Yemi Okulaja is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). He graduated from the University of Ife and he was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1974. He was conferred with the prestigious rank of SAN in 1998 and he has been in practice for about 38 years now. In this interview, he spoke on the postponement of the general election, Rivers state judiciary, election petitions, criminal matters brought against political office holders and other sundry issues.

Excerpts:

By Onozure Dania

FEARS are being expressed in some quarters that the elections may still be postponed again. What are the likely implications of this, considering the last postponement?

I think we are still on course as far as handing over is concerned because the tenure of this government comes to an end on May 28  and by May 29 a new government should be sworn-in. I think that there is another proviso that there should be a 30 days within the time of election and the time a new government will take over.

Provisions of the constitution

But any further delay will be unconstitutional because it will mean that we would not be able to adhere to the provisions of the constitution as to elections and the handing over to the new government.

What is your take on the 180 days time-frame given to determine election petitions?

The problem is on how matters are handled. It would be possible for the matter to be given accelerated hearing because it is very bad that when elections are concluded, someone has been sworn in as governor and then election petition is still going on.

Okulaja

For instance, look at the presidency, since the inception of this country, there has never been any instance where you have election petition in respect of the presidency and then the court would remove the person who has been sworn-in and another person will replace him, it has never happened and it may not happen.

In Awolowo’s case,  the Supreme Court  justice went as far as saying the judgement should not be used as a precedence  because it was more or less a political decision that how can you ask  Shagari to vacate  the government house for Awolowo.  So everybody knew and they were playing politics about it, I believe that you should not allow a governor or somebody to almost exhaust his term in office before you conclude an election petition. So 180 days is sufficient.

Should serving judges take part in election petitions?

There is nothing wrong in serving judges taking part. But I believe we have a large crop of retired judges who although have retired but are still mentally active and who can handle this election petitions.

Election petitions

This is because the court system is over burdened by strenuous matters that will cause delay. For instance, if you take a judge to go and serve on the panel of an election petition, what will happen to all the cases assigned to him?

It happened to me in Oyo state, the judge before whom I had a case that has lasted for 14 years was assigned to participate in election petition tribunal. I had to wait for her to come back and that was an additional two years to the number of years the case had been in court. That is why I believe we should make use of retired judges, because judges retires at the age of 65 and some of them are still very mentally alert five, ten years after they might have retired.

Again the issue of corruption comes in, unless somebody is really a perverted, when you retired, your anxiety to make billions out of the election petition will be greatly reduced.

Look at me now, I am 63 years, my best years are behind me what do I want to achieve now? All my children are graduates and married. It is only what my wife and I will eat that I am looking for. You cannot compare it with a man who is still on top of his games at 45 and ambitious who are getting offers from politicians.

I believe that we can still get retired judges particularly those with clean records without any blemish after retirement to serve on the panel of election petition.

Does the 1999 constitution contemplate an interim government?

No. It does not contemplate an interim government, the idea of interim government was brought in by Babangida, he wanted to vacate and he arranged for Shonekan to take over. Most of the bad things that we have in our governance today were introduced by the military who did not feel there was any need to adhere to any constitutional or legal procedures that were laid down. There is no provision for an interim government in our constitution, but they said that it is in charge of necessity because of our situation in Nigeria. Nobody can walk up to the presidency and say I want to be the president its always negotiated between the power blocks in the country.

Degree in management

May be if the negotiation breaks  down now, they would begin to look for an interim government.

The Rivers State Judiciary has been in comatose since June last year over the appointment of the Chief Judge of that state. What is your view on this?

Well it’s quite unfortunate the whole thing has been politicised. Right from the time of the colonial government we have a system in place whereby it is the most senior Judge that will be appointed as the Chief Judge of a State and that has always been because a judge is not under compulsion to have a degree in management. We are not businessmen, who ever finds himself as the most senior judge will be appointed as the CJ. Because our profession operates mostly on seniority, in fact if two lawyers were called to bar the same day you must be able to determine who is the senior among them.

We are called to Bar alphabetically, so if my name starts from A then I must be able to call my case before a person whose name starts with B or C. So, that is how it is, that is how we operate.

Things started collapsing when the soldiers started planning coup, and coming into governance. That is what has brought us to the situation in Rivers state.

For the first time in the history of judiciary in the country, they now started taking a number four judge to be the Chief Judge.

Maintenance of security

Gate of the Rivers state Judiciary complex.

Politics has now come in, Justice Agumagu was the most senior judge although he was redeployed to the customary Court of Appeal but he still maintains his seniority, and that does not affect the fact that he is the most senior judge. I believe that Agumagu should be the chief judge of the state.

Lagos State has opened a register to document records of serial rapists. How do you see this exercise?

Well it’s okay, if it is not just to create a black book and use it for some other purposes rather than what it is meant for. This is because, in other civilised countries when you are convicted of rape there is legal provision that they should make your identity known in the area where you settle. So that people will know that the man is a threat to young women in the area. This will prevent him from having another opportunity. This is because rape is almost an offence of opportunity, I cannot rape somebody who is in Ibadan, I can only rape people who are very close to me.

You will see all these young men inviting girls into their room, or maybe if they are left alone in the house with the rapists and then he would attack.

In fact, people in Britain, America and more organised countries even go beyond that, they would make sure that all the people in the area as well as social workers are aware because once you are a rapist, the chances that you will repeat that offence is there.

Protection of society

So the government has the duty to protect the society, somebody who has committed an offence has lost the right to be treated as a normal human being.

Notwithstanding pending criminal matters brought against some political office holders we still see many of them occupying executive positions. What is your reaction on this?

Under the judicial system, a man is presumed innocent until his case is closed in court. In a civilized trial if you stood trial, once you are convicted you are  disqualified and you have to wait until you have been redeemed at the court of appeal  before you can start something and once  your name  or your record is dented you have to be vindicated before you can run for an office.

This is because we have to agree that something is wrong with us here, in a civilised country once you make any serious allegation against a public official, he resigns and goes but in Nigeria once you make any allegation that somebody has committed a crime he will still be in the office and occupying the position.

It is only in Africa that there is a sit tight syndrome that we have. Look at Mugabe who is 90 years old and he is still in power it is basically an African thing. Look at Mandela if he had decided to stay nobody will stop him but he just decided to leave.

What is your take on the none implementation of the national conference recommendations?

All these conferences that we have had were meant to buy time, it’s always political and they were like a top shop even before the inauguration of the last conference, I knew that we were not going to get to anywhere.

There is no where the outcome or the decisions of such conferences can be implemented and the president had his way when he inaugurated it, he spent a lot of money to buy time and kept people quiet and he succeeded in doing that  otherwise they had a lot of time to implement  them and he did not see any  reason to ask them to implement the recommendations.

Some of them can only be done by Act of the parliament,  there are some that can be done by the executive fiat  that has been the problem of  Jonathan’s government.