By Steve Sun

‎Professional “Conduct” as the name implies, has to do with those things, which members of any given profession have to be mindful of, so as not to bring the profession into disrepute.
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‎A male lawyer for instance, can sleep with his female client even if she’s married.
‎This type of conduct is certainly morally condemnable, but will not be classified as professional misconduct.

‎Recently, there was actually a case of a female lawyer who was doing a divorce matter for her female client and then went ahead to marry the ex-husband of her female client immediately after the divorce.🤪😂
‎One woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure indeed.🤪😂😂
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‎If a male gynaecologist on the other hand, sleeps with his patient, whether she’s married or not and whether it’s consensual or not, he can land himself in serious trouble with the authorities, including of course the MDCN.
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‎Conversely, if a sick patient gives five thousand dollars in cash to his medical doctor for safekeeping and along the line, the doctor uses $1k for an emergency; he can always return the money to his patient later and it won’t be a problem; but as a lawyer, you dare not tamper with your client’s money which happens to be in your possession! You could get yourself disbarred.
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‎Upskilling or CPD, on the other hand, has nothing to do with professional conduct as Chief Ozekhome SAN recently opined in his well-considered treatise.
‎Incorporating the so-called MCPD into our Rules of Professional Conduct is therefore evidently ultra vires the powers of the NBA and/or the GCB; and we shall soon be asking the FCT High Court to so hold.
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‎There is, however, a bifurcation of the Legal Profession, unlike the medical profession.
‎There is the Bar and there is the Bench.

‎Of course, an incompetent lawyer can do irreparable damage to a case, but if a client realizes that a lawyer is incompetent, such incompetent counsel can be debriefed and a more competent lawyer will take over; but if a litigant realizes that a Judge is incompetent, there’s little or nothing that can be done. You can only apply for reassignment or recusal on grounds of bias and not on grounds of perceived incompetence.
‎An incompetent Judge is therefore a serious danger to the general public, unlike an incompetent lawyer.

‎That is why Niki Tobi, Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria (of blessed memory) stated that the law is the Judge’s clientele.
‎The full quote goes as follows: There are times when counsel ask for a relief with the full knowledge that the law is not on the side of his client. In such a situation, counsel merely tests the legal strength of the Judge, who in his capacity as the unbiased umpire and master and expert of the law, should give judgment according to the law. While the parties are the clients of the lawyers, the law is the Judge’s, clientele and constituency and he must apply it properly without fear or Favour. That is the oath he took on the day he was sworn in as a Judge qua judex. See Inakoju & Ors,. v. Adeleke & Ors. (2007), 4 NWLR (Part 1025) 423.
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‎The point being made, therefore, is that MANDATORY CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT should be for the bench and not for the Bar.

‎While CPD should be encouraged for the Bar, it should be mandatory for the Bench, because a lot could go wrong when society is confronted with Magistrates, Judges and Justices who are not very competent. Because why should some Justices now upend the Marriage Act by suggesting that the Act allows polygamy for Muslims?
‎NO, IT DOESN’T!
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‎The NBA, as a major stakeholder in the justice sector, should therefore channel its energy and resources towards strengthening the National Judicial Institute (NJI) so that our courts (especially our superior courts) can be armed with the much-needed requisite expertise and so that they can evolve with the times and not be left behind.
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‎Of course, we all know that the NBA’s aggressive push for the so-called MCPD obviously has to do with beefing up their revenue stream and nothing more!Nevertheless, it’s important to x-ray the legal arguments for the unsuspecting members of the legal profession and indeed for the benefit of the unsuspecting members of the general public.
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‎Let lawyers breathe.
‎Thanks for your attention.
‎
‎Steve Sun🌞
‎President/Founder, ADLAW.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chinedu Agu

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CHAIRMAN, NIGERIAN BAR ASSOCIATION, OWERRI.

