INTERVIEW: Nigeria: How NJC Is Protecting Corrupt Judges – Buhari’s Adviser

The Special Assistant to the President on Prosecution, Okoi Obono-Obla, a lawyer, in this interview with PREMIUM TIMES’ Festus Owete and Hassan Adebayo, speaks on how the judiciary has frustrated the corruption war of the Buhari administration and steps being taken to purge it.

PT: Nigerians have expressed different views on the arrest and detention and even the release of some judges. Some persons have said the SSS does not have the powers to effect the arrest. What is your take?

Obono-Obla: The arrest of the judges is lawful, legitimate and constitutional. In the first place, judges are not above the law; judges in Nigerian do not have immunity. The issue of immunity is purely spelt out in the constitution. The president, vice president, governors and deputy governors are the only categories of politicians who have immunity. If the framers of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) intended that the members of the judicial branch of government should have immunity, they would have clearly spelt it out in the constitution.

Nigerians are confounded, surprised and amazed because this type of a thing has never happened in Nigeria. It is unprecedented. So the assumption that judges are above the law has been there. It was a perception but it is not true in reality. And this is a reformist government that will ensure that the rule of law is obeyed by everybody and that is why I can see that Nigerians are surprised that these things are happening.

Even Ghana, 22 judges were arrested, arraigned and dismissed from service. In Italy recently 16 judges were arrested by police and 1 billion Euros recovered from them. In the U.S. that is supposedly the bastion of constitutional and liberal democracy, judges have been arrested and jailed by FBI. In the U.K., judges have been arrested, tried and jailed. In India that is very similar to Nigeria in terms of socio-economic development, judges have been arrested and jailed.

But in Nigeria, judges have never been arrested because there has been no will in Nigeria to enforce the rule of law. And then this mentality – the Nigerian big man has this mindset that ‘I am above the law’ and then the thing has trickled down to the ordinary people who have the perception that big men should not be answerable for their crimes. That is why each time a big man is arrested in Nigeria, it will generate controversy. It has happened in Dasuki’s case and so many other high profile cases. They just generate controversy so that government is discredited and distracted.

So, do we want two standards of justice in Nigeria – one for the rich people and one for the poor people? When the police break into the homes of the poor people and arrest them, nobody says anything. Go to the prisons and see how poor people who allegedly stole maybe N1 or N5 are being treated. So all said and done, judges are ordinary people. They are subjected to the law just as you and me. It is only when a judge is sitting in the courtroom that he has immunity just like the legislators when they are inside the parliament they have immunity. If a judge comes out of chambers and he commits a crime he is liable to the law.

On the legality of DSS’ action, DSS was a branch of the Nigerian police. It was known as the Intelligence and Investigation Unit of the Nigerian Police. That is the historical background. But later on it was severed from the Nigerian Police to form the Nigerian Security Organisation. Then in the 1990s when Babangida was president, he had to change it to SSS. If you look at Section 2 (3) (A) of the National Security Agency Act, the SSS has the power of prevention and detection of any crime within Nigeria against the internal security of Nigeria. If a judge collects bribe to pervert the cause of justice in an election matter, don’t you think that can lead to a threat to national security? It is a threat to national security because there is a tendency towards impunity and lawlessness by Nigeria.

There is a serious propensity of Nigerians taking laws into their hands. Why? It is because they no longer have faith in the judicial system because judges collect bribe. Is that not a threat to national security? It is. What is the goal of judicial branch of government? The role is to interpret the law, maintain social equilibrium, social harmony so that Nigerians live together. If they have disagreement, they should go to court and have justice. The court will make a pronouncement that Mr. B is right and Mr. B is wrong to prevent Nigerians from taking laws into their hands.

If there is a crisis between the executive and legislature, its own is to interpret and resolve their crisis on conflict. So if we have a judiciary that is collecting bribe to subvert the course of justice, is that not a threat to national security? So DSS or SSS by virtue of section 2 (3) (A) of the National Security Act, has the power to also investigate corruption cases, financial and economic crimes, terrorism, etc. If you also look at section 2 (3) (c), of the Act, it gives the president the discretion to assign any role to SSS in so far as the national interest or security is involved.

