Ifedayo Adams Adedipe, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has 35 years’ post-call experience. In this interview with Senior Correspondent, ONYEWUCHI OJINNAKA, he speaks on the appointment and discipline of judicial officers and SANs, among others.
As the lead defence counsel in the trial of former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, how do you see the judgment of Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia that discharged and acquitted him?
First of all, I must appreciate the courtesy and the industry of the judge that heard the case. Honourable Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia sifted through the evidence, considered the law and came to a conclusion that the prosecution failed to prove its case against my client. It shows that the Nigerian judicial system still works. I am satisfied as a lawyer that the judge got it right. I am equally satisfied that the prosecution was misconceived ab-initio because there was no evidence. It does appear to me that perhaps there is more to the prosecution than meets the eye. But, I do not want to speculate.
How do you go about charging a man for having people paying money into his account? They charged him with money they found in his grown-up children’s accounts. I think that is ridiculous. It smacks of vindictiveness. That is not the way prosecution should go. If anybody runs foul of our law, the individual, irrespective of his status, should face the law; but he should have his day in the court. Eight years is a long time for an individual to be made to go through the judicial system, but at the end of the day, the system has shown that it works. I thank the judge for being painstaking and I must also commend the prosecution because we all want a better society. As an individual legal practitioner, I am satisfied that the system is working. The prosecution is dogged. We have a
judge who is incorruptible and we have a defence that is formidable. So, I thank God and I am happy.
Do you regard the case as one of the challenging cases you have handled?
Well, every case has its own peculiarity. We had a case under a particular law. The first thing you looked at is the requirements of the law and you see whether the evidence on record establishes a case or not. My client was forthright in his interview with me and I was satisfied that he had committed no wrong. So, I was not under undue challenge, there was nothing unusual or challenging about the case. It was just one of the normal cases.
The CJN recently disclosed that between 2009 and 2014, about 64 of the 1,020 judges currently serving in superior courts were disciplined. Is this figure not alarming?
I would not think so, because if you have 30 judges in a state’s High Court and you multiply it by 36, plus Customary Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, that will give you a figure. So, if you talk of 64 from this figure, it is probably less than five per cent. I would not say that is on the high side. But, it does show that the judiciary is involved in house-cleaning. I expect the legal practitioners’ group to toe that line. Let us be very frank; it takes two to tango. So, if a judge is involved in wrongdoing, that wrongdoing must have a counterpart. How many litigants have we charged to court? Have we punished them? How did the litigants get in touch with the judge? Who is the conduit?
We need to go through those processes, so that we do not make it a one-way traffic. One of the most painful cases that I keep referring to is the case of the former Governor of Awka Ibom State who allegedly gave money to tribunal members. Members of the tribunal were found guilty, but the governor spent four years in office. I think the governor should have been removed because when you corrupt the system, you do not deserve to remain in that system.
So, if 64 judges were found, over a certain period, to have abused their position or violated their oath of office, they should be removed. As the saying goes, the judiciary is the last hope of the common man, and when some bigwigs pollute and corrupt it, we are all in trouble. So, if the judiciary has a system in place by which it corrects itself, I welcome it.
What is your view on the appointment of judicial officers into the Bench, especially in recent times?
Appointment of judges is fairly contentious in recent times because you do have lawyers who are unwilling to take up appointment. In some cases, even those willing to take appointment will be sidelined if they do not have political godfathers. So, what you end up with is a situation where you will not likely to get the best. Unlike places like the United Kingdom where it is the Chief Justice that will invite competent legal practitioners to the Bench, in Nigeria people apply and I think it is wrong.
When you apply, you need a godfather, and when they or their relations or church/mosque members have cases, they can always call on you to return that favour. I think we need to look at the way we appoint judges. I want to encourage lawyers in practice not to shy away from taking appointment to the Bench. I also want to plead with the judicial system to take a second look at the way they recruit judges. The NJC should reconsider the philosophy of promotion in appointing judges to the high courts. I do not subscribe to promotion, which is from magistracy to the high court, to Court of Appeal and then to the Supreme Court. My take is that if you want to appoint somebody to the Supreme Court, you should look beyond the Court of Appeal. You could look for a competent, incorruptible legal practitioner of 15 years post-call and above. You may look at professor of law in various fields. You may even select from the state high courts. Make no mistake about it; the Supreme Court is a policy court of the nation. I believe if we want the best for our country, that is the way we should go.
So, appointment to the Bench should go beyond the routine; where governors choose who become judges. We have seen it in few states in recent times. In Rivers State, for instance, ridiculously and painfully, the ex-governor, against all norms, closed the courts for over one year because he does not want a particular individual. He wanted his friend, contrary to the oath of office that he took that he will not allow his personal interests to affect his conduct in office. The Rivers case is a rebuke to the power of a governor to appoint the Chief Judge. We have had some inadequate men occupying the office of a governor in recent times and they cannot look beyond their tenure.
What precisely are you suggesting?
One of the problems we have is the way we practise our federal arrangement. States should have constitutions because a situation where we want the federal government to do everything is not good. Because our judiciary is unitary, people do not seem to understand that the highest court in a state is the High Court. In other jurisdictions where they practise federal system, states have Court of Appeal and Supreme Court. Only few cases go to the federal Supreme Court, and that is on constitutional matters, death penalty cases and interpretation of state constitution. But, in our case, every case goes to the Supreme Court. So, we have it all mixed up. I do believe that certain cases should end up in the state high court. The fear of those who drafted the law is that some of these governors are impossibly difficult. I must go back to Rivers; if you had a Court of Appeal there to which the governor had a hold on, we will all have been in trouble.
So, what is the situation of judiciary in Rivers now?
Well, after the election of Governor Nyesom Ezenwo Wike, a new acting Chief Judge, in line with the constitution, in the person of Honourable Justice Daisy Okocha was appointed. So, the courts have started sittings. You would agree with me that it is not easy getting cases that have been pending since June 10, 2014 back to cause lists. Immediately the then Chief Judge left office, rather than appoint the most senior judge in the state high court, the governor went and changed the law most ridiculously that magistrates should assign cases to the high court judges. The abuse of power that took place with the connivance of the then Attorney-General ought to be investigated. I am embarrassed as a lawyer because I cannot imagine a case in which magistrates and Chief Registrar will assign cases to high court judges. They just messed up the system. Right now, they are trying to settle down, and it will take some time. But everything will fall in place very soon.