Former president, Civil Liberty Organisation (CLO), and the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Chief Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), in this interview with journalists in Lagos, speaks on various issues of national interest. BOLA BADMUS brings excerpts: You raised a concern that the government is retrieving money or saving but not spending it and that takes us back to the era when President Muhammadu Buhari was a military Head of State. People are saying this was exactly the situation then. Are we back to the same approach to solving economic problem? Yes, he creates policy but the fact that it is not being followed is a different story. The economic policy, as I said, is monetarism and what I said shows it. Monetarism is how not to spend money and how to use other scientific methods to get things going. So, if President Buhari were to be the laissez-faire type, he would want to spend. But the reason I don’t want to criticise him overtly is that we have to also realise that the outgone government was rather profligate in spending. I would not align myself with the criticism that not spending is necessarily a bad thing; it has to be given a value. I think the challenge is in tying restraint to the wrong notion; restraint is being tied to anti- corruption. So, people are saying “save the money, don’t spend it in the interim,” because the other government had a world-class economist in the person of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who should have seen all these, but did not see them. If you see the sort of corruption stories coming out, it beggars belief. So, if I were Buhari, there will be a tendency to want to do the opposite. I don’t think he should be criticised for slowing spending,. By the way, in spite of alleged hyper corruption in Jonathan’s time, we clipped away at about nine per cent growth rate, which was why the famous Dutch journalist said corruption is a lesser poison than incompetence, which is a matter for another day. But the point is that on the strength of why President Buhari wanted to gather the money in, I think it has to do with what we all wanted, the change from profligacy. That was the conceptual background. Okay now that he has gathered it, the big question is, what next? First, we have fallen into two recessions, so what is the government’s response? Would it now still stay with monetarism or would it reflate? I would like the government to reflate by putting money in the economy in a productive way in areas of public construction, rebuilding the institutions of state, like the civil service, the police and other things. A lot of Nigerians interested in entrepreneurship seem discouraged by the blockages in the Bank of Industry. What do you say about this? In the first place, I think the name Bank of Industry is a misnomer for funding SMEs because Bank of Industry suggests they are funding industries but they are actually funding SMEs. So, you can see the challenge there. We need to rejig our economic dashboard to ensure that the right institution is doing the correct thing. What happens in the UK is quantitative easing. I can give an example of where the government of that country made available £20 billion loan at exceedingly low interest rate. But those who can access the loan are first time buyers, not those who are already with 10 houses like we have in Nigeria. Nigerians have complained on the issue of prolonged cases in courts. What do you think can be done to address the problem? The first thing is to change the model. Every business has a model. The dispute resolution model that the courts are using is outdated. It is about 200 years old, it’s too slow, non-technical and lacks skills. So, just changing the models will make things go quicker. I was on the National Judicial Council (NJC) and I know about this very well. Somehow, the profession is very conservative and that change idea hasn’t gone in yet. In England, a judge controls the court but a judge does not in Nigeria. A lot of times, lawyers play a strong role in the control process because we say that a judge does not enter the field; he doesn’t descend into the arena. At a time, that was correct, but not anymore. So, judges are a bit too cautious not to take care of their cases because they don’t want to be seen as taking sides and that causes a tremendous amount of delay. Secondly, the nature of disputes is so diverse that the regular courts can no longer cope. What this brings as international best practice is to create, like it is done in the US, a system of special administrative tribunal, sector by sector. So, we can now have the financial sector tribunal that can deal with anything in that sector. If you look at many of the cases in court from the banks, 80 per cent are on “I don’t owe you N10, it is N5.” A court can’t deal with that. But a tribunal made up of people of technical experience can do so. We need to create diversified types of courts and you will leave the regular types of cases to continue. So, you can open up new channels. I am not saying that special regular courts should be established. We need to return to that system where we have administrative tribunals because the Federal High Court has taken more powers than it can actually deal with. We have judges that deal with everything and often they cannot have the type of expertise in construction dispute, aviation problems, maritime, financial sector and others. Also, the judicial system is outdated and needs to be updated. What do you say on the current debate about whether the Naira should be devalued or not? I think many people have misunderstood the devaluation debate and that is causing a big problem. Investors will not come in if they feel the Naira is being held down. The president himself has said that he is not going to devalue, but the fact is that we already have devaluation. I think the argument is not devaluation but revaluing the naira. The choice here is between regulation and deregulation. The regulation logic would encourage the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to dictate the exchange value, in this case, it amounts to devaluing it. This is the position favoured by IMF. The contrary view, which I feel is more reasonable, is to deregulate the environment and allow market