A lot of people do not know that in 1999, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, when he was head of state, made an executive order pursuant to section 2 (3) (c) of the Act vesting the power on SSS to investigate financial and economic crimes. So what are they talking about? It is just the Nigerian thing that when a big man is involved there is propaganda in the media to distract government and discredit the process. We must do away with that mindset that big men are not subject to the law.

PT: But in this matter, we understand the president has a hand in the arrest of the judges.

Obono-Obla: The president has no hand. This president is one man who does not interfere with the
work of the various ministries, commissions etc. There are a lot of petitions against judges that were even sent to this office by civil society groups. There are a lot of petitions sent to the NJC and NJC could not investigate these petitions for whatever reason. So these petitions were forwarded to the relevant security agencies to investigate because they border on crime.

You must know that NJC has no power to investigate crime. NJC has powers to investigate professional misconduct of judges. It is spelt out in Section 153 (1) (i) of the 1999 Constitution that created the NJC and then you go to the Third Schedule Section 21 is on the jurisdiction or the powers of the NJC, it vests the power on NJC to discipline judges and to take part in the nomination of judges etc. There is no criminal power vested on NJC. And most of the allegations against the judges border on crime – money laundering, abuse of office, official corruption etc.

PT: These issues of money laundering, abuse of office are things that happened in the course of their professional practice

Obono-Obla: Yes. The NJC has been accused of being half-hearted in fixing complaints filed by members of the public. If they are working, if a complaint is sent to NJC that borders on crime, what they are supposed to do is to refer that complaint to EFCC, ICPC for further investigation. There were insinuations that the SSS made efforts to NJC to react to these allegations made against all these judges that border on crime. Can you allow us have access to these judges? Can you allow us to investigate them and they were stonewalling.

PT: Now these judges have been released on bail, when will they be prosecuted? They were to be brought to court last Monday but it never happened.

Obono-Obla: It was speculative. We never made a categorical statement that the judges would be taken to court on Monday. For goodness, these judges were arrested on Saturday and investigations are still ongoing. The asset declaration forms have to be looked into and it will take a few days to verify the information on asset recovery. If these things were declared in the asset declaration form, it has to be established. So, let Nigerians allow the security agencies investigate this matter properly before taking these judges to court.

If they are charged to court and there is no evidence and the matter is struck out there will be a backlash. So, SSS is investigating these judges. Let us give them time. The judges have been released on bail. Give us time, we will charge them to court. If we were not serious, we wouldn’t have gone on sting operation. It has to be done with a lot of deliberation and painstaking manner. You cannot just go and arrest judges and make headlines without charging them to court.

PT: What time are we looking at?
Obono-Obla: Maybe next week. But I am assuring you that definitely they will be charged to court. It takes time to investigate. For instance, some of the former governors have been under investigation for a very long time. If you want to us to do a wishy-washy investigation, then the matter will be thrown out and you will say government is not serious or we have compromised. But I can assure you that this matter will be dealt with because we have to clean up the judiciary. If we don’t clean up the judiciary no foreign investor will come to the country and then the country will be sliding into anarchy. We must clean up the judiciary because the judiciary is very, very important to the economy, to Nigerians living together, to the national unity, integration etc

PT: The executive is now of the view that in the judiciary there are bad eggs that have to be flushed out. But in the executive, there are certain individuals against whom the allegations of corruption have also been made.
Obono-Obla: What are the grounds? Who are they? They have said there are some bad eggs in the executive. All what I see is a spate of speculative allegations. If you have anything against any member of the executive bring it out, concrete information on wrong doing or corruption. They always mention Rotimi Amaechi, Babatunde Fashola and the Minister of Interior, Dambazau.