There was once a town where a chief priest was the custodian of truth and justice. The people looked up to him to speak whenever evil men defiled the land. But when thieves began to plunder the market, he said nothing. When warriors began to terrorise widows and orphans, he turned his eyes away. Seeing that the one who ought to speak was silent, the wrongdoers grew bolder, their hands heavier, their cruelty without shame. In time, the people began to whisper: “If the custodian of truth no longer speaks, then truth itself is dead.” Thus, the town sank deeper into rot, not because evil was powerful, but because the voice that should have rebuked it chose to remain mute. And as the Latin maxim reminds us, corruptio optima pessima est — the corruption of the best is indeed the worst.

Prof. Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature, captured this tragedy in words that ring louder with each passing day: “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” The graveyard of nations is filled not merely with the bones of tyrants, but with the silence of men who should have spoken.

Mr. Chairman, I write with a heavy heart because silence, especially the silence of the Nigerian Bar Association Owerri Branch, has become deafening in the face of judicial desecration in Imo State. Our bar, once the bastion of courage, now carries the burden of complicity through its muteness. And as it is said in our villages, when the flute refuses to play in the festival, the masquerade dances awkwardly. Today, governance in Imo State dances awkwardly because we, the Bar as a pressure group, have refused to play the flute.

Imo State groans today under the weight of the collapse of the justice sector:

1. Since May, we have had no Attorney-General, the chief law officer of the State, as though the law itself is in exile.
2. Since 15 November 2024, there has been no Acting Chief Judge, a travesty unknown to any constitutional democracy.
3. Vacation Courts, which serve as the last refuge for the oppressed during recess, are absent, leaving our people to the cruel jaws of detention without trial.
4. The Tiger Base Unit of the Nigerian Police now struts about like a militia, detaining, brutalising, and humiliating citizens with reckless abandon, knowing that there is no functioning judiciary to check their excesses.

Yet, Mr. Chairman, in all these, NBA Owerri has chosen to stand aloof, as though silence is a mark of wisdom, when indeed silence here is nothing but cowardice dressed in borrowed robes.

I dare say: if Owerri Bar cannot rise when the judiciary is in chains, when will it rise? If it cannot speak when citizens are brutalised without access to courts, when will it speak? If it cannot defend the sanctity of the justice system, then of what use is its toga of nobility?

It is for this reason, Mr. Chairman, that I urge you: do not wait until the next monthly General Meeting. Summon an emergency meeting of the branch this week, where these matters will be placed squarely before the Bar. Justice delayed is justice denied; so too, action delayed is action lost.

Mr. Chairman, let me remind you that the noble motto of the Nigerian Bar Association is “Promotion of Rule of Law.” This is not a hollow chant for banners and letterheads; it is a solemn charge that we, as officers in the temple of justice, must live out daily. To promote the rule of law is to resist lawlessness, whether it comes from government, police, or even the judiciary itself. To promote the rule of law is to speak when others are gagged, to act when others are paralysed. It is to rise tall where others crouch in compromise.

This is why I titled this letter, “Time for NBA Owerri to Stand Out and Stand Tall, or Henceforth Remain a Timid Dwarf.”

History will not forgive a Bar that refused to stand out when its people were devoured. Posterity will not remember us for our dinners, AGC appearances, or football trophies; it will remember us for whether we stood tall when justice was on its knees.

Mr. Chairman, it is time to choose:

Will NBA Owerri continue to be a timorous dwarf, hiding in the shadows of compromise, or will it stand out and stand tall as the conscience of the society?

Will you, as Chairman, choose the applause of transient political masters, or the enduring honour of history’s verdict?

Will you remain silent, waiting for another voice, or will you, like the trumpet in the night, rouse the conscience of the Bar and the people?

The NBA in Owerri must demand the immediate swearing-in of the Acting Chief Judge; the immediate appointment of not just a constitutionally-qualified but also suitable lawyer as the Attorney-General; and the dismantling of the Tiger Base terror machinery. Anything less is a betrayal of our oath, our calling, and our history.

And if these demands are not met in seven (7) days, then the Bar must wield its ultimate weapon of protest: a total boycott of the courts in Imo State, upon resumption. For what courts do we attend when there is no Chief Judge? What justice do we seek when the seat of the chief law officer is untenanted? What dignity do we preserve when the police are the only judges in town? To continue to file processes and argue motions in such a hollow system is to confer legitimacy on illegality.