forces to determine the exchange value. Also tied to this is that the CBN should allow free flow of Forex. CBN should expand the space and allow all Nigerians to participate in this. Currently, the centralised system on this issue excludes critical stakeholders from Dangote to the ‘malam’ on the street. The problem with Forex is that CBN does not have enough, but if we expand the space, we would be surprised that many Nigerians can participate and increase the stock. All that is needed is to create a legal framework to encourage this participation, subject to money laundering rules. Recent statements from President Buhari and the EFCC boss suggest that the judiciary is corrupt. Is the judiciary corrupt in your estimation? The judiciary is not corrupt. The fact that you have some judges that are corrupt doesn’t make the judiciary corrupt. The judiciary is a branch of government but clearly, there are some bad eggs in the process. To say the judiciary is corrupt is a sweeping statement but I won’t vouch for not finding one or two, even among lawyers. For very many years, Nigeria has been talking about looking for others areas to generate revenues from the abundant resources that God has blessed the country with. Don’t you think the current federal structure we run in the country is hampering efforts at diversifying the economy especially for state governments? If the Federal Government were courteous enough to allow the other sovereignties to share power, it will help because I can’t just see how Solomon Arase (Inspector General of Police) can be expected to guarantee the safety of all Nigerians, it makes no sense. Whereas you can remove the police from the Exclusive List and say to the 774 local governments that they have authority over municipal policing and you define what each person can do. In the US, the FBI deals with federal cases, other police like the famous NYPD deals with New York issues. So, that was my earlier point that we have a country where everybody, as it stands today, the only responsible sovereign is President Buhari and his ministers. That’s all because I was at a conference, where Adams Oshiomhole (Edo State governor), was also speaking and I told him he was not correct because he is not a sovereign. I reminded him that Rotimi Amaechi, a former governor of Rivers State, was not even allowed to get into his house by Joseph Mbu, which shows that the Commissioner of Police can actually be the sovereign of a state. If the Commissioner of Police in Lagos wishes to arrest the governor of Lagos State, he can do so, and you can then talk of immunity. But he can do so. Because when former Governor Bola Tinubu wanted to remove, rightly or wrongly the market at Falomo, Lagos, the police put two armoured tanks there. So, a country where sovereignty is only in the Federal Government is problematic. It means that they can’t see everything. I always like to use the example of where I come from. When I was probably 22 or so, I was a second-year Law student or so at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus. That was when they started talking about dualising the Onitsha-Enugu road. Up till today, different governments have been dualising but they have never finished the road because it is from Abuja and nobody cares. I also remember that something called a port was put at the River Niger and has never been used till today. But if the governor of Anambra State has the responsibility, I think it will be a different story. So, that is a very valid point you made. The nature of our federalism creates a lot of inefficiency. But having said that, we can still do a lot better even in the context of the political configuration. Can we have your opinion on this issue that has just come up in fresh revelation of cases involving some lawyers and judges. Is it a crime to assist a judge who has a domestic problem and approaches his friend for assistance? Yes, it is a very good question. When my father was the Chief Judge of the old East Central State, to even attempt to approach our gate if you’re a lawyer, you would land you in jail. And I remember the late Justice Kayode Eso said that he would refuse to accept a Christmas hamper from even me because he and my father were very close. But he said “I can accept a complimentary card wishing me a happy birthday.” But we also know that values have changed. It is part of the challenges, why would that judge be in a situation of that kind of helplessness? That is the underlying question. I remember when Justice Adeleke retired from the Supreme Court and her valedictory speech actually suggested that she had nowhere to go to. So, I took it up at the NJC, and said we can sit here, supposedly the third arm of government by the constitution, and our judges are dying, they have no houses. So, I requested the CJ at the time, Aloma Muktar, to take it up. She said no, no. I said if you don’t do it I would do it and I went to court, it was Agbakoba vs the AG on the point of how to fund the judiciary and I won the case, even though it has not been enforced. On your question, the way I would answer it is that I will leave out answering directly whether it is right or wrong. But if a judge is in a situation where his mother is dying, he will take money from anybody and lose his job. It doesn’t have to be a lawyer. But the issue is, why would he be in that sort of position in the first place? That, I think, is a better conceptual question, not whether it was right or not. If you ask Justice Esho this question, he would tell you that it is wrong because that was their training. But at that time, they were properly funded, everything was in place. I remember former CJN, Justice Belgore. When he was then CJ of old Benue-Plateau and then governor of old Benue-Plateau referred to them as my judges, he absolutely abused him. I think it was Gomwalk. But today, a lot of irony is in place in judiciary. I think Ricky Tarfa is even a better person to ask for assistance than a governor. Why would CJs go cap in hand to governors for goodies for their judges? Why? I know so many judges who are in difficulty. Some can’t even pay school fees. The question it raises is funding of the judiciary. You don’t expect that a judge whose mother is dying would be thinking about Code of Conduct. I don’t think so.]]>