By Innocent Anaba

Mr Joseph Daudu, SAN, is the President of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA. In this interview, he spoke on the committee set up by the association to resolve the face off between the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, and President of the Court of Appeal; the committee set up by the Federal Government to investigate the violence in some Northern states, after the result of the Presidential election was announced among other issues.

Mr . Joseph Daudu, SAN, NBA President

Excerpt:

The NBA recently set up a committee to investigate the face-off between the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu and President of the Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Isa Salami. How realistic is the committee, given that you want lawyers to investigate the heads of both the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. We also learnt that the committee visited the CJN and waited for close to three hours, yet the CJN did not meet them. How do you expect members of the committee to achieve the task before them?

The problem with the legal profession is that some times, people fail to realise that both the bar and bench are partners in progress in the profession. None of the arms can claim to be superior to the other because without one, the other can not work. There is no man-servant relationship between the bar and the bench. If we refuse to go to the court today, that is the end. Therefore, they must take seriously what the bar think and says. If the bar in its wisdom, sets up a committee to resolve the face off between two top officials of the judiciary, then it follows that the bench must at least take it seriously, because they are morally bound to do so. In addition and without prejudice to what the committee may come out with, the bar has a moral platform to intervene in this matter.

You can not be in your house and it is on fire and you say until the fire brigade comes, you will not quench the fire, you must have at least make efforts to quench the fire. In this case, the National Judicial Council, NJC appears to be the fire brigade but we have the right to put off the fire in our own house, therefore, it is unfortunate if the committee goes to see the parties involved and one of them fails to cooperate with them. You can say that at the end of the day, the panel will be entitled to reach whatever inferences it needs to draw from those omissions or refusal. When they present their report, which I don’t know what they are going to say, it will be considered by the National Executive Council, NEC, of the Nigerian Bar Association, before it is made public. You know that there is nothing the bar says that will not be taken seriously by members of the public. It not a question of whether panel will achieve its aim, but what matters is that it will carry the moral force at the end of the day, because the whole legal community will be speaking with one loud voice when it comes to that point.

How will you enforce the recommendations of the committee?

It is not every thing that you enforce through law, the mere fact that legal profession has taken its position, is what is important. When it comes to enforcement, we will know how it will be enforced.

The lawyers have been accused of being the major problem, because while there are efforts to solve the problem, we have lawyers who are deliberately frustrating the efforts and want status quo to remain?

If you are talking about the issue of corruption, Nigerian entirely is full with corruption. Judiciary is a small macrocosm of Nigeria, definitely some aspects of the general problem had crept into the judiciary. By judiciary, I mean the legal profession. Definitely, there will be accusations here and there, and there are some members of the bar, who are involved as runners. If what you mean is that those people will not want matters to come to light, then that is a different issue. The allegations of corruption are matters of crime, you have agencies such as the State Security Service, SSS, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, ICPC. It is their basic responsibility by police detection method to fish and find out these things, if there are crimes. We hear of such accusations often, but you cannot catch any body red handed unless you have the authority of the state to go into such matters. So those people who may be involved or may not be involved, do not affect the quality of the investigations that are being carried out because we did not set up the panel to investigate whether any body is corrupt or not. What we want them to do is to address those things that are militating against the full administration of justice and like I told an eminent judge, recently, by reading a judgement, you can know whether the judgement proceeds from a clear mind or proceeded from a mind that has been employed from some of untoward consideration. Reading a judgement alone, you don’t need to catch some body red handed. If you read a judgement, you will know from that judgement, that some thing is wrong some where. Those are the things you look at, areas in which judicial precedence has not been followed and why cases are not being properly handled. Why a case filed in 2011 is heard and a case filed in 1999 has not been heard or the motivation for leaving the case. There are so many things. Why records are not properly read before an accused. We have things that we legitimately point out, that are wrong with the system and lowering the quality of our justice system. People don’t remember that, they just go to the parliament to say that some people are carrying money from one place to the other. That happens round the whole country. We see it at check points. We see it every where. There is, therefore, insincerity in every part of this country. You can’t run away from it and to solve the problem, the leadership must address it from the very top. It cannot be addressed from the bottom.

