International human rights lawyer and judiciary expert Emmanuel Ogebe’s recently granted an interview to ARISE TV on the bombshell valedictory accusations and revelations by retiring Supreme Court Justice Dattijo Mohammed. Below is the transcript in which Ogebe made startling revelations and spoke freely on pertinent political and judicial issues.

Charles Aniagolu: Now, perhaps more than at any other time, the national focus has been on Nigeria’s judiciary, which is why that powerful valedictory speech by retiring justice of the Supreme Court, Musa Dattijo Muhammad, continues to rumble like a bombshell. In it, Justice Dattijo set out the forthright argument that Nigeria’s relative decline over the years has been in part as a result of corruption and nepotism in the judiciary, which in turn has led to a deterioration of the rule of law and the quality of the institution of the judiciary- a disease which has left Nigerians vulnerable to the corroding influence of injustice.

He talked about numerous other ills: the depleting number of justices at the Supreme Court, the non-representation of the North-Central and South-East zones on the bench, the lack of proper funding for judges and the negative image of the judiciary, which in terms of public opinion, is clearly at its lowest ebb. As a result, the Supreme Court, which should be the cure of this country’s many ills, the foundation stone of its development and its last hope, has itself degenerated into stagnating under development.

According to him, the fundamental reform of the judiciary must now be front and center for the National Judicial Council and the Chief Justice of Nigeria. But is there the reforming zeal to turn things around?

Over more of this, I’m joined now in the studio by the International Human Rights Lawyer, Emmanuel Ogebe, who’s also a pro-democracy advocate with the US Nigeria Law Group in Washington, and who’s been in this country to monitor the presidential election trial and the appeals process. Thank you very much indeed.

Emmanuel Ogebe: Always a pleasure Charles

Charles Aniagolu: We’ve heard that valedictory speech, which was delivered by Justice Dattijo Muhammad, which has had everybody talking. You’ve been a consistent advocate of judicial reform in Nigeria. You are of course, based in Washington, and that to some extent forms the urgency that you have placed on reforms. Yeah because when you compare it to the US judiciary, it falls absolutely flat on its face, doesn’t it?

Emmanuel Ogebe: Absolutely I mean, it was shocking. I was talking with a US uh, federal judge recently, and when I told him that even up to the Supreme Court of Nigeria, they take notes in court, he was stunned. And this judge had told me many years ago, that when he travels to lecture in countries like Nigeria, he’s always impressed by the number of bodyguards and the flashy cars that the judges have, but they don’t have the equipment that he has.

Charles Aniagolu: To actually do the Job.

Emmanuel Ogebe: To do the work yeah… extraordinary and he’s actually able to rule from his farm!

From his ranch, he can preside over proceedings so we, we are completely anti-deluvian- we’re antiquated, we’re obsolete in terms of modern judicial practice.

Charles Aniagolu: And in terms of what’s needed uh, or what needs to happen in the Nigerian judiciary in the short term, what do you think ought to change?

Emmanuel Ogebe: Well, the first thing is that the Nigerian Supreme Court is dying and Nigeria is dying with it and I say this because, for the first time, we have a Supreme Court that is so starved of personnel that they cannot constitute a quorum for two cases simultaneously.

Even the Court of Appeal, you know has, you know, dozens of panels because they have so many judges but the Apex Court that hears all these appeals cannot constitute quorum. Now, right now after Justice Dattijo Muhammed’s retirement, they’re down to 10, but it’s actually single digits because the Chief Justice barely sits; he is so busy with all the other offices, he has: chairman NJC and so on and so forth.

Charles Aniagolu: He’s become an administrator.

Emmanuel Ogebe: He’s completely an administrator. So at this point, you know, the court is on life support… now, the most shocking thing for me in his Lordship’s remarks was the marginalization of justices from the Southeast. I hadn’t heard that one before. And this is something I’ve studied for many years…

Charles Aniagolu: Well, he talks about the North Central.

Emmanuel Ogebe: He allso, but why I zeroed in on the Northeast is um…

Charles Aniagolu: The southeast…

Emmanuel Ogebe: On the Southeast rather, is that my dad in his autobiography…

Charles Aniagolu: And your father was of course, a Supreme Court justice

Emmanuel Ogebe: Like yours… Uh, but what he said is that in 1968 when he was called to the bar, it was in the middle of the Civil War. So there were no Igbos in law school in Lagos- that’s why historically there’s been a deficit of uh, southeastern judges in that class. But what happened is there was a good turnaround because after the Civil War, your dad became Chief Justice of Anambra State and went straight.

