By Bartholomew Madukwe

Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa is a Lagos-based lawyer. A product of late Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN) Chamber (1995-2000). He is known for human and civil rights advocacy. Adegboruwa is a member of Campaign for Democracy, the Civil Liberties Organization and Committee for the Defence of Human Rights.

In this interview, he spoke on human rights observance and factors militating against their enforcements, corruption in some of the law enforcement agencies and the need to decentralize the Supreme Court.

Excerpts:

CRITICS have argued that observance of human rights in Nigeria is unattainable, would you subscribe to this?

Adegboruwa Ebun

It is quite unfortunate that we cannot get the observance of human rights because the agency that is mainly involved in that promotion of it is the law enforcement agencies. What is human rights?

It is the right guaranteed by law to secure citizens- right to life, right to movement, right to liberty, right to association, right to freedom of expression and right to dignity of human person. These rights are to be protected by law enforcement agencies and they are the ones breaking them.

Congestionin courts

If you are arrested by the police without any reason, you take any steps and they will lock you up in ransom for somebody else. When the victim happens to seek for remedy, then it is between a cross-road.

The courts are congested. A person who is arrested wrongly, sent to Kirikiri (prison) and spent up to one month before his case will be assigned and granted bail. Even if he is granted bail, the conditions are so harsh; then at the end of the day the man is innocent.

You see that we cannot observe human rights because the complimentary agencies (police and court) are not well equipped. The police know that there is no way you can file an application for bail and get yourself out in one month. They know the bureaucracy of the court, so they take advantage of people. The police extort money from people and force them into accepting situations that ordinarily would have been resisted.

So when you talk about Nigeria, there is no observance of human rights. It is only on paper that human rights is being observed and not in times of the actual physical monitoring of the respect for the rights of the people.

When you go to the police station, there are many people in the cells or inmates in custody who should not be there. There are many people in the cells at the police stations over issues of landlord, boyfriend and girlfriend, pure commercial transaction and others. We do not have respect for human rights in this country.

Are you saying that the Nigerian police is corrupt?

It goes beyond corruption. Yes, the police is corrupt. But that corruption will not represent the deterioration on the abuse of human rights. Many of the police members do not know these rights that we talk about and this is the person assigned to enforcing such rights.

The starting point is the level of illiteracy within the police itself will not even allow the rights to be asserted. Secondly, the various Executive agencies have taken the police to be an extension of their offices. A governor or Special-Assistant to the Governor will be traveling and will be on convoy, he has escorts.

The police is unable to detach itself from loyalty to the Executive because they see them as people in power or control and they do not accept that power belongs to the people. The police is not to the people but to the leadership, President, Governor- from whom they take directive either to suppress the people or deny them of their rights.

So it goes beyond corruption but lack of education, awareness and proper enlightenment. The average police man does not even know the provisions of the Constitution because he has never read it. That is why when a lawyer goes there to make case for his client the police gets embarrassed. The police get unduly provocative and have this sense of inferiority as if you are coming to tell them what is not right.

So the starting point is for the Nigeria Police Commission, police, Inspector General and the relevant agencies responsible in monitoring the police need to set-up enlightenment agencies that will go round the barracks, police stations, all the enforcement agencies- that include the army, custom and immigration, to tutor them on the basic requirement on the observance of human rights.

So what is the best way to fight corruption?

The best way to fight corruption in any country, especially in Nigeria, is for government to deliver by providing the basic need of the people.  What is the meaning of corruption? A school dropout that becomes a councilor, looks back at the situation of poverty that he is coming from, now he is seeing money- he will want to get to the position that forever he will never go back to poverty.

Abandonedpublic schools

Where did he live? He left a “face me and face you” house. He left a situation where there was no water or drugs in the hospital and abandoned public schools. Now that he gets into power and sees money, he will want to live his life in way that will make him promote himself and leave all that circumstances.

In order for him to do that (build a mansion, send his children abroad since Nigeria schools are known for embarking on strike etc) he has to deep his hand into the coffers of the public. If the government makes all these available to the masses, corruption would have been fought.

If the schools are working, electricity, education, employment etc., if they are working- many people would go to public office and not be interested in bank account but performance because they know that after the work, they can return to the village and meet everything working.

But the average politician looks at himself and say “if I leave office and I do not return to power, I will be returning to suffering, poverty and darkness that I left.” Then what he does is to accumulate a lot of wealth, so that when he goes back home he’ll build the road that leads to his house, he will put electricity and solar system in his house- with the money he has stolen.

The first level to fight corruption is to deliver infrastructure. When this is done, it will no longer be attractive for anybody to want to put himself in public treasury.

Go to America, if you drive a Limousine, people will jump into train and go to their work and they do not care how many convoy you carry. If you like build a house and put a skyscraper, it is nobody’s concern because there is a place to sleep and there is electricity. Look at Bill Gates, he does not walk around in Kaftan. He is always on sweater. Facilities are available for the  people.

