Barrister Johnson Esezobor is a legal practitioner with over 39 years at the Bar. In this interview with AYODELE OLALERE, he blamed the Supreme Court and the Executive for the high level of corruption in the judiciary as well as undermining democratic values in the country.
When court gives orders, government no longer obeys them. Some judges are seen, as being used by government to deliver judgements or rulings in their favour. Where do you put the blame, the judiciary or the executive?
I will say the Supreme Court should be held responsible. At the return of democratic rule in May, 1999, Nigeria had got to a high point of impunity. Yet the emergent democratic government was to be managed by a snooty President of Obasanjo’s extraction.
The challenge was for the Supreme Court to take our law to the level where it would humble everybody, including the president and the judges. But the court itself went on the arrogance when it said in 2007 that it had a right to be wrong, which was not a good statement by a democratic institution like a court in a democratic society. That statement seemed to leave the judges with a licence to do as they like, believing that nothing would happen. The Supreme Court itself led the way by harassing a lawyer, a very senior member of the Bar, out of the court for merely pleading the course of his client and the Bar kept quiet. It is the aftermath of all that we are witnessing today.
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When a man believes so much in his strength and feels he can do and undo, he will soon realise that his strength lies in doing what is right as well as in wisdom rather than flaunting his strength around. Samson in the Bible is a good example of what is happening today.
At the time that the Supreme Court made that statement in 2007, Nigeria was saddled with a President, who did not pretend that he was not going to be bound by the law or even the advice of his ministers or advisers.
He ignored the decision of the apex court that he had no right to seize the Lagos State local government fund. The Supreme Court did not do anything to enforce its judgment. Rather, it took to arrogance of power and harassed a lawyer out of court, asking him to carry his complaint to God. It is this arrogance that made the National Judicial Council, NJC, to say to the State Security Service, SSS, that it is not amenable to an invitation to a judge to answer to allegations of criminal offence of bribery and corruption.
But more importantly were the rumours at that time that some persons were writing judgments for the Supreme Court. Besides, the manner the National Judicial Council got Justice Salami out of the Bench then went un-redressed.
That incident brought the judiciary very low when judges that walk around them with special aura played cheap. When a man does or allows a wrong to be done to another, his own is waiting for him. It is obvious that some judges take the judiciary as a place for trading as justice is now commodity for merchandising. I have had occasion to meet a judge in his chambers to confront him with a wrong thing he did and asked how he would feel if I took him up. The judge apologised and asked that I bring a motion to enable him set aside the order he made. This was in 1994. But unfortunately, the judge is late now.
But in a particular case, a lady judge was reported by the clients to have been compromised by a person close to the other. I assured the clients that the rumour couldn’t be true. But in court, the judge actually veered off, showing that something had happened. The judge called the lawyer I sent to represent me ‘olodo’. The ruling she delivered overshot the processes before her. She was undoubtedly playing to the gallery. I complained to the Head Judge to afford her the opportunity to be corrected by her boss. The Head Judge phoned me and said the judge was wrong to have behaved the way she did and pleaded with me to please withdraw my petition against the judge, which I did.
One lesson is that if the Bar and the Bench had been working with a mutual purpose of ensuring good administration of justice, they could minimise incidences of corruption by correcting themselves. But because many of the judges have become too arrogant to listen to correction, they have forgotten that they were lawyers before becoming judges. The issue of corruption has become something of a public discussion.
So, how do we reform the judiciary?
Judicial reform is not all about fighting corruption. Our attitude must change. Many lawyers take some cases to court not for genuine reason of seeking justice but to use the system to oppress the other party or for circumventing the law, same with politicians. We must evolve a process of punishing such lawyers for improper use of the process to achieve unlawful purpose.
The talk of corruption in judiciary is a failure of both the Bar and the Bench. One cannot blame the other. We are both guilty. For example, why will a case in the Supreme Court spend as long as 10 to 11 years? How does that help investment, local or foreign? How does it help commerce and industry and how does it help development?
