Following President Muhammadu Buhari’s complaint against the judiciary over alleged failure in their statutory duty regarding the prosecution of corrupt persons, the Special Adviser to the President on Prosecution, Okoi Obla, has blamed the development on alleged misconduct on the part of some lawyers in the rank of the Senior Advocates of Nigeria.
Obla said that the seeming incapability of the judiciary was caused by several unprofessional acts allegedly perpetrated by some of the SANs involved in the prosecution of many of the corruption cases.
President Buhari had recently lamented the slow pace at which the judiciary had been handling corruption cases before them, imploring them to sit up and discharge their responsibility as enshrined in the constitution.
But Okoi said, in most cases, the senior lawyers used their ranks to intimidate the judges handling cases involving their clients, adding that this had been the major reasons behind the delay in concluding many of the corruption cases.
He added that the Nigerian judiciary would have excelled in handling several corruption cases before the courts if they had been impartial in giving undue recognition to the senior lawyers, especially the SANs who he accused of using their rank to intimidate the judges while handling cases.
Okoi said, “Nigerian judiciary cannot achieve more than what we are seeing if the judges do not stop giving undue and unnecessary respect to the senior lawyers in the country. As a result of this, politicians and wealthy people in the society, having understood this, now parade a lot of SANs in court whenever they have cases.
“And at the end, the judge will be intimidated to the extent that he keeps adjourning the case. But if the case involves a poor man, you will never see such a thing; that is when you see the best of our judiciary, because the judge is not intimidated. But in a case that involves high ranking people like the governors, senators and others, you will see them parading SANs in order to have their ways.”
He, however, advised that the judges should ensure that cases before them were not adjourned more than five times before their final verdict.
But a SAN, Paul Ananaba, disagreed with Obla, saying that the clasims by Buhari’s aide was far from the truth.
“Such thing does not hap pen. Judges have power in their courts and no senior lawyer can intimidate them. They are capable, that is why they were made judges in their various courts,” Ananaba said.
Advancing reasons for the delay in dispensing with cases even after several adjournments, the SAN said, “In most cases, investigation and other findings are factors that are responsible for adjourned cases, because, as a lawyer, you have to do your finding thoroughly, if you want to defend your client very well.”
He also advised judges to avoid unnecessary relationship with the Executive arm of government.