Let’s take the case of Amaechi. Amaechi was governor of Rivers State for eight years. If the Rivers State government truly believe that Amaechi committed a crime or was corrupt why can’t the attorney general of the state that is vested with the power to prosecute anybody in the state who has committed an offence against the laws of the state not prosecute Amaechi? Why is he passing the buck to the federal government? Where is the evidence that Amaechi was corrupt apart from the politics of maliciousness and vindictiveness? They simply drag the federal government into these things simply because some of them do not want Amaechi to be appointed.

If anybody has concrete allegation against Amaechi let him send it to the EFCC and pursue it and ensure that EFCC does the right thing. The president is not EFCC or ICPC. Send these reports to EFCC or ICPC to take action and if the president is blocking these allegations then you can go home and say the president is selective or he is protecting Amaechi.

The allegation against the minister of interior is that he has property abroad; it is not that he stole from this government. He was in government when the president was an opposition leader. So if the evidence is there that he bought the property let them come out with petition and bring to the ministry of justice and let them tell us where the property are and then we start investigating him. I can tell you that nobody is protecting anybody. But it is not just to make any allegation against somebody because you want to rope in somebody or because you want to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it.

PT: In clear terms, does the president believe the judiciary is corrupt?

Obono-Obla: I cannot say, but the president has made some statements that the judiciary is not forthcoming in the war against corruption, that the attitude of the judiciary, and cases are delayed just like Saraki’s case. I have been going to court since last year and we have not made any headway because of the attitude of the judges. And there is nothing you can do. He is the master of his court. That is why the president said the judiciary is not forthcoming. But he has not said the judiciary is corrupt. He has not told me that.

PT: Given this frustration from the court are you thinking of ways to make this corruption war faster and effective?

Obono-Obla: There is nothing we can do for now. We have to use the laws that are in place to fight the war against corruption. But we have done a lot of interventions to ensure that convictions are quickly secured. For instance, we have come out with some documents. We have designed some documents, strategic plans for prosecution between 2016 and 2019. We have also come out with a National Policy on Prosecution. We have also come out with guidelines on prosecution. We have also come out with Code of Conduct for prosecutors. We have also established the administration of criminal justice monitoring committee whose function is to ensure that criminal cases are speedily dealt with.

The Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption has also designed some documents which have been sent to the AGF for adoption. We have also designed a draft bill to create a special criminal court that will be vested with powers to deal with economic, corruption cases, terrorism etc.

Meanwhile, because it will take a while to pass for this bill to be passed into law, we have set up a National Prosecution Coordinating Committee to complement the efforts of public prosecution in the federation. These are all the interventions we have made and we will keep on appealing to lawyers, the police and all those involved in the administration of justice to cooperate so that criminal justice system can work.

I am also appealing to the judges to be firm because the attitude we see is that when big people have cases in court and they hire big lawyers, some of the judges are not firm. They indulge the big lawyers. Ironically they don’t indulge the young aspiring lawyers. If a poor man is facing trial and his lawyer makes an application for adjournment the judge will descend on that lawyer and tell him off. But you see senior lawyers making all these manoeuvres in court calculated to stall the hearing of a matter involving a big man. The judge looks the other way.
PT: Are these interventions capable of addressing these issues you are raising giving the extent of the rot in the system?

Obono-Obla: That is why the judiciary has to be cleaned up and that is what we are doing. There is a lot of quakes in the country, a lot of sensational headlines, a lot of making a mountain out of nothing. We are going to clean up the judiciary to have judges, who are committed, who are patriotic, who are knowledgeable about the law, who are firm, who have courage to interpret the law the way it is.

PT: What about the NJC? Are you also thinking of cleaning up the NJC?
Obono-Obla: Yes. It is one of the defects in the constitution. The defect is that NJC is 80 per cent made up of judges. So the question is – is that not a contradiction? Because this universal principle of justice which is also embedded in our constitution – you cannot be a judge in your own court. You have seen the NJC trying to protect some categories of judges.