Battle againstcorruption

You look at Obama, he is not interested in getting kickbacks. When he retires from office, he goes back to his home. Everything is working. And that is why you see in America the Presidents are alive. The father of Bush is alive, Bush is also alive, his son wants to be President. Clinton is alive. This is because the life-span of an American person is longer, facilities are working, society is improved and leaders deliver.

We should not just think the battle against corruption is to get people and hand them over to EFCC and draft charges against them. We do not know how much money have been recovered. The fight starts with government being sincere with their promises to make life better for ordinary man, that even if you go to public office without embezzling money, you can return and not regret- that is how to fight corruption.

In fighting corruption, the judiciary too has to be lifted up with a massive restructuring because it is a law (EFCC Act, Criminal Code, ICPC law) that you will use in charging those corrupt ones.

Court system

The President cannot on his own grab a Minister who has stolen money and lock him up, it is not possible. You have to use the law and the law is abandoned. Law is about the court system, prosecution, police and judges.

You said fighting corruption is about the court system, but at most times cases are adjourned because there is no light and judges do not sit- even most courts are decorated with microphones and speakers that are not working. So do all these suggest that government is not serious about fighting corruption?

If you want to fight corruption, there should be no reason why a case should be adjourned because there is blackout. I know some judges who drive by themselves and when there is accident, they will have to wait- whether their car will be repaired.

By the time they get to court, litigants will be waiting, the judge being tired will ask his registrar to adjourn all cases. Average number of cases on a Cause List of Lagos high courts is about 70. Same in the magistrate courts. The judge is a human being, sitting from 9am to 4pm, how many trials will he take? In a country of about 187 million people, what is the number of our judges and what are we paying them?

You go to a magistrate court in Lagos State, there is even no chair for lawyers to sit down. The judges in Lagos are less than 50 overall, in a state of about 18 million people. Obviously, criminals will be arrested everyday and there are about 100 disputes to deal with; how would the judiciary cope with all these?

They cannot! I think the court system should be restructured. I have a case I am handling for a client that we filed the appeal in 2006 in the Supreme Court. I have been told by apex court that it is not my turn to get a date for hearing, that currently it is treating 2004 appeals. So you can imagine the backlog that we have. And the list keeps enlarging everyday. How can Nigeria have a single Supreme Court sitting? It is not possible.

Then what is your advice on this?

Divide the Supreme Court according to the zones, at least 200 judges with 10 panels- sitting everyday to avoid conflict of decision. Those panels, one day the Chief Judge (CJ) would say “go to the South-East zone- sit in Port Harcourt and treat all appeals coming from Enugu, Calabar and other states. When you dispose of them, then return to Abuja.”

The CJ can send another panel, go to South-West and do the same thing.  How can you be asking people to come to Abuja from Lagos everytime they have a case in Supreme Court and they get there only to see that the court is not sitting. You have wasted money on flight and hotel. These are not the faults of judges, they are overwhelmed.

And when the politicians saw this, what they just did was to take away their cases and made a law by amending the constitution, saying that every matter that involves election petition must be handled and finished in 180 days. So they removed their own cases out of the glut, out of the problem.

Commercialdispute

Now once they file their election petitions, you will see the judges rushing to finish it in 180 days. The politicians have taken away their own interest and that is selfishness.   The EFCC cases, landlord/tenant, commercial dispute, husband and wife matter, all these cases are hanging. Immediately election petition comes, it will be taken out. That is not a solution! It is selfish bye-pass which has brought us back to where we are.

Also, judges should be made to retire into peace. Justice Funke Adekeye, when she was reading her final speech on the day she was retiring, she was lamenting that she is retiring without a roof over her head, without a house. This is a judge of the Supreme Court, a judge who rose to the highest rank in the land, has no bedroom to retire to. How do you want such a person not to be corrupt, if having another chance.

I think the system itself is just talking about corruption just to please international community. If this government is serious about fighting corruption, there should be evidence of it translating into a revamping revival of the judicial system. They should give the same attention they gave to the National Assembly to the judiciary.

Average senator

Take an average senator and look at the number of Personal Assistants he has, look at his salary too. Compare what a senator earn to what a judge earn, and we will say we are fighting corruption. We are not ready but just deceiving ourselves. I have not seen that evidence of really fighting corruption.

In Section 14 of the Constitution states that sovereignty belongs to the people, is that really the case now in Nigeria?

That same section also stated that government shall derive its power and authority from the people.  What that means is that, in good settings like America, UK and others- where power belongs to the people and they exercise it during elections, the leadership is always accountable because they know that in the next dispensation if they take up policies that are unpopular the people will speak through their vote.

But in our own system here, where God-fathers determine who rules, or where the ballot is not counting, where the political parties sit down and lord it over the people, we won’t have respect for human rights. When the leaders get into office, they do not feel accountable to the people; they feel accountable to their God-fathers, sponsors and thread upon the rights of the people. They also trample upon constitutional guaranteed rights and get away with it.