Well, I still do not believe what happened in that case. The Constitution had stated that Governorship petitions ended at the Court of Appeal. The Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over Governorship appeals at the time. But the then Chief Judge, Katsina-Alu, for the first time in the history of Nigeria, arranged to have the case heard as an appeal to the Supreme Court, even without constitutional jurisdiction, simply because, as we later got to learn from Justice Salami's affidavits, he had vested interest in the case.
Now, a few years later, Olujimi SAN went to the Supreme Court on a matter that the Supreme Court did not have jurisdiction and rightfully in my view cited this same Wamakko's case as authority, but the Supreme Court ducked and said the Wamakko case was a one-off decision, or something to that effect. Can you beat that? The Supreme Court was too ashamed to follow its own earlier decision!! Now Katsina-Alu is enjoying retirement, fully paid for by my taxes. But that is just one instance. I can give you 2,000 other examples off the top of my head of similar incidents in recent times.
Previously, not so long ago, Nigerian Judges were the toast on the African continent. Justice Udo Udoma was Chief Judge of Uganda. Akinola Aguda was Chief Judge of Botswana. Justice Charles Onyeama, Justice Teslim Elias, Bola Ajibola, Chile Eboe-Osuji, etc, all sat as Judges of International Court of Justice and other tribunals. Every country wanted a Nigerian Judge on its bench. In fact Elias, because of his brilliance, had one of the longest tenures as a Judge in the history of the ICJ. He served for 15 years.
These were incorruptible men. But today, countries would think twice before touching a Nigerian Judge with a ten-meter pole. Gambia tried it recently, and got its fingers burnt. It appointed Joseph Wowo as President of its Court of Appeal. Not long after, this fellow was caught on tape negotiating a bribe from a litigant, over a bottle of Hennessy. The President of a Country's Court of Appeal. He has since gone into hiding.
I did election petition last year. In fact, we handled 22 petitions in all. I know what we passed through in those cases. I know what went down in those cases. But i'll say no more on this. I'll just leave it at saying: "Let the law take its course". And as the Judges themselves say: "No one is above the law."
The DSS has done nothing wrong for now, in my view!!. And apart from hundreds of petitioners besieging the SSS office today the below is what is happening next as at today Oct. 12. 2016 . . . no one knows tomorrow o. The judges were released on Monday after initial plans to arraigned them stalled for reasons not disclosed by the secret police.
But PREMIUM TIMES gathered from sources at the agency’s headquarters on Wednesday afternoon that the jurists will start facing trial from next week.
The sources said the SSS had dispatched proofs of its allegations against the judges to the National Judicial Council for action.
“We have written the NJC about what has happened and we expect the NJC to take some decisions about the affected judges this week,” one source said. “Once that is done, hopefully by next week or thereabout, we should arraign them in court.”
The NJC is constitutionally charged with the task of investigating and sanctioning erring judges.
The agency hopes that the NJC members, led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Mahmud Mohammed, will recommend sanctions against the judges based on the evidence of graft tendered against them.
How the OP seems to confidently declare it is over, is beyond me. |