Let me give you an instance in the contradiction in the rulings of the NJC of recent. That is the case of Justice Mohammed Tsamiya of the Ilorin Division (of Appeal Court), one of the arrested judges. Somebody lodged a complaint, one Nnamdi Oji, against that judge for collecting bribe and four other members of the Election Petition Tribunal Appeal Panel that sat over election disputes. The NJC found that judge guilty and that he should return the N200 million in instalments.

And the complainant is very angry. He spoke with me on phone. He told me that he is very angry because he lodged a complaint and that he has evidence that all the five judges were involved. He told me that he is ready to appear in any court to testify against those judges. The NJC exonerated three judges and asked Justice Mohammed to pay N200 million he collected as bribe in instalments. They did not say Justice Mohammed should appear before SSS, EFCC or ICPC.

But a Kano State judge who allegedly collected N197 million from somebody, the NJC ruled that he should be dismissed and also lodged a complaint with the Assistant Inspector General of Police for his arrest and prosecution. But in Justice Mohammed’s case they did not say he should be prosecuted but instead he should pay this N200 million in instalments. What kind of justice is that? So you can see clearly that they are trying to protect Justice Mohammed. Maybe the judge in Kano is not a senior judge and is not well connected. They reported him to the police.

That also shows that NJC does not have power over criminal complaints against judges. All judges are screened by SSS and so why are they suggesting that the SSS has no power over judges? Before their appointments they are screened by the SSS. That is the practice which has been going on for the past 30 years in this country. So you can see that NJC is a toothless bulldog. If NJC is up and doing, all the rots we have in the judicial system will not be there.

So because it is made up of 80 per cent judges who want to protect themselves which is also against the principle of fair hearing. You are a judge in your own court. So there should be constitutional reform of the NJC. Maybe we should bring in outsiders that are not necessarily lawyers or judges, men of proven integrity who will judge judges. Judges should not judge themselves. If a member of the executive arm of government commits a crime, it is the judges who judge him and also in the legislature. But the judges don’t want another body to judge them. So there should be constitutional reforms.

PT: You people in the executive are angry that Sambo Dasuki has not been convicted after more than a year.
Obono-Obla: I will not say that. You are a Nigerian like me and you have been watching the proceedings. I cannot say it categorically because the matter is in court. You can just infer.

PT: The ECOWAS Court ruled that he should be released. When will that be effected?

Obono-Obla: It is an advisory opinion. The ECOWAS Court cannot enforce its judgements. So its rulings are advisory. The government is not obligated. That is why you see that Israel has flouted all the judgements of the ICJ. So also the so-called bastion of democracy, America, has flouted all the judgements of the ICJ against America. They even refused to join the ICC. So it is national interest and it is paramount. So the federal government is not obligated to obey an advisory opinion of ECOWAS Court of Justice. But we are studying the ruling and at the end of the day we will react.

PT: Many Nigerians feel that your office and indeed that of AGF is slow in prosecuting cases. Why? For instance the case involving Saraki you were slow in prosecuting him.

Obono-Obla: Which case are you talking about because we have a lot of prosecuting agencies? It is not only the office of the AGF that prosecutes. The police prosecute, the Customs Service, the Immigration Service, EFCC prosecute, ICPC. If you look at the EFCC Act, it gives the EFCC powers to prosecute. They are on their own.
PT: Will his release threaten Nigeria’s security?

Obono-Obla: Well he was a National Security Adviser. That’s a very powerful office; and he’s a prince. The president has not disobeyed any law regarding Dasuki. The first charge against Dasuki was unlawful possession of firearms. They brought application for his bail which was granted. As he was perfecting his bail conditions and before he was released, he was arrested for another offence. That’s it.

If you are arrested for manslaughter, you asked for bail and the bail is granted. But as you are about to be released, the police come to say you are accused of killing another person two years ago, that has cancelled the first bail. There is no evidence that the federal government is in contempt of court.

PremiumTimes

END

CLICK HERE TO SIGNUP FOR NEWS & ANALYSIS EMAIL NOTIFICATION