EXCELLENT!: Redeeming The Nigerian Judiciary - ThisDay Editorial - 28 Sep 2014 Action against corrupt officials is the right response, not occasional lamentation Speaking at a national workshop organised by the National Judicial Institute last week in Abuja, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloma Mariam Mukhtar, decried the pervasive cases of corruption within the judicial arm of government in the country. And she put the blame at the doorsteps of judiciary employees. Said the CJN: “Now more than ever, the public has become more critical of the conduct of judicial staff, perhaps buoyed by public outcry against unwholesome conduct of the judicial staff like leakage of judgments before delivery, demanding bribes before the preparation of records of appeal, acting as go-between for some overzealous litigants and some corrupt judicial officers, ostentatious lifestyles beyond legitimate earnings and host of other activities.” According to Mukhtar the corrupt activities of some judicial staff have helped to undermine the administration of justice in Nigeria. “Some of the corrupt ones amongst you have gone ahead to solicit and collect millions of Naira from unscrupulous litigants on the pretext that they are acting for the judicial officers handling their cases. This is bad and reprehensible. Many judges and magistrates have been violently attacked by hoodlums on the mistaken belief that they did not perform even after money has been given to them through their staff,” she said. While we commend the CJN for her courage in speaking boldly about the problem, we hasten to say that mere lamentation will just not do: it is high time all stakeholders sat down to realistically salvage the judiciary from the doldrums of inefficiency and corruption that have combined to render it ineffectual. But it is important to stress that the allegations by the CJN were specific to judicial personnel such as court bailiffs, court registrars, court clerks, court security and so forth. And there are good justifications for it. Oftentimes we blame judges for leading the corruption in the judiciary forgetting that judicial personnel are sometimes the real culprits since administrative injustice begets legal injustice. The situation is so bad that if you are instituting a new case in court, you must give “something” to the judicial staff for “buying a new file”, failure for which your case file might not move an inch from the table where you dropped it. Woe betide you if you are applying for a certified true copy of a court judgment, ruling or court proceedings, without first “seeing” the court personnel whose duty it is to process the document. However, we are not unmindful of the fact that judiciary workers across the federation are most often owed salaries, sometimes for as long as six months. That, quite naturally, exposes many of them to temptation. These are some of the challenges but that is not to say that the judges themselves are saints. In 1994, a high level inquiry into corruption in the judiciary - chaired by respected former Supreme Court Justice, Kayode Eso, recommended the sacking of 47 judges as part of far-reaching judicial reforms. Only six of them were removed after a review in 2002. Opposition to the Eso Panel report led to the establishment of a review panel chaired by another former Supreme Court Justice, Bolarinwa Babalakin, which substantially affirmed the findings of the Eso Panel. Far from being implemented, their recommendations were disregarded while most of the judicial officers identified as corrupt by these panels served until retirement in careers in which many of them rose through undeserved promotion. To compound the situation, the independence of the judicial branch has been compromised through funding arrangements that make it dependent on the elected branches of government. That perhaps also account for why in recent years, the quality of judicial appointment has suffered. Rather than being based on merit and earned reputation for fairness and honesty, judicial appointments are now allocated as political favours in expectation of protection and quid pro quo. But things cannot continue the way they are. We must do everything we can to put an end to judicial rascality in our country. thisdaylive/articles/redeeming-the-nigerian-judiciary/190062/
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 04:58:53 +0000
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