14
Sep
Sep
HOW NIGERIAN POLITICIANS STARTED DASHING CARS AND HOUSES TO JUDGES
-
CapitalTimesNews / 3 months
- 0
- 7 min read
By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu In January 1993, Ibrahim Babangida was Nigeria’s military ruler. He was supposedly in the last year of an interminable transition at the end of which he promised to hand over power to an elected civilian administration. Moshood Abiola was actively canvassing to inherit that mantle. As Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mohammed Bello was in his fourth year at the apex of the system for resolving disputes between Abiola and Babangida in that process of transition from military to civil rule. He had been CJN since 1987. At the time, Abiola was also Nigeria’s most influential newspaper publisher under the Concord Group. One of the titles published by the Concord Group was a weekly magazine called African Concord. Its editor was Bayo Onanuga. The previous month, in December 1992, Bayo Onanuga’s African Concord ran a cover under the title: ‘‘Justice Mohammed Bello: Kick him out now! Lawyers demand.” Essentially, the story alleged that military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, had bribed the Justices of the Supreme Court led by CJN, Mohammed Bello, with gifts of exotic Mercedes Benz cars. At the time, Mercedes Benz produced the most famous luxury brand of cars in Nigeria. This story would not have amounted to much but for what followed. Shortly after New Year in 1993, nine of the Justices of the Supreme Court instructed Frederick Rotimi Alade (FRA) Williams, the doyen of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), to file a case before the High Court of Lagos State against the Concord Group, African Concord, and its editor, Bayo Onanuga, claiming that the story had defamed them. The Concord Group instructed stormy petrel, Gani Fawehinmi, to represent them. At the Ikeja Division of the High Court of Lagos where the case was tried, Samuel Omotunde Ilori, who would later rise to become the ninth Chief Judge of Lagos, presided. This case had many sub-plots. It turned out, for instance, that Chief Williams’s youngest son, Tokunbo, who was shortly thereafter to become a SAN himself, was married to the daughter of the presiding judge, Olusola. When Gani Fawehinmi asked the judge to disqualify himself from the case, he declined, describing the request as “unprecedented” and an invitation to “an abdication of his sacred duty as a judicial officer.” The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) at the time, Alhaji Aliyu Mohammed, the Wazirin Jema’a, was a witness in the case. In cross examining him, Gani Fawehinmi asked for his qualifications. Reluctantly, the SGF ventured that he was the proud holder of a Teachers Grade 2 certificate, in response to which Gani spat out (to predictable courtroom mirth) “Teacher’s Grade Two certificate, and he rose through the ranks to become the SGF!” Ultimately, the case was settled when Abiola elected to apologise to the Supreme Court Justices, who then instructed Chief Williams to withdraw it. In response, Bayo Onanuga resigned as editor of Chief Abiola’s African Concord. The underlying issue in that case, however, was judicial independence and integrity. 32 years ago, it was an affront to the independence and integrity of judges to suggest that they could be impressed with gifts of cars or imply that they were in the payroll of political office holders. Today, it is different. Senior judicial figures flaunt their propinquity to politicians and rely on that to subvert established rungs of authority among judges and between courts in the judicial hierarchy. It is now de rigeur for politicians to ply judges with cars. Divining how the country got to this is not that difficult although it is not nearly as necessary as understanding when we did so. When Mohammed Bello retired as CJN in 1995, Mohammed Lawal Uwais succeeded him. Justice Uwais was one of the justices affronted by the claims about collecting a car from the soldiers in 1992. Although Uwais well understood that “military rule had a corrosive effect” on the judiciary and had not made much of an effort to disguise their campaign to reduce the heads of the judiciary to the status of beggars before the soldiers, he was nevertheless not prepared to cede much ground to them on questions of personal and institutional integrity. Until his retirement in June 2006, the spectacle of politicians publicly gifting cars to judicial officers was not much part of Nigerian public life. All that was to change under his successors. In effect, this business of the judges being reduced to beggars for Sub-Urban Utility Vehicles (SUVs) has all eventuated in less than two decades. It is difficult now to trace exactly when this change began. It seems likely, however, that the index case was – as with many things in Nigeria – Lagos State. There are suggestions, at the time of writing difficult to verify, that the practice of lacing judicial office with gifts of political housing and transport was quietly in place before 2007. However, a significant moment for policy purposes occurred in the first week of October, 2007 when freshly minted Governor of Lagos, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, presented 18 cars to Magistrates in Lagos State. Daily Champion reported the presentation the day after it occurred under the caption “Lagos Government Dashes 18 Cars to Magistrates.” In presenting the cars, Governor Fashola declared: “Our commitment to continuously improve the welfare package and conditions of service of judicial officers in the state places a reciprocal demand on magistrates to display professionalism, integrity and above all a good work ethic.” Of course, Magistrates Courts are state courts and subordinate ones at that. They are inferior to the High Court. But the significance of this moment was hardly lost on the politicians and the public. At the state level, the Judicial Service Commission oversees the work of Magistrates. The Chief Judge of the state heads the JSC. At the federal level, that role belongs to the CJN. The JSC also controls the budget of the magistracy. The issue was not that the government desired to uplift the wellbeing of magistrates. It was that it chose