Prof Itse Sagay, SAN, recently faulted the reports of the local and foreign election observers, who concluded that the April general elections were free and fair, saying that the elections were not free and fair. He added that elections in Akwa-Ibom and Delta States ought to have been repeated. Do you agree with him?

Prof Sagay is not a spirit. He could not have been every where in the country at the same time during the elections. I think it is presumptuous, with due respect to him, to say that through out the country, the elections were not free and fair. Was he in Akwa Ibom State on the election days? I think people should limit themselves to places where they are or where they had agents, who reported back to them. Let us assume that he has his own observers and that was what they said, but what we saw, because we had people in all parts of the country, even though we are not saying that the election was a hundred percent perfect, we are saying that the elections, when you compare it with the other elections that had taken place in this country, it stands out as free and fair. If you ask me to assess this election, I will give it 65 %, 35% is a high margin to say that an election has not been properly conducted. Seriously, Plateau State has one of the freest and fairest elections, which used to be a war zone. But they conducted one of the best elections. I cannot say that the elections were not free and fair because of what I knew about the place before now.

I think that some of these statements, when they are made, particularly by eminent person, we tend to give it a lot of credence, but the process has been set (tribunal), which at the end of the day, will determine whether elections were free and fair. I don’t think that a good professor should pre-judge this matter. In any case, I don’t agree that the elections were not free and fair. The NBA has said that the were free and fair.

The NBA is currently undergoing what is called lawyers data verification update. What does it entail?

What it seeks to achieve is to have a comprehensive record of real lawyers in the country. There has been similar exercise in the past. Former President of the association, Mr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, started an exercise in that direction, while Chief Olarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, during his regime, introduced the digital bar initiative. The flaw in those two projects is that they did not contain the distinguishing factor, which is the enrolment number of the lawyers. For the past 12 years, lawyers have not been allocated enrolment number by the Supreme Court. If you don’t have an enrolment number, any body can fake your name. It means that you don’t have a complete data. Thanks to our data base committee and gratitude to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, we were able to set up a joint committee between the bar and the Supreme Court that took up the duty of giving those people, who do not have enrolment number, their numbers.

These enrolment numbers have been updated and for the first time, there is an up to date account of all the lawyers in the country. What the data base seeks to do is, now that your data is correct, we need additional information, such as your names, phone numbers, and many other details, so that when we go back to the digital base initiative, it will have your number as a lawyer. When we were doing the digital bar initiative, those who said they were lawyers went to form a long line and we discovered that among the people who joined the line were some drivers, clerks and all manner of persons, who wanted to play pranks. If you give those people the bar identity card, they will masquerade as lawyers and they will enter the legal community without any body knowing. Even the digital bar initiative will carry lawyers enrolment numbers, an additional feature, which will eliminate the syndrom of fake lawyers. We suspended the stamp and seal because what was the need putting your seal on a document and they cant see your enrolment number. There could be three J.B. Daudus, so which J.B. Daudu filed the processes. There may be three Abdullahi Mohammed, which of the three Abdullahi Mohammed filed the document. If the enrolment number is there on the stamp and seal, you will be able to tell the person that filed the document and this would have helped us eliminate the menace of fake lawyers.

We have many people who are sitting on board of big companies and other high places, masquerading as lawyers, when in actual fact, they are not and they are blocking the opportunities for real lawyers to earn a livelihood. It is very serious and we place a high premium on it.

You said that it is the police and other security agencies that should prosecute cases of corruption, but we have situations, where the Attorney General of the Federation, has filed nolle prosequi in known cases of corruption before our courts. With this, don’t you think it will be difficult to fight corruption, and nolle prosequi abused as well?