There are concerns that this practice in the judiciary cannot be totally curtailed. How do we ensure the judiciary does not become a tool in the hands of executive to fight political opponents?
What will happen is that a new style in engaging in corruption will be designed by the people both in the judiciary and other arms of government. Buhari has only taken individual steps to fight corruption because he has the political will. That is not to say the way the President has addressed it is the best. The best is how to stem it.
However, every judge should talk to himself or herself that they would not want to be involved in corruption. The NJC must also sit up in disciplining judges who fail to do the right thing. For somebody to have become a judge, he would have spent 10 years as a lawyer before becoming a judge. It means that he is qualified. A judge is more like a god.
Judges should be above board. Anything unbefitting should not be attached to judges not because they are human but because they are judges. Their pronouncement can terminate a life so they must ensure they examine themselves.
Having spent 39years at the Bar, what have been your experiences?
It’s been quite interesting watching how we are growing and reacting to developments in our society. It is still debatable whether Nigeria is yet a responsible country. We commonly refer to other climes as civilised countries, implying that there is a difference between us and other climes.
In 1995, (the late) President Nelson Mandela of South Africa described us as ‘irresponsible’ following what the United Kingdom government described as ‘judicial murder’ in the Ogoni saga. All these tell us that Nigeria is not yet civilized like the other climes.
‘In other climes’ was the common language employed by Babatunde Fashola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, to perpetrate illegalities, including neglect of orders of court. He used this to pursue frivolous appeals to frustrate judgments of courts of law. When confronted with certain facts at the Senate screening process, he said he was not signing cheques. Today, he is there as a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Talk of Rotimi Amaechi, the Minister for Transport, he left Rivers State a war zone where his successor (Nyesome) Wike is not conducting himself any better than a thug because according to him, he has lined up several Senior Advocates of Nigeria to fight anybody who looks for his trouble. Can you imagine the work lawyers are now being engaged to do?
Rotimi Amaechi, at a point in time said that Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, as Minister for Finance and coordinating Minister under Jonathan, begged him as governor of Rivers State to stop telling the world that Nigeria was broke. From the level of corruption exposed by the Buhari government so far, will you adjudge Rotimi Amaechi, like Okonjo-Iweala as a patriotic Nigerian, who knew that the country was being massively looted and felt that the best option was to conceal the fact? He is there as a minister. All these tell you how irresponsible we are as a country.
Nigeria is a country of people with great learning, yet with little or no counsel because of the attitude I have highlighted. We deploy our great learning negatively. We pursue mundane things and do things only to satisfy our longing for money even at the expense of the people of this country.
We do things the wrong way. Doing it right is an aberration in Nigeria. The Holy Scripture says from knowledge we get wisdom and understanding. From the problems in this country, you wonder whether this Scripture is true of us. It is certainly true; Nigerians are highly knowledgeable. They have wisdom. They have understanding but they are selfish. They use the knowledge, wisdom and understanding they have acquired to undercut the society for personal benefit.
Irrespective of position or status in society, an average Nigerian does not consider that he is above getting involved in weird things. For example, he does not consider it a fraud on the people who elected him to serve them as a governor to get a law passed to enable him to be paid what they call ‘pension’ and go to the Senate to draw salary. So, while those who served in the approved services and have retired are dying from non-payment of pension, those who are merely using their position to legalise stealing and a corrupt practice are collecting millions of Naira of the peoples’ resources.
I once read in the papers where a Professor said there is nothing criminal in a man who rendered a service in a political capacity for just four or eight years to be drawing pension from state fund. That shows that that Professor will do the same thing if he finds himself as a governor. You can now see why our legislators enact self-serving legislations and engage in padding of budget. You can see the challenges of a selfless regime such as we have today in fighting against corruption.
As a rights activist and anti-corruption crusader, do you think Nigeria will ever be corruption free?
I know what I have gone through since 1990 when I was thrown out of public employment because I insisted on the right thing being done. I have been swimming against the storm. Some judges don’t even want to see my face again. They only try to accommodate me because they cannot throw me away.