Charles Aniagolu: Well, he served as last chief judge of East Central, yes Chief of East Central State, first of Anambra State.

Emmanuel Ogebe: Yes and then went on to the Supreme Court yeah, so there was a turnaround. We had justice Oputa go to the Supreme Court, so there was a rebound, uh uh, like Alex Ekweme became vice president….So there was some rebound after the effects of the Civil War. The problem after that is that southeastern states today persecute their own judges. And so they don’t rise like northern judges do in the north- they sit down, they look for young, bright people, put them on the bench. In the southeast, lawyers want to practice and make money and retire to the bench and so you don’t have longevity on the bench. So those were systemic problems that occurred that limited the number of justices of the Southeast.

Charles Aniagolu: Well, that’s not what Justice Dattijo was talking about.

Emmanuel Ogebe: Yes so I’m giving the context of what the problem was before, but for him to say, now that there’s actual marginalization going on, the refusal to replace two southeastern justices who passed away, that shocked me! I have to tell you, I didn’t see that coming and he also mentioned of course, the North Central, that shocked me but the problem here is this, this is management failure on the worst possible level; every election year, we know when it’s gonna hold… we know that there’ll be uh, cases going up to the Supreme Court, that’s when you should fill all the slots of the Supreme Court! That’s not the time when you should have vacancies In the Supreme Court.

Charles Aniagolu: Yeah, that’s a good point and as you well know, um I mean you talked about elections there… Nigeria has been called out for quite some time yes, for Democratic backsliding…

Emmanuel Ogebe: Yes.

Charles Aniagolu: And for eroding standards for the rule of law; I mean, we’ve seen lots of contradictory rulings with regard to elections, and we’ve seen what’s going on in Rivers State at the moment, which looks pretty much like anarchy to me… yeah, yeah but there’s been really no institutional action.

Emmanuel Ogebe: Mm-Hmm….

Charles Aniagolu: To change that course, how much do such fundamental breaches of the rule of law threaten this country’s future?

Emmanuel Ogebe: So I would like to you know, start by saying two things: The first is that the courts have become no longer the last hope of the common man, but the last hoax of the uncommon politician – that’s the last trick they pull out of their hat and as we’ve seen it in recent cases… but is it any wonder that days after the Supreme Court gave a judgment that most people could not comprehend as the right conclusion, we begin to see anarchy in full swing in Rivers State? For example, I think we’re at what we call a Grabitocracy, which was of course you know, the ideology espoused by someone whom I wouldn’t name, who said, you should grab it and run with it….

That is what is happening. Now some, we have a former uh governor trying to grab, uh, power from someone who he grabbed it.

Is It power? You know? So you know, it it’s just going to the dogs. But let me say this, and this is what uh, is very painful; you’re talking about you know, what systemic or institutional intervention should that be? Guess what it is?

The judiciary! We’ve e been down this path before…. I’ll give you two quick examples: Look at what happened in Anambra State when Ngige was abducted by his godfather and forced to resign and this went to court, and the court said, you can’t do this stuff and they put him back in. And then Peter Obi challenged the election of Ngige, which obviously the Godfather had fraudulently acquired and successfully won and was put into power. So we’ve been down this road before.

Let me give you another example; you know, with what’s happening in Rivers… in Oyo state, we had a situation when a, where a couple of uh, legislators met in a hotel and impeached the governor, governor Ladoja, and the Court of Appeal said, this is not the way things work and they reversed it and put it back in. Now, ironically, I know these cases because there were cases in which my dad was involved m-hmm, and so we put a collection of his judgments together.

We haven’t published it yet, and we called it judgments that defined democracy. Now everything, all of that is being rolled back barely a week after the Supreme Court threw out essentially our jurisprudence, our election, and our constitutional law on these issues. So it’s not a surprise – this is the consequence of throwing away the essence of our civilization.

Charles Aniagolu: So, I mean we’ve heard Justice Dattijo as well as the likes of the former president of the Nigerian Bar Association, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, calling for the Chief Justice and the National Judicial Council to, uh, initiate urgent reforms…. Yes Mm-Hmm Um, do you think the judiciary itself can take steps to reform itself? Yeah. Or that, that simply won’t happen without pressure from the public, the executive arm of government, and perhaps with new laws from the legislature?

Emmanuel Ogebe: So well as I said, you know when I was here last week, it’s never about new laws; It’s the operators… a good judge makes a bad law good. A bad judge makes a good law bad. Now, let me give a couple of um, contextual background; we’ve had four justices retire since last year, and each of them said something unique that we should look at- they’re sending distress calls to us…

Charles Aniagolu: And it’s very important to listen to what they’re saying…

Emmanuel Ogebe: Exactly because in a 40-year career, this is probably the only time that you open up.