Sometimes silence is treason, but at other times, continued participation in a charade is complicity.

We cannot forget that in not-so-distant times, when the administration of Owelle Rochas Anayo Okorocha trampled heavily on the rule of law in Imo State, the administrations of NBA Owerri then stood firm and resisted the onslaught. Those Chairmen — from Ama Akalonu to S.C. Imo, SAN, from L.U.N. Nwakaeti to D.O. Nosike — refused to bend, and in doing so, they wrote the name of the branch, and theirs in gold. That proud legacy is what gives weight to the name “NBA Owerri” today.

It is that tradition of standing out, standing tall, and rejecting dwarfism that must not be lost, for once a Bar that once stood tall learns to crouch, it risks being remembered only for its silence.

To remain quiet in times such as this is to endorse tyranny. To speak is to stand tall, even if alone. And as it is said, the tree that refuses to bend in the storm is not weak—it is remembered as strong.

Mr. Chairman, the choice is yours: Stand out and stand tall, or henceforth remain a timid dwarf.

Chinedu Agu
Past Secretary, NBA Owerri and Member, Advisory Council.
7 September, 2025.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Lasisi Olagunju

Why did Bola Tinubu offend Nasir El-Rufai? He should have kept him. There are three principalities the Yoruba dread to offend: The first is Osó (wizard), the second is Àjé (witch); the third is the most dreaded, their name is Aláròká. How do I translate that into English? I cannot, but you will get to know what it means when you hear the Yoruba say: Eni gbé adìẹ òtòsì, ó gbé ti aláròká (Whoever steals a poor man’s chicken has stolen from the one who will shout about it from street to street). The proverb is a warning against having as enemies those who have legs, and have mouths and who thrive on noise.

On Sunday last week, El-Rufai was his oppositional best on Channels Television, levelling allegations, issuing threats and giving assurances. The state breeds and feeds terrorists and bandits for political gain, he claimed. That was on Sunday. On Friday, he went one step further. If he had been told two years ago that he would be in a church against his Muslim brother, the president, El-Rufai would have said “A‘ūdhu billāhi mina sh-shayṭāni r-rajīm (I seek refuge in Allah from the accursed devil).” But he was in a church in the South-East last Friday doing just that, suited up like a pastor, preaching sermons of democracy and deliverance and promising to lower the flag of today’s lord in the Villa. That is the problem with all aláròká; once they start, they don’t stop unless and until they are done. This one will not stop. Where he will be today, and tomorrow and what message he will carry depends on what the Nigeria police do with him. He has been asked to submit himself to the law, allegedly for being rude to the law.

The government will soon learn that neither police invitation nor detention can sew up the honker’s lips. In my part of the country, we say there is no armour against the bullets of aláròká. Never fight or underestimate the aláròká; he is the one whose voice multiplies and complicates a quarrel until the whole village hears. Huffing and puffing, and talking and threatening are El-Rufai’s strongest weapon against his victims. His present noise and the threats his cries contain are the consequences for Tinubu’s ditching of Nasir, his friend and ally. When you offend someone who looks small, you may in fact have provoked the person who has the loudest voice.

The police inviting him won’t shut him up. That was exactly the undertone when Nasir said on that TV programme: “I am not afraid of anybody. I say my mind and I don’t look back.” In those words, he defined himself as the quintessential aláròká, the one whose voice ensures that an injury does not die in silence.

So, President Tinubu and his minders would be mistaken if they thought a cheap police invitation would defeat ‘small-body-big-engine’ Nasir. Whoever has crossed El-Rufai has not just taken a poor man’s chicken; the person has, knowingly or unknowingly stirred up the town-crier who will not stop shouting until everyone knows the story of the soup that burnt down the whole house.