I can safely say that we, the people of Nigeria are unpatriotic. Our motto seems to be money, money, money, where is the money? That’s why those who should ordinarily be role models in society feel no shame being docked for criminal wrongdoings and when granted bail, they shamelessly praise the rule of law and blame their travails on political detractors. So, we never think of doing anything right. We can never get it right if we continue like this.
Since 1999, in our individual ways, we fought for democracy and rule of law in Nigeria and the military left. But what I have witnessed since 1999 is not different from autocracy and rule of the thumb. That accounts for the increasing level of impunity and lawlessness in the country.
An incidence of democracy is responsibility and accountability to the people rather than to self. If we were practicing true democracy, Dr. (Bukola) Saraki, the former Senate President, and his then deputy, (Ike) Ekweremadu, would not have been maintaining their positions in the senate at the same time they were being docked in court.
It is only in Nigeria that I find that a country can be governed from the dock. It is only here in Nigeria that I find that a man can win election from the prison where he is being detained for an alleged involvement in murder. When there is a state function, people who are in the dock standing trial for what is a corrupt practice, sits in roll of honour with the President of a modern country like Nigeria.
It is only under an autocratic system within a democracy that can happen because top public office holders are sovereigns in their respective departments. I have had it argued that persons in the dock can remain in office because they are presumed innocent until otherwise found guilty. This is unfortunate. Even from self-respect, integrity and respect for the people, a man should not sit tight until he is convicted and disgraced out, or discharged, before he vacates a seat he has denigrated.
Do you support the current clamour to restructure the country?
Without looking at what is before us and correcting it first, we now feel that the solution to our problems is in restructuring of the country or state police or a true federalism and fiscal federalism. We should stop deceiving ourselves. Let us learn to do it right first before we talk of any other step. We have not proved that we are capable of operating a responsible process under the law. We believe in oppression and injustice, which necessarily obtains from doing things the wrong way. In positions of authority, Nigerians are not fulfilled unless they have used their positions to oppress and to execute injustice.
I also have some concern about the judiciary too. Administration of justice is very slow particularly at the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. There is urgent need to look into this problem.
It is also worrisome that impunity has spread into the judiciary as a result of which there is a remarkable deviation from the norm. Many judges now interpret the laws their own ways. Sound advocacy which would have unraveled this evil and have it checked has waned. The Bench has been conquered and the Bar has sold out. The Bench is now going it unguarded. I think that both the Bar and the Bench need cooperation to engender good administration of justice for common good.
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A situation where manipulation is the order of the day, such that a female judge can be removed from office for having as much as N1billion in the account and some lawyers are buying private jets is against the administration of justice. There is something ominous in a system that has driven government crazy to the point of the President complaining of the judiciary as his headache and constituting a special class of prosecutors to prosecute some class of cases. There is something to worry about in a system that is permissive of manipulations.
When a situation has arisen where lawyers can no longer be trusted any more than as conduits for politicians to launder money, then there is cause for worry. Femi Falana, SAN, has been raising the alarm over this unwholesome development and nothing is being done about it.
One thing I have found also very offensive is the monetisation of justice. Ordinarily, justice is a social service the state owes the citizenry. But today, if you are going to our courts, you have to have your pockets loaded to be able to file processes, courtesy of new rules of courts. There are some other new methods like what they call ‘Fast Track’ etc under which you pay more to access justice in our courts and they say all these are not a corrupt practice?
Ordinarily, the court is not part of the commercial sector of the economy like the NNPC, NEC, NIMASA, NPA etc. To turn the court to a revenue generating outfit is against the principles of democracy. For example, it creates inequality between the citizen and the State contrary to Section 6(b) of the Constitution. This is so because if you have a claim against the state, while you pay through your nose for filing processes, the state does not pay. Let me admonish my colleagues of the Bar and the Bench who have no fear of God and feel that the profession is all about money. Life does not end here, unless we as lawyers and judges who feel that it is all about money, even from bribery and corruption repent, we are all hell bound.