Charles Aniagolu: Yeah, absolutely.

Emmanuel Ogebe: You know, and the first one I was there for the Valedictory and Justice Echo said the Supreme Court should be investigated for corruption- I almost fell out of my seat!

I said, did I just hear a sitting judge say in front of his colleagues that the court should be investigated for corruption? There are two types of corruption I would define…. One is um, administrative corruption and judicial corruption mm-Hmm, he was referring to administrative corruption. The contracts in the Supreme Court are some of the most, you know, corrupt contracts, opaque in the country.

I was shocked when someone who worked in the National Assembly told me, look, the margins you make in the Supreme Court are bigger than anything we do here and so that has been a problem for years, and when you saw the fire in the Supreme Court, a Supreme Court staff said, our administrators should be investigated because the fire trucks are not working They’re corrupt. So we’ve all known about that.

That’s separate from judicial corruption, which is the handling of the cases so Justice Echo said that, and weeks later, all the other justices mutinied, and they had the CJN removed mm-hmm, he was he didn’t retire- he was forced out of office by the people who put him in there, but that’s the story for another day.

Then after that, we had Justice Amina Algi recently talk about the workload and how difficult it is. Now, my colleagues tell me that the workload is so demanding Right now there’s a 10-year backlog in the Supreme Court so they’re dealing with cases from 10 years ago and this year they’ve not dealt with any cases except Supreme Court…

Charles Aniagolu: Yeah. Because of the elections.

Emmanuel Ogebe: Exactly and so judges look for frivolous reasons to deny cases and not truly hear them on the merits and so the output, obviously is impacted by that.

A third judge, who I won’t call his name in his valedictory, announced to the world that he was best friends with Asiwaju with Atiku, and all of that, and all of us were stunned- Judges don’t brag about friendships with politicians! And then the final judge of the four is Justice Dattijo Muhamed, who has also called out administrative corruption because he feels that it is excessive to put all of these powers in the hands of one man and the chief justice is supposed to be first amongst equals

Charles Aniagolu: Absolutely. Like the Prime Minister of the UK.

Emmanuel Ogebe: Yeah you’re just a minister and you can be held to account by everybody else. But in Nigeria, the chief judges have tended to make themselves potentates, and that goes against everything that uh, they’re trained to be.

Charles Aniagolu: Yeah. Very very interesting analysis and you mentioned there the third justice…yes um, who talked about his relationship yes with the politicians…. Yeah do you think there’s still a long way to go because the governments of the day are simply not keen enough to give up their dominance on many rule of law fields as well as the judiciary?

Emmanuel Ogebe: Yeah so there is a real hesitance for reform – the justices who have spoken out obviously are pro-reform, that’s why they’re risking everything to say it. Although you’re not really risking much when you’re retiring and they’re on their way out.

Charles Aniagolu: You’re saying that, yeah. I mean, they, they’re on their way out, so you’ve got nothing to lose at that point.

Emmanuel Ogebe: But here’s something that’s quite fascinating… I was speaking with SAN, uh, Falana and we were talking about this political . . .

Charles Aniagolu: That’s Femi Falana; yes?

Emmanuel Ogebe: Yeah uh, these political judgments that are coming out of the Supreme Court that are very bizarre now, before now all of these cases ended at the Court of Appeal, the governorships. Now you have three bites at the pie because you have the tribunal, you have the court of appeal….Now, with the Supreme Court, a third layer was thrown in, he told me and I hope he's not embarrassed by this revelation, that it was lawyers and some judges who wanted to amend the constitution to allow, go to the Supreme Court so that they could earn more fees and earn more bribes and earn “SANships” because of the number of appearances you make. So it was the self-interest of a few people right, that has created the chaos that we have now in the system.

So is there pro-reform? I mean, there are people who are minded to reform, but judges do not have the opportunity to express this till they’re going out the door… we have to have a mechanism that allows judges to speak out early enough in the process yeah so that it can be fixed.

Charles Aniagolu: That’s a very good point and I want to thank you again, Emmanuel Ogebe it’s brilliant, um getting the benefit of your analysis there.

He Is of course, an international human rights lawyer, also a pro-democracy advocate with the US Nigeria Law Group in Washington and he’s been in Nigeria monitoring the presidential election trial and the appeals process. Thank you very much indeed.

Emmanuel Ogebe: Thank you, Charles.

Charles Aniagolu: That’s it for this edition…

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