Now, jilted El-Rufai is determined to undo what he did for Tinubu in 2023. That is the role he has chosen for himself. He does this street to street, city to city, dismantling the myth of Tinubu’s invincibility. He now waxes prophetic: “In the 2027 elections, the worst-case scenario is a runoff, and Bola Tinubu will not be on that ballot. At best, he will place third. He has no viable pathway to victory. I’ve done the maths, I’ve done the analysis; it’s simply not there.” He said that and then added the dagger: “He can continue deceiving himself, thinking, ‘I have money, I have INEC, I have the police, I have the army.’ Well, President Tinubu, go and invite ex-President Goodluck Jonathan for a chat. Ask him if he didn’t also have all these in 2015, and yet we removed him. Is the situation similar today? It’s worse.”

But, I am worried. And you should be, too. How innocent is El-Rufai in the rottenness of the system he is complaining about? He could be genuinely clean; he could be genuinely filthy. But if his hands are not clean, shouldn’t he first confess and seek forgiveness before wearing the tunic of the messiah? The Bible’s St. Luke (18:10-14) tells of “Two men (who) went up into the temple to pray: One said, ‘God I thank thee that I am not as other men’; and the other smote upon his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner.’” What was God’s response to the two sinners? Reading it is so instructive as we navigate the dangerous waters of Nigeria with its feuding political elite.

These days, the jilted are rebelling with daring moves and statements. The government is reacting, it is blocking rallies, north and south, and issuing summons. For now, we hear charges of betrayal; tomorrow it may be treason. These things are not new. People in government have historically seen opposition to them as either an act of betrayal or treason or both. They can be both right and wrong; most times wrong. We learnt from ‘Tyranny of The Minority’ authored in 2023 by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, Harvard professors of government, that in the early years of the United States’ democracy, “the very existence of partisan opposition was regarded as illegitimate. Politicians, including many of the founders (of America) equated it with sedition and even treason.” Indeed, in 1798, the US Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts “which were used to jail opposition elements and newspaper editors.” The jailed were labeled betrayers. But the repression did not last. It, in fact, blew up in the face of its makers in 1800, just two years after that law was enacted. You ask how? The government lost the 1800 election; the disgusted American voter, for the first time, elected the opposition Democratic-Republicans. You can try, like me, to read that book, particularly Chapter One; its title is: ‘Fear of Losing’. If you are from my country, you will appreciate the details, especially if you also know that those authors also wrote ‘How Democracies Die.’

Betrayal is despicable; treason is evil. American Associate professor of history, Sally Shockro, in her ‘ Blessed Betrayal’ warns that “in a culture centred on honour, a betrayal diminishes the status of the perpetrator, and often the victim as well, destroying the personal fortunes of those involved along with the trust of the community.” Now, can I quickly add this: “if the institutions of power are corrupt, is resistance an act of betrayal or an act of loyalty to the greater good?” This question forms part of the reasoning in Larissa Tracy’s ‘The Shameful Business of Betrayal and Treason.’ The author who asks that question is a professor of Medieval Literature at Longwood University, United States. You can answer the question based on where you stand and on what you stand on. I wish we could pose it to the feuding lords of our manor and know where we and the state stand in their estimation.

They are fighting over the spoils and loot of the last war. The shut-out feel betrayed, genuinely so; now they are all out to crash the temple of power. In Crystal Parikh’s ‘An Ethics of Betrayal’, we are reminded that ‘betrayal’ as a “crime provides its own punishment” and that “where traitor feeds upon traitors, betrayal exacts its own self-consuming vindication.” If Tinubu had not offended El Rufai, we would not have been hearing the secrets we hear these days; very dark secrets couched as bad, wicked allegations. First, El-Rufai on national TV accused the ruling APC and its government of financing bandits and terrorists as weapons of politics. Nasir said this and provoked his kinsman from Kaduna, Datti Baba-Ahmed, into making a counter appearance on the same TV platform. From Datti Baba-Ahmed, we heard what the forest heard that deafened it. The man told Channels TV’s Seun Okinbaloye on Tuesday last week that insecurity in Nigeria is “orchestrated and is political.” He said Nasir El-Rufai shouldn’t be the one crying wolf; he said the man belongs in the pack of the implicated wolves.

