By Chidi Odinkalu
On February 27, 2024, Nigeria’s National Judicial Institute, NJI, in Abuja opened a continuing education course for judges. The opening featured an address by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Olukayode Ariwoola, who invited the participants to eschew “unethical conduct that could expose the judiciary to ridicule.” Beneath his text, it seemed as if the Chief Justice desired to warn the participants to stay away from interfering with a brief that he has chosen to make entirely his own. Under his watch, judicial appointments in Nigeria have become farcical.
The fortnight before this address, it emerged that the CJN’s daughter-in-law, Oluwakemi, was at the top of a list of 12 nominees to fill judicial vacancies in the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT. In the preceding six months, he had also appointed his son, Kayode Jr., as a judge of the Federal High Court; elevated his nephew, Lateef, to become a Justice of the Court of Appeal; and made his own blood brother, Adebayo, the auditor of the National Judicial Council, NJC, which he chairs in his capacity as the CJN. With this CJN’s retirement from office due on August 22, 2024, the concerted effort to anoint his daughter-in-law to the bench would presumably showcase his credentials for gender equity within his family. Let’s not digress though.
That these appointments have occurred when they did is no coincidence.
They are spoils of office for the CJN. Nor is it any coincidence that the same
list that proposes the CJN’s daughter-in-law for appointment as a judge of the
High Court of the FCT also contains the names of the daughters of the Chief
Judge of the FCT, Hussaini Baba-Yusuf; and of Ariwoola’s predecessor in the
office of the CJN, Ibrahim Muhammad Tanko.
As a federal institution,
however, section 14(3) of Nigeria’s Constitution requires that appointments to
the High Court of the FCT “shall be carried out in such a manner as to reflect
the federal character of Nigeria and the need to promote national unity, and
also to command national loyalty, thereby ensuring that there shall be no
predominance of persons from a few State or from a few ethnic or other
sectional groups in that Government or in any of its agencies.” If these
nominations in favour of the children of the Chief Judge of the FCT and the CJN
were to be implemented, then their respective states, Kogi and Oyo, will have
three judges on the bench of the court while a state like Ebonyi would have
none.
It requires no original
insight to understand that this kind of outcome is hardly compatible with the
requirements of Federal Character. Sadly, the senior judges who are supposed to
protect this high constitutional value are the people willfully endangering it.
Last month, Azubuike Oko, a lawyer from Ebonyi State, sued accusing the CJN and the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court of unconscionable insider-dealing in judicial appointments. In response to the suit, the CJN and his satrap in the FCT High Court did not bother to confront the serious allegations levelled against them. Instead, they sought to disqualify Mr. Oko from litigating the issue by arguing that he lacked the standing to sue, claiming, contrary to a long line of relevant jurisprudence, that he had not suffered any personal injury.
On March 15, the Federal
High Court in Abuja presided over by Inyang Ekwo, upheld these shameful
objections by the CJN and the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court. According to
the judge, in order to establish standing to question this high racketeering in
judicial office by the two officials responsible for stopping it, Mr. Oko
needed to show “how the appointment being considered by the defendants has
affected him as a person…. This, he would have done, by showing that he applied
to be considered by the defendants for appointment but he was ‘routinely
excluded and marginalized.” How he was supposed to show this in a situation in
which the CJN and the heads of courts who work under him will not allow a fair
and credible process of judicial recruitment, only the judge can tell.
This is the latest in a
line of cases in which senior judges use their offices to steal judicial
appointments for their children or mistresses and then use lower court judges
to make it legal. In 2020, the Justice Reform Project, JRP, an entity
comprising several Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs, sued to restrain former
President, Muhammadu Buhari, from going forward with the appointment of 21
persons to the bench of the High Court of the FCT who, according to the JRP,
“failed to meet the mandatory requirements under the NJC Procedural Rules.”
That round of hires, like the latest, was bounty for judicial insiders. On
September 30, 2020, Okon Abang, then a judge of the Federal High Court, ruled
that the “JRP lacked the legal right to challenge the NJC’s actions and that
the National Industrial Court and not the Federal High Court was the proper
court to approach as it was an employment-related case.”
The appeal by the
JRP against this judgement has been pending since November 24, 2020. Meanwhile,
for his efforts, Okon Abang got elevated to the Court of Appeal in October 2023
along with the nephew of the Chief Justice.
The JRP are not the
only SANs openly scandalised by what the CJN and his colleagues are doing with
judicial appointments. In January 2024, seven SANS from Kogi State sued the
State Chief Judge, Josiah Majebi, and the Kogi State Judicial Service
Commission, alleging egregious perversions in the nominations into high court
vacancies in the state, including the nomination of a wife of the then outgoing
governor of the State, Amina, whose only claim to the nomination appeared to be
her marital relationship with the then incumbent in the office of the Governor.
The SANs effectively claimed that the effort by the Chief Judge of Kogi State
and the Judicial Service which he chairs, to nominate Amina Bello as a judge of
the Kogi High Court was meant as a parting gift to the state governor, who was
term-limited, making it clear that this was not a lawful or relevant factor in
the exercise of powers of judicial appointment.
While this case is pending, the NJC has suspended the process of
appointment of new judges in Kogi State. In neighbouring Edo State, however,
the appointment of new judges is suspended by the ego of Governor Godwin Obaseki.
In June 2023, the NJC approved the appointment of eight new judges to the High
Court of Edo State. Over eight months later, the Governor has refused to
consent to their appointment or to swear them in. Adaze Emwanta, a former
Commissioner in Governor Obaseki’s cabinet, sued late last year seeking to
compel the Governor to formalise these appointments.
A manifestly unwilling
Governor Obaseki has chosen instead to use the case as his excuse for refusing
to appoint them. While the case pends, these judicial nominees waste. Because
they have been nominated as judges, they can no longer undertake legal work to
subsist or earn. But because they have not yet been formally appointed as
judges, they cannot be paid in that role. In effect, Governor Obaseki does more
than merely choose not to appoint them as judges. He has chosen to destitute
them and ruin their lives.
While all these
scandals unfold, the leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, under the
presidency of Yakubu Maikyau, SAN, has chosen to toe the path of eloquent
silence. The president of the NBA is a member of the National Judicial Council
and he is entitled to nominate three other representatives of the Association
into that body. For the record, the stated motto of the NBA supposedly is
“promoting the rule of law”.
Odinkalu, a lawyer and a teacher, can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu
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