By Sonnie Ekwowusi
To affirm that the judiciary is corrupt is an understatement. The judiciary is not just corrupt; the men and women entrusted with the affairs of the judiciary are suffering from a huge character deficit. It is painful that our judiciary has been constituted into an object of derision by the very people who should labour to maintain its prestige.
The level of official corruption and moral degeneracy at both the Bar and the Bench is alarming. It seems as if the judiciary is beyond redemption.
While the Bench sickens for lack of moral renaissance, the Bar
fairs no better. Regrettably, many members of the Bar lack the lowest common
denominator of acceptable character.
As regards the judiciary workers often loosely referred to as the judicial personnel-court bailiffs, Chief Registrars, Assistant Chief Registrars (ACR), court clerks, court messengers, court cashiers, court stenographers and so forth- their lives are ruled and governed by the civil service bureaucratic extortion.
Oftentimes
whenever corruption of the judiciary is mentioned, our thoughts first go to the
magistrates and judges, forgetting that the judicial personnel who play an
essential role in the administration of justice are damned too corrupt.
A corrupt court staff can ruin your case before it even gets to
the Judge. He can, for instance, hide away your case file for refusing to
accede to his extortionist bid. So, the judicial personnel who perform
administrative tasks in the judiciary play an indispensable role in the
dispensation of justice.
I am sure you have watched the video clip circulating on social
media, exposing the day-to-day extortion and shady practices perpetuated by the
judicial personnel in our courts. Judicial personnel extort money from lawyers
and litigants before rendering them services which they rightly deserve.
For example, at the time of filing his case in court, a litigant
usually pays for the service of his court processes on the other party. But the
court bailiffs would not serve the court processes on that party until the
litigant pays them extortion ranging from N4,000 to N7,000.
This
explains why Busola Aro, a creative investigative journalist by profession,
volunteered to go to the Federal High Court, Ikoyi Lagos, Agege Magistrate
Court and the Ikeja High Court, Ikeja, Lagos with her hidden camera in order to
expose the layers of corruption in our judiciary.
Busola recounts how she got to Ikeja Magistrate Court and applied for a
certified true copy (CTC) of a particular court judgment. Thereafter Alhaja
Khaijat first directed her to see the Assistant Chief Registrar.
Upon her return, she (Khaijat) said to her: “If you want to get
the CTC today, you would have to mobilize people to help you look for it…You
ought to know what to do. Those people won’t work for free unless you are ready
to come back in two weeks”.
Anyway, the journalist ended up giving Khaijat the sum of the
N2,000 extortion fee. Of course, her hidden camera captured Khaijat collecting
the money from her and counting it in the open. Busola also narrated how she
applied for a CTC of a court judgment at the Federal High Court, Ikoyi, Lagos,
and, how the court official on duty at the material time looked at her and said
to her: “You came from a newspaper company. You people are rich.
ay
N20,000 or no judgment”. She also narrated how she went to the Federal High
Court, Ikoyi, a second time, and how one Olubodun, a staff of the court,
extorted the sum of N4,000 from her. She also narrated how she got to the Ikeja
High Court and was commanded by the staff of the court on duty to pay the sum
of N200 for photocopies. She promptly did and thought the extortion transaction
was over. But she was wrong. No sooner had she quit the court premises
than the court registrar called her and told her that she should pay the sum of
N5,000 to him for “hospitality”.
She promptly did and made sure that her hidden camera captured it.
Sad. Isn’t? Do we even need a Busola to tell us what we already know about our
judiciary?. I don’t think so. The high-level corruption and shady practices in
the judiciary are notorious facts requiring no proof by Busola. Not
infrequently, some court bailiffs refuse to serve court processes simply
because they were unable to extort money from the litigant or his counsel.
Many litigants and their counsel get to court only to discover to
their chagrin that their case files had either been misplaced or are completely
lost. These are administrative injustices which beget legal injustice or even
social injustice.
It
is sad that under the watch of the bar and
bench, court registrars, court clerks, court bailiffs, court
messengers etc, who play a vital role in the administration of justice in
Nigeria continue to set up layers and layers of corruption structures in order
to extort money from litigants and lawyers.
For instance, to obtain a certified true copy of
a court judgment or a court ruling, a court registrar would
extort not less than N5, 000 from you. To secure a hearing date at
the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court, the court
officials at those courts will extort about N15, 000 from you otherwise they
would inform you there are no more available hearing dates in the year.
To get the court bailiff to serve
your court process on the other party, you must give him not less
than N5, 000 otherwise he will never serve your process and even if he
grudgingly does so, he will not put the affidavit of service in
the court file until you pay him the extortion fee.
The most tragic is the inability of judgment creditors to reap the
fruit of their court judgment. After a judgment creditor had spent a
gruelling 6 to 10 years in court litigation, he gets a favourable court
judgment. But he cannot even levy execution against the judgment debtor because
the extortion fee for levying execution, at least in Lagos State judiciary,
ranges from N2.5 million to N4.5 million.
As has
been repeatedly re-echoed, corruption optimi pessima (The corruption
of the best is worst). The judiciary is not just any arm of government: it is
arguably the toast or lifeblood of other arms of government.
The corruption of the judiciary is the worst tragedy that can
befall a nation. So, it is high time the Bar and the Bench resolved to rid the
judiciary of corruption. It is not rocket science.
It is doable. To begin with, the court personnel who extorted
money from Busola should not only be relieved of their jobs but prosecuted as
well in the law court. Salus populi supema est lex. The welfare of the people
is the supremacy of the law.
Like Caesar’s wife, judges and Magistrates should learn to live
above board and not smear their hands with corruption and dirty dealings.
Judgeship should be reserved for the best and the brightest, not for
never-do-wells or for those who find it difficult to eke out a living in
private legal life.
The
current process of appointment and removal of judges in Nigeria is overdue for
a review. First, the process should be transparent. It should not be shrouded
in secrecy. Whenever a vacancy for the appointment of a judge exists in
any Judicial Division, it should be widely advertised to the public
so that interested lawyers should apply for consideration.
As done in some countries, candidates applying to be appointed
judges should be made to sit for a compulsory rigorous Bench
examination. The yearly continuing education program for Judges and
Magistrates should include such courses as basic logical reasoning processes,
basic psychology, legal ethics, basic writing skills and basic philosophy.
Lawyers should represent their clients ethically and professionally as officers
in the temple of justice.
Corrupt
judiciary personnel such as court bailiff, court clerks, court
messengers etc should be punished or disciplined regularly to serve as a
deterrent to others. Each NBA Branch should regularly compile the names of
corrupt judicial personnel for punishment.
It makes no sense to shield them because they portray the
judiciary in a bad light. Only an incorruptible and irreproachable judiciary
will steer us out of the muddy water presently reaching our knees and
threatening to drown us.
*Ekwowusi, a lawyer, is a member of The Guardian Editorial Board.
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