Hear him: “Do we understand the gravity of his statement?…What I am about to say is that insecurity is part of APC; insecurity has been APC’s way of getting power. Insecurity has been APC’s way of staying in power.” He then went into accounts which I pray must not be true. He said, without mentioning names, that a former Nigerian president met with and collected huge sums of money from the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, to sponsor extremists in Nigeria’s North-East. Hear him: “Go back in time. Do you remember that a former Nigerian president was attacked by terrorists? It was unprecedented; never in the history of Nigeria did that happen. Why did some young men in the forest in the North-East…what business did they have (with him)? When Nigerian leaders leave power, they are liked, they are loved, they are forgiven all their errors and everything. But, this one, they followed and tried to kill him. Why did that happen?” He asked, paused and feigned crying. Then he continued: “What happened to all the donations leading up to 2015? Why did he decide to run in 2015 after crying and telling the whole world that he was no longer running? What was his link with North Africa? What was his link with Muammar Gaddafi? He is not alive, but others are alive to say it.

“I told you about 2015…you see… going after a former president and trying to kill him, what does that tell you? Before that, what had happened? After Jonathan won at the Supreme Court in 2011, the government called for dialogue (with the terrorists) and those young men nominated (the) former Nigerian president. It took three days to repudiate (that nomination). After those three days, go and plot the graph, you will see that between 2012 and 2014, the number of attacks in the North-East skyrocketed.” Datti Baba-Ahmed blamed the escalated terrorist attacks of that period on what he called “hunger, (and) lack of medicine (for the terrorists).” Why? “Because somebody had stopped sending the recurrent expenses of those people who used to come to Kaduna, collect (money) and go back.” He alleged (or claimed) that the funding was stopped as a punitive measure for the young men’s indiscretion of publicly naming their covert funder as their negotiator with the government. “That’s how the cycle went, in protest against ‘why did you call out that name (as your negotiator).’ They (terrorists) couldn’t bear it (hunger) anymore, so they felt the best thing was to go and attack (him). It failed; we are lucky… Jonathan provided him (the former president) with additional cars and money. And it was all about money; all about collecting money.

“The truth is that someone had gone to North Africa and negotiated with Gaddafi; Gaddafi who was an international terrorist said ‘I will help you as I have been doing… I will retire to your country if you become president… He wanted to create a buffer in Nigeria. They gave crazy amount of money to that gentleman (the former president) to go and help these people with the intention of bringing them to fight in Libya. When Gaddafi died, ‘they’ sat on the money. They kept on (giving) the recurrent until (the terrorists) mentioned the name and then they stopped sending the money. Now, all these things are linked. They wanted Nigeria to burn if Buhari did not become the president in 2015. They brought people from neighbouring countries in readiness, to remove Jonathan by all means. The desperation to get Jonathan out of power built up and added to what we call insecurity in Nigeria today.” That is Datti Baba-Ahmed saying all those things after the man who was allegedly involved has died. I heard people asking why he did not say those things when the man was here. I wonder too.

Why did he have to wait till El-Rufai said his own before saying his own? And immediately he left the TV studio, someone in their party, Hon Farouk Adamu Aliyu, came in, sat where Datti sat and pointed fingers at Datti too as a disciple of the ex-president he had just accused of financing terrorism.

The you-be-terrorist-I-no-be-terrorist diatribe should lead us to ask who really these people who have been leading us are. Could it be that people who are supposed to be in the dock have all along been the court? Nigeria has faced unremitting violent insurgencies for decades. It ranks 6th on the 2025 Global Terrorism Index and accounts for 6% of global terrorism deaths in 2023. That is according to the Global Community Engagement & Resilience Fund (GCERF). Hundreds of people have been killed and millions more displaced, and the end is not yet. Now, we hear claims, accusations and confessions from these gentlemen that the cause of everything was politics and quest for power.

