The 15-member panel was set up last October by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, in the wake of the creation of special courts to handle corruption cases. This is against the backdrop of widespread public angst and criticism of their indeterminacy. Its most alarming observation was the collusion between prosecutors and defence counsel to pervert justice. Stalling of trials and arriving at predetermined judgements are the eventual outcomes of such an unethical union. Inadequate funding of the anti-corruption agencies and prosecutors’ lack of experience, it said, affected the quality of their investigations and, by inference, the power of prosecution. However, to turn the tide, it recommended a slew of measures, including special training in investigation and prosecution; synergy between the anti-graft agencies, enlistment of accountants and auditors in the investigation of complex cases, legal support staff and research assistants to judges, deployment of more judges to handle corruption cases and the issuance of “Practice Directions” for anti-graft trials. Obviously, the constraints are huge and undoubtedly contribute in no small measure to the quagmire in criminal justice dispensation. Unfortunately, the Suleiman Galadima-led committee only examined one side of the coin. How about the collusion between defence lawyers and judges? There are avalanche of examples. No handicap is weightier than this unholy romance between the defence and the judge. This is why those trials wilt, not necessarily because of weak investigation or prosecution, as judges and counsel often claim. Interestingly, much of public knowledge of corruption in the temple of justice in Nigeria is purveyed by some courageous members of the bench and bar. The late Kayode Eso, a retired Supreme Court jurist, was the person who alerted the nation to the existence of “billionaire judges;” Joseph Daudu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and a former President, Nigeria Bar Association, once decried the sale of justice on several occasions; while Ayo Salami, a former President, Court of Appeal, a few years ago, said retired senior justices were playing the “despicable role of bribing or intimidating judges” in warped legal consultancy. Not too long ago, a CJN directed a Court of Appeal to “arrest” a case on which it was about to deliver its judgement. As a matter of fact, where a judge is bribed, no amount of diligence or forensic skill in investigation and prosecution can redeem a case so smeared. It is, therefore, not strange that corruption trials that involve more than 15 former state governors, most of whom left office in 2007, are still at the preliminary stages in courts. It is trite in law that a suspect must enter a plea of guilt or innocence in any trial before it could actually be said to have begun. But this was not the case in the 170 charges the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission brought against a former governor before a Federal High Court. The suspect was promptly discharged. Ironically, based on the same set of charges, the same suspect pleaded guilty in a foreign land and was sentenced accordingly. Encouraged by the corrupt judicial system, suspects and their lawyers spend donkey’s years in court raising preliminary objections, seeking interlocutory injunctions and making no case submissions, among other noxious tactics employed to buy time. It took 11 years for the EFCC to secure the conviction of Jolly Nyame, a former governor of Taraba State. He was jailed for 14 years on Wednesday, for misappropriating N1.64 billion by a High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Addressing the deployment of disgusting devices to cripple cases was the reason the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015 was enacted. Within and outside legal circles, it was widely applauded. However, it has failed to bring sanity to the process because judges and lawyers have unabashedly defanged it. For instance, judges adjourn recklessly to give rulings on interlocutory applications, instead of doing so on the day of final judgement, as the ACJA prescribes. Curiously, the NJC has not sanctioned any judge over this. The perverse deployment of the ACJA “Practice Direction” to the benefit of suspects suggests that a new one being championed might not provide any compass for anti-graft cases. It boils down to indiscipline and corruption in the judiciary, which the NJC has not done enough to rout. A judge it recommended his removal in 2011 based on his demand of N200,000 bribe, remained in office until 2017. Where corrupt judges are given a mere slap on the wrist by only retiring them, corruption cases will continue to flounder helplessly. Instances of protest judgements against the state in corruption trials that involve judges abound, influenced by the erroneous belief that judges are immune from investigation and prosecution except with the approval of the NJC. Some lawyers have faulted this reasoning, given that the NJC is a mere administrative body, whose powers cannot override that of a court. A judge who soils his robe is never spared in the United States, Italy and other countries in the West. In Italy, 16 judges were arrested in Naples in 2012, after being bribed by drug syndicates for favourable judgements. Therefore, if judges nabbed with illegal firearms and ammunition and tons of cash in their apartments above their legitimate earnings are set free here, the alibi of poor prosecution from any quarters sounds like a broken record. Nobody expects the EFCC to win all of its cases; even in countries with the best judicial environment, such a feat is not attainable. Yet, it does not mean that nobody knows how to prosecute cases diligently anymore. Onnoghen’s predecessor, Mahmud Mohammed, said the National Judicial Policy “recognises that the greatest and most damaging challenge to the administration of justice is corruption…” Then, this fact must be faced squarely. Only by so doing that the dignity and honour of the bench will be restored. Culled from Punch]]>
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