BY  IKECHUKWU NNOCHIRI, ABUJA
The National Judicial Council, NJC, is currently divided against itself. On one hand, a group loyal to Justice Isa Ayo Salami, president of the Court of Appeal, indicted by the  5-man probe panel headed by a former President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Abdullahi Umaru, is kicking against the report.  On the other, the NJC is fighting to restore confidence in itself.

Members of the 5-man panel  had allegedly found Salami guilty of perjury, even as it exculpated the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Aloysius Iyorgher Katsina-Ala of complicity over allegations of judicial recklessness levelled against him in relation to the role he played in the 2007 gubernatorial dispute in Sokoto state.

Investigations by Saturday Vanguard revealed that some members of the NJC loyal to the PCA, have continued to stage vehement protest against the report, insisting that it was biased and lopsided. They contended that considering the opprobrium the uncanny impasse between the two legal eggheads attracted to the entire judiciary, the panel ought to have recommended that there was prima-facie evidence suggestive of an accumulated acrimony between the warring parties.

Consequently, the pro-Salami group at the NJC rejected the probe panel report on the premise that it was masterminded by the CJN. However, in a bid to restore confidence of its members, the legal body, presently presided by Justice Dahiru Musdapher, has constituted a fresh 3-man panel headed by the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Ibrahim Auta, charged with the responsibility of subjecting the previous report to an intensive scrutiny.

The new panel was equally given the mandate of recommending a befitting sanction for the PCA should it affirm the verdict of the Justice Abdullahi’s panel. It will submit its report before August 9.

On the establishment of evidence of conviviality between the PCA and the ACN politicians, the new panel in a terms of reference handed to it by the NJC, was asked to determine if Salami had run foul of Rule 1, 2, (A) of the Code of Conduct for Judicial Officers, which states that: “In performance of his duties a Judicial Officer should observe the following rules: Rule 1 (2) (a): A Judicial Officer must avoid social relationships that are improper or give rise to an appearance of impropriety, that cast doubt on the Judicial Officer’s ability to decide cases impartially, or that bring disrepute to the judiciary.

It would be recalled that the 5-man initial probe panel which was expected to have submitted its final report before May 9, a day the CJN lost his wife in a bizarre home accident, could not do so till last week.

Though the CJN is statutorily the head of both the Supreme Court and the NJC, however, he was asked to step-aside for his deputy, Justice Dahiru Musdapher, to enable the judicial body to objectively investigate all the allegations of official misconduct levelled against him and the PCA, Justice Salami.

The legal body had in its 5th ad-hoc meeting held in Abuja on March 9, 2011, deliberated on the various petitions written against the PCA and six other justices of the Court of Appeal, and subsequently constituted the 5-man investigative panel with a view to conducting a holistic investigation into the matter.

In aberration to its normal schedule of things, the NJC ordered the CJN who by virtue of his position always superintend over its meetings, to step aside from performing such function considering that he cannot be a Judge over his own case.

Though NJC expressly gave the panel 2 month to conclude its investigations and submit its final report on the matter, the verdict however emerged after 5 months of intensive closed door hearing of the case.

The six court of Appeal Justices also entangled in the alleged corruption saga were, Justices Clara Ogunbiyi, M. L. Garuba, Paul Galinje, C.C Nweze; Adamu Jauro and O. Ariwoola.

They all participated in the 2007 election appeal panels that sacked former governors Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Chief Segun Oni, of Ogun and Ekiti States respectively.

Both Governors Oni and Onyinola who were members of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Osun and Ekiti State chapters, had accused the election petition tribunal panels of engaging in unethical conversation with some chieftains of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, which they alleged aided the favourable judgements that the party got in both Osun and Ekiti state governorship election appeals.

The petitioners further furnished the Justice Abdullahi led probe panel with records of call logs between the accused tribunal judges and politicians that allegedly secured favourable verdicts against the sacked governors.

The NJC summoned the CJN and PCA to appear before it for interrogation.
Although the panel opted to conduct its proceedings in camera, Saturday Vanguard however gathered that it had on March 26, ordered all the accused judicial officers to appear before it on April 11, just as it equally asked the petitioners to come before it with their substantive proof of evidence and witnesses if any.

Meanwhile, both Justice Salami and the four other Justices that sat on the Ekiti State governorship appeal panel told the NJC probe panel that their call logs obtained by former governor of the State, Chief Segun Oni, amounted to an invasion of their privacy. Ex-governor Oni had alleged that the panel sacked him and enthroned Governor Kayode Fayemi sequel to deals allegedly cut in the course of making the recovered telephone conversations.

In their defence dated March 3, 2011 and signed by all the justices, they maintained that the petitioners violated their right to privacy as enshrined in Section 37 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and sought protection from the NJC in order to preserve the independence of the judicial system.

They neither denied engaging the politicians mentioned in the call logs in conversation nor expressly admitted that they exchanged calls with the politicians.

Tagging the call log evidence ‘meaningless and useless’, they further insisted that “The said call logs offend Section 37 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which provides that ‘the privacy of citizens, their homes, correspondence, telephone conversations and telegraphic communications is hereby guaranteed and protected.”

In acknowledging the powers of the NJC to sanction erring judicial officers in the country, the jurists also called on the council to be protective of its officers in situations like this, so as to preserve the independence of the judiciary and shield judicial officers from attacks while performing their statutory functions.