Whatever is the worth of the long English of the three political leaders from northern Nigeria, it should get us thinking as a nation in dire need of peace and security. Can the agencies in charge of our security and safety ‘collaborate’ with these gentlemen (Datti Baba-Ahmed and Nasir El-Rufai) to draw up an action plan for us to defeat the enemy? Those two guys sounded like they knew too much. It becomes real when you hear Datti declaring that what he said was just about 10 percent of what he had in his belly, begging to be released. How and when will he be released of the remaining 90 percent? It took Tinubu’s non-accommodation of El-Rufai to make the man angry and say what he shouldn’t say; it took a provocative statement by El-Rufai to draw out Datti Baba-Ahmed. Then Adamu Aliyu. They’ve all been in government, yet it appears we do not know them. Who really are they?

Warts and all, each of them still seeks to sleep with us. We are a nation of helpless landlords who must open their door at midnight to bloody invaders. “They say in Yoruba, Ìjàmbá ṣ’olè bí onílé bájí (The thief is in danger if the landlord awakes). But today, the landlord is in danger if he does not open the door for the thief.” That is classic helplessness – or surrender; an inversion or transposition of order and orderliness. University of Michigan art history professor, David T. Doris, has the above quote in his ‘Vigilant Things’ (2011). He goes on to sum up our situation in words of exasperation: The world has turned upside down (Ayé ti d’orí k’odò).

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

When the House of Lords, as the upper chamber of the UK Parliament is called, debated the Courts Bill introduced by the government of Edward Heath in December 1970, Lord Hailsham was in the Woolsack as the Lord Chancellor. His father, the first Viscount Hailsham, had served his first tour of duty in the same position a mere 42 years earlier. As the debate proceeded on the bill, Lord Hailsham reminded the prospective judge to “approach the Bench with the enthusiasm of a bridegroom approaching marriage, or of a priest approaching priesthood.”

In the British system, the relationships entailed between a groom and his spouse or a priest with his Bishop, excluded multiple partners or patrons; but just as alimentary wellbeing has always been celebrated as the key to the heart of a spouse, politicians intent on cultivating intimate relations with the judiciary disregard judicial independence and invest financially in the appurtenances of judicial wellbeing

In 1992 Matthew Ngulube became the Chief Justice of Zambia, the first to be appointed since the country transitioned from one-party rule. The president was Frederick Chiluba. Ngulube arrived the Chambers of the Chief Justice with credentials that looked impeccable. One and a half decades earlier, he had served as President of the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ), the country’s Bar Association.

Ngulube served as Chief Justice for one decade, presiding over some momentous decisions and transitions in Zambia’s judicial and constitutional history. During this period, he became well known around the Commonwealth as a spokesman for judicial integrity. Outside public view, his record stank.

On 28 June 2002, President Levy Mwanawasa, successor to President Chiluba and, himself also a former president of the LAZ, accepted the resignation of Chief Justice Ngulube. The facts that emerged were shocking.

As Chief Justice, Ngulube was in fact in the payroll of President Chiluba and “received thousands of dollars from a special account managed by Xavier Chungu, former intelligence chief and ex-president Frederick Chiluba’s top security adviser”, amounting to over $168,000. This was a lot of money in a poor country at the time and indeed more than the “equivalent to the Zambian government’s annual funding to a single government department.” From the proceeds of this financial intimacy, Chief Justice Ngulube separately built “a nearly-completed mansion on the eastern fringes of Lusaka, whose cost is estimated at about 700 million kwacha (about 149,000 dollars).”

These payments enabled the government of President Chiluba to buy favorable decisions from the court of Chief Justice Ngulube. The investigations reportedly revealed that the government used him “to subvert the course of justice in all cases involving Chiluba and his aides during the past ten years of his administration.

52 years earlier, in the debate on the High Court and County Judges Bill in the United Kingdom House of Commons in May 1950, Mr. Marlowe, a member of parliament, explained that it was impossible “for a High Court judge to discharge his functions properly if he knows that during the day, he will sit on the Bench with a prisoner in the dock before him and later in the evening may be sitting side by side with the prisoner in the bus.”

When they are not concerned about gifting houses to judges, politicians in Nigeria, for instance, seem overly concerned with the cars that the judges drive. On the last day of July 2025, Adamawa State Governor, Umaru Fintiri, gave away 23 sub-urban utility vehicles (SUVs) to judges in the state as an expression of his “unwavering commitment to strengthening the justice system.”

