Human rights advocate and former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, has launched a sharp rebuttal against retired Court of Appeal President, Justice Ayo Isa Salami, challenging his credibility to critique judicial competence following controversial remarks describing Peter Obi’s 2023 presidential candidacy as a “judicial error.”
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Taking to X (formerly Twitter), Odinkalu openly questioned Salami’s moral authority to pass judgment on judicial standards reviving references to the retired jurist’s own troubled history with the National Judicial Council.
“I am sure I will find the report of the NJC Panel of 2011 into Justice Salami. I want to read it again…..,” Odinkalu wrote, in a remark widely interpreted as an unmistakable reminder of the circumstances surrounding Salami’s suspension over a decade ago.
The controversy erupted after Justice Salami, speaking to journalists at the 20th anniversary of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism’s Human Rights Defender Award — where he was being honoured — blamed “wrong court judgment” for allowing Peter Obi to contest the 2023 presidential election on the platform of the Labour Party.
“Peter Obi of the Labour Party ought not to have been allowed to contest election in the presidential election in the sense that by the time he lost PDP primary, Labour Party had submitted its list of members to INEC,” Salami stated.
“The constitution says there can’t be independent candidates. How did he become a candidate if he doesn’t belong to Labour Party?”
The retired jurist extended his criticism to Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, noting that his name was allegedly not in the NNPP register before he was issued a membership card.
“The register is supposed to be the mother of the card. That is the source of his register of his membership. Even though the Tribunal and Court of Appeal frowned at it and that’s the problem of competence,” Salami said.
Justice Salami went further, attributing what he described as declining judicial standards to inadequate training rather than outright corruption.
“There are little bad eggs. Well, I can’t say bad eggs. Strictly speaking, some of them have problem of learning. They are not sufficiently trained. They don’t have good background to be such,” he said.
“And imagine appointing a higher registrar, a judge. There’s no experience. But in the past this one will not happen. But maybe due to population explosion, we have everybody reading Law and every university or college trying to have faculty of Law.”
He added: “At times when you see or read judgment of some of them, even the Supreme Court judgment, you would be astounded and wonder what is happening.”
The retired justice also criticised the appointment process to the Supreme Court, suggesting that geographical considerations now trump merit.
“People get to Supreme Court today not because they are good, but because there is vacancy from their zone. So, they supersede people who are senior to them, whom they met in the Court of Appeal, who are senior to them and who are more experienced than them but because they do not have vacancy from their zone.”
Odinkalu’s response struck directly at Salami’s credibility to make such pronouncements.
The reference to the “NJC Panel of 2011” invoked a turbulent period in Nigeria’s judicial history when Justice Salami was suspended as President of the Court of Appeal amid a highly publicised dispute with then-Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu.
The controversy at the time involved allegations and counter-allegations between the two senior jurists, culminating in Salami’s suspension and a protracted legal and institutional battle that exposed deep rifts within the judiciary.
By invoking this history, Odinkalu appeared to be questioning whether a figure with such a contested legacy could credibly critique systemic failures within the same institution.
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