Even if nolle prosequi is abused, there is a legal remedy for it. It has been dealt with in the case of Attorney General of Kaduna State Vs Author. In that case, the Supreme Court said that the Attorney General must act in good faith and public interest. Therefore, if any body is dissatisfied with the way the Attorney General has exercised his power under the nolle prosequi, take him to court and have it set aside. The AG does not have dictatorial monopoly on the powers to remove cases from court, it has to follow due process. But I had discussed with him (Mr Mohammed Adoke, SAN), the only case he has entered a nolle prosequi was in relation to Nuhu Ribadu’s case. That was the only case he said he ordered withdrawn. The other cases were withdrawn by the agencies handling them, the EFCC, ICPC and others on their own. I feel for the Attorney General of the Federation, you have to be a whipping boy, but I believe he is well prepared to defend himself, but from what I heard, he said it was in only one case that he entered a nolle prosequi, even at that, I still maintain that he can be sued if he abuses the power of nolle prosequi.

But the constitution grants him the power to file a nolle prosequi.

The constitution didnt say that you cant sue him if the power of nolle prosequi is not properly used or abused.

Who determines what it is properly used?

The court will determine whether he has abused, or misused the power of nolle prosequi. No right is absolute. We must learn to use the processes that are available to us.

In a case where the government claims that for political exigencies, a matter should be withdrawn, while the people feel otherwise, what happens?

The aggrieved parties should go to court. People must learn to challenge issues in court. America and other democracies, even though we claim to be a democracy, have been able to use the judiciary process to curb the excesses of people in government and until we use the judiciary to make a point or to get things done, we will not make any progress. If we don’t obey court orders, then we are going back to anarchy. We must use the judiciary to achieve the reform we desire.

Do we have the quality of judges required to achieve this reform?

We do. We have not tried to initiate such measure, so we cannot speculate that they do not have the capacity. We have some of the best legal minds in the world. On the allegation of corruption here and there, that is why we have the appellate courts. My concern is that our lawyers are not as hard working as they should be. Our lawyers are timid. Lawyers in Pakistan staged a sit-in strike, which led to the return of their sacked Chief Judge. For lawyers in Nigeria, it is either to collaborate with one interest group or the other. Lawyers must follow what the rules of the professional ethics says, you must be courageous and exhibit candor. They must not sit in their chambers and think that the only risk they will suffer is when they collect transport money from their clients and travel from Port Hacourt to Aba for a case.

What is the NBA doing to ensure that our lawyers sit-up?

It is by taking and telling them that things are not going on well and that more was expected from them, that is the only they can sit up, but they know the rules, no body is going to lecture a lawyer on some of these issues, we all went through the same school and know these things.

President Goodluck Jonathan has constituted a committee to look into the crisis that rocked some Northern state after the results of the April 16, presidential election was released. What is your reaction to this?

We have a serious task ahead of us and the President has listened to our fears by setting up the panel. These are events that are too prevalent. Every time there is a small disagreement between two people in some part of this country, people attack other people, burn churches, property and treat them as if they are not even fellow Nigerians. Therefore, one of the first thing that need to be done by the panel is to identify those who have suffered loses, those who have lost their lives, those who have been victims in one way or the other in this senseless and brutal attack. When that has been done, then the people who are responsible for this, must be brought to justice. There is no way Nigeria can continue when we feel insecure and are strangers in our own country. We travel to England and behave as if we are part and parcel of the whole citizens. The perpetrators should be brought to justice, criminal trials conducted, appropriate punishment melted out, then there will be no repeat of the senseless killings, if not, what we will have is that every body will arm himself, and when people arm themselves, we will have difficulties in checking law and order. Again, the government must ensure that security apparatus are up to the task. So this panel must revealed why there was a security failure, when it was a known secret that there would be crisis on that Monday, April 18. Also, why was steps not taken to stop the crisis, especially with the death of the corps members. The panel must look into who ordered the attacks on the corps members. The panel must take the task very seriously and bear in mind that it may effect the unity of the country, how the crisis is resolved.