Governor Fintiri was the latest governor to advance this practice of conducting executive intimacy with judges on four wheels. In this he was merely following in the footsteps of his peer in neighbouring Borno State, Babagana Zulum, who had “donated” 19 cars to judges and Khadis in the state in January 2025 “, to enhance the judicial sector and ensure that our citizens have access to justice as we continue to recover from 16 years of insurgency.”

In one month between July and August 2024, Kogi State’s Governor Ahmed Ododo donated 25 SUVs in two instalments of 14 and 11 respectively to the Chief Judge, Josiah Majebi, for use by judges in the state, “with assurance to supply more soon so that it can go round all the Judges and magistrates operating in the state.” A mere eight months earlier, in December 2023, Governor Ododo’s benefactor and predecessor, Yahaya Bello, on the eve of his departure from office as Governor, had donated 40 SUVs to be shared equally between judges and legislators in the state.

When Catholic priest-turned-governor, Hyacinth Alia, gifted six new SUVs to judges in Benue State in May 2024, he claimed that he did it to enhance “judicial service delivery.”

Eight months earlier, in September 2023, his counterpart in Abia State, Alex Otti, handed over five SUVs to judges of the State High Court because they were reportedly in their fourth year of service in the role without official cars.

In July 2023, Anambra State Chief Judge, Onochie Anyachebelu, received 11 SUVs from the state government, “the first batch of official vehicles the Governor, His Excellency, Prof. Chukwuma Charles Soludo pledged to allocate to the Judicial Officers.” The Chief Judge thanked the governor “for being timely in commencing the fulfilment of his promise to the Judiciary to that effect, noting that the Judiciary’s expectations on him for the remaining vehicles are high.”

In August 2022, Ogun State governor Dapo Abiodun presented 13 SUVs to judges in the state “to enhance their welfare.”

In September 2020, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu handed over 51 SUVs and eight houses to judges in the state “as part of his vision to build a strong judiciary.”

In this, Governor Sanwo-Olu bettered his counterpart in Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, who, the previous month, in August 2020, gave 41 SUVs to judges in the state.

Three months earlier, in May 2020, his counterpart in neighboring Owerri, Hope Uzodinma, handed 20 to judges in Imo State to “motivate” them. He added 10 more in July 2024. 

In February 2020, then Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, gifted 24 SUVs to judges in Kaduna State.

In the five years since 2020, advocacy group, Citizen Gavel reckons that eight governors gifted at least 237 SUVs to judges in their respective states. This is a gross undercount.

The Nigerian Bar Association has complained that the practice of gifting cars to judges demeans the judiciary, impoverishes judicial office, and hollows out judicial independence.

In 2014, the Federal High Court ordered government at all levels to pay funds for the needs of the judiciary to the National Judicial Council (NJC). Compliance with this would have ended the undisguised importuning of judges with alimentary blandishments from the executive. 

Instead, the Federal Government has turned that into an art form and appears to have designated a Minister for the Welfare of Judges in all but name. This past week, the Minister, Nyesom Wike, “boasted that about 80 per cent of the accommodation problem bedevilling judges would have been solved before the end of the first tenure of President Bola Tinubu.”

The calibration of this pretence of executive magnanimity with the electoral cycle was an essential part of the announcement. Buying judges has become a central tool in the arsenal of political ascendancy in Nigeria. No one pretends to conceal the appearance of quid pro quo.

At the Annual Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Enugu at the end of last month, a judge from one of the neighboring states of south-east Nigeria was heard openly, fulsomely confessing the support of himself and his judicial colleagues for the present administration. He cited the increase in judicial salaries by over 300% and the increase in age of retirement of High Court judges and warned whoever cared to listen that any political competitors will not receive the support of judges in 2027. How many votes do judges have?

102 years ago, the High Court in England cautioned that it is essential that nothing is “done that creates even a suspicion that there has been an improper interference with the course of justice.” The role of the Ministry of Judges Welfare is to ensure precisely that the opposite is the new normal. He is doing well.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected]

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.