Former member of the Nigerian Constituent Assembly, Sola Akinyede, in this interview, discusses the rot in the judiciary......CONTINUE READING THE ARTICLE FROM THE SOURCE>>>>>
Akinyede calls for the National Judicial Council, NJC, to be reconstituted, saying the NJC is abusing its powers. Excerpts:
You are one of those who have been quite vocal about the absolute need for judicial reforms in Nigeria. Why?
As a young lawyer, I remember when I finished studying law in England and my father wanted me to do a PhD. I said no. I had done a master’s. I wanted to come back to Nigeria because I knew there were a lot of opportunities. He was a lawyer and I joined him in his practice. By the time my son graduated from the United Kingdom also in 2006, he came here. I had forced him to come to Nigeria for his National Youth Service Corps, NYSC.
He did. But when he got here, he said there was no way he could practice here. He is back in the UK. When I was a student in England, the first time I heard of Justice Udo Udoma, I knew about him because his son was a classmate in King’s College. But the first time I read his judgment was in a British university. His judgment was cited in the British textbooks. So that shows the extent of the international regard that Nigerian jurists had. Today, you can not say that.
And I remember when Justice Dattijo Muhammad was making his valedictory statement, he alluded to that. The kind of decisions that the courts make, including the Supreme Court’s decision on Imo governorship election 2020, it is a decision that nobody can explain. And there are so many other decisions like that. Some of the decisions in respect of the primaries in 2023. Decisions like the Kano Emirate cases. A person who has been a lawyer for just two years knows that the Federal High Court has no jurisdiction in respect of chieftaincy matters.
But the case went on. The Chief Judge of the Federal High Court knows that. The judge to whom the case was assigned knows that. The senior advocate of Nigeria filing the case knows that, but the case went on. There is no serious country in the world where that happens. If you file a case meant for the family division in the UK in the chancellery, the judge in the family division will automatically transfer the case to the correct division. The…..CONTINUE READING THE FULL ARTICLE
