Kano Based Lawyer Seeks Disciplinary Action Against Magistrate Over Alleged Unguarded Utterances In Open Court

A legal practitioner and legal advicer to the NBA Kano branch, Mr. Ibrahim Abdullahi, has petitioned the Kano State Judicial Service commission over what he described as the unbefitting and unguarded utterance of a Chief Magistrate in the state on December 23, 2020, according to Nigerian Sketch.

The petition was addressed to the Chief Registrar of the Kano State High Court, and copied the State’s Chief Judge, the State’s Judicial Service Commission, as well as the National Judicial Service Commission. Also copied in the petition where the State’s branch of the National Magistrate Association, the NBA branches of Kano and Ungogo, as well as the NBA President.

The petitioner had alleged in the petition that the said Chief Magistrate stationed at the Magistrate Court No. 4, Gidan Murtala, Kano State, had referred to his application for adjournment in a criminal proceeding as ‘Nonsense’.

TheNigeriaLawyers gathered that the petitioner had appeared before the said Chief Magistrate in a criminal matter —COP v. Samba Usman & 3 Ors, on the 23rd day of December, 2020, only to be informed by the prosecutor that the nominal complainant and the accused had reached a form of plea agreement, which would see the defendant plead guilty to the offence, and that his services (the petitioner) would no longer be needed as he had been debriefed by the accused.

Trouble however started when the petitioner requested a short adjournment from the court, in other to enable him properly brief the lawyer for whom he was holding the brief in the suit, but the Magistrate would have none of that, and rather than accept or decline the request, the said Chief Magistrate went ahead to refer to the request made as ‘nonsense’. The Magistrate is alleged to have said “I will not write this nonsense. This is nonsense.”

The petitioner further alleged that he had called the attention of the Chief Magistrate to the implication of the use of the derogatory word, but still she defiantly continued to make use of the word. He however requested that his application be on the Court’s record for the day, after which she overruled his application.

Mr. Abdullahi noted in the petition that he had also applied said record of proceedings for that day, only for the Chief Magistrate to order him out of the court noting that he wasn’t a Counsel in the suit, “…as far as I am concerned (referring to herself), you are not a Counsel in this matter, get out of my Court..” the Magistrate is alleged to have said.

Mr. Abdullahi is therefore seeking disciplinary action against the said Chief Magistrate, and an apology letter from her Worship, which should be published in the Daily Trust Newspaper, as well as all the Notice boards at the Kano State High Court and Magistrate Courts’ Complexes. As at the time of filing this report neither the Chief Magistrate, nor the State’s Judicial Service Commission have responded to the petition.