18th December, 2013
Professor Wahab Egbewole expresses grave concern about corruption in the judiciary and offers a recipe on how the tide can be stemmed
A professor of Jurisprudence and International Law at the University of Ilorin, Wahab Egbewole, has advocated imprisonment without option of fine for any judicial officer found guilty of corruption if the on-going efforts to sanitise the judiciary and rid the country of corruption would make any meaningful impact. Believing that these people have no business in the judiciary in the first place, Egbewole decried the present approach of just dismissing or retiring judicial officers found to be corrupt, a measure he described as a mere slap on the wrist capable of increasing the impunity in the judiciary since culprits would practically be set free to go and enjoy their loot.
Speaking on 28 November at his inaugural lecture, entitled Judex: Hope for the Hopeful and the Hopeless, Egbewole said stressed that for the fight against corruption to be holistic, the system also has to bring to justice couriers of bribe since such money used to bribe those judges caught did not drop from the sky. The couriers, who Egbewole listed to include seasoned and senior lawyers, judges, retired justices and administrators, are equally guilty and should be given the same treatment as takers.
To him, corruption is antithesis to judicial office which is expected to be integrity-driven and sustained by respectability. Since judges wield enormous power and possess power over life and death, Egbewole noted, they should live above board and be able to sense the danger in corruption with a view to running away from it. “If gold rusts, what would iron do?” queried Egbewole.
From research, the don said, he discovered that the corruption in the judiciary stemmed largely from the mode of appointment to judicial offices in the country, which is largely characterised by nepotism, ethnicity, promotion of mediocrity and who you know and not what you know. To redress the situation, he said, the appointment procedure must be reworked in such a way to give room for transparency and merit. “We have had enough appointment of the sons, daughters, cousins, in-laws, brothers and sisters of judicial officers. It is time to appoint truly deserving people to judicial offices and not the prevalent approach of lobbying and who you know,” he cautioned.
Arising from this, Egbewole said, is the present composition of the Nigeria Judicial Council, NJC, which he noted is making it impossible to get the kind of corrupt-free judiciary of the nation’s dream. This arises from the fact that the way people get to office influences the way they discharge their duties. To this end, Egbewole called for a fundamental surgical operation of the unwieldy body if the dream of exterminating corruption in the judiciary in the country won’t be a mirage. Of the 22 members of the NJC, he noted, the appointment of 20 are directly or indirectly linked to the approval of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, wondering the type of freedom one would expect from a body that is in the firm grip of an individual who holds the fate of the entire judiciary in the country. “Aside pruning down drastically the number, the NJC should be loosened from the grip of the CJN, while, as a federal state, each state should be allowed a level of autonomy and control over its judiciary as it has on the legislative and executive arms,” he posited.
Describing as worrisome the sluggish pace of dispensation of justice in the country, Egbewole noted that some cases take about 15 or 30 years before being concluded judicially despite the constitutional arrangement that a case is expected to be concluded promptly and within a reasonable time. To Egbewole, it would be practically impossible for an institution that grinds so slowly to provide hope for the common man, given that in most cases, the original litigants must have died, especially in land matters.
Egbewole also harped on accusation of forcing suspects by the police to sign extra-judicial statements that form the basis of conviction of many accused persons. Egbewole cited the case of Williams Owodo who was accused of the murder of one Daniel Obi and was put in prison custody for about 18 years only to be discharged and acquitted by the Court of Appeal having been found innocent of the allegation. To reverse this trend, Egbewole urged the trial courts to always hold trial-within-trial to confirm the veracity of such statements. Besides, he said, the trial courts should also deploy new technology to confirm the voluntariness of such statements. Curiouslyhe noted however, instruments capable of advancing the course of justice are not being used in judicial proceedings in the country.
To enhance a corrupt-free judiciary, the don stressed the need for judicial officers to be made to work under a very conducive environment that would not expose them to corruption in any form. To this end, he admonished the three tiers of government, especially state governments, to adequately fund the judiciary in their respective states with a view to making them self-accounting as against the present practice of going cap in hand to government for all their needs.
On the law school, he decried the present mode of training legal practitioners who eventually find their way to the bench, saying it is skewed in favour of being legal practitioners and against judicial officers. “The law school programme should consciously provide for the practice of law as a judge, making it more practical by allowing the students in the law school go to court for the whole year, prepare the processes themselves, argue real life cases, let them make the mistakes and get corrected,” he said.
—Stephen Oni/Ilorin