By Prof. R.A.C.E. Achara
Read the original report: As the Summit on Justice in Abuja ends today…
1st: “Appoint upright lawyers”.
A. How?
B. In granular detail, specify the steps for this and end with verifiable steps to decide who should be the righteous members of the team of appointors and how those you suggest are guaranteed to be better than those supported by the current political and thus constitutional and legal structure.
2nd: “… judges should be made to attend an annual conference on … logic, philosophy and metaphysics and the real meaning of justice. I can get excellent instructors…”
A. It’s important to make suggestions that have a real likelihood of acceptance:
Without stating the criteria for suitability of these instructors and the suggestor’s bases for proposing himself as the one from over 200m Nigerians alone capable of appointing these instructors, is this a proposal expected to be taken seriously and approved by those currently in charge?
B. Is there currently not more than an annual conference for judges of different levels in Nigeria under the NJI and less formally structured ones open to both the bar and bench, already?
C. Do you have evidence that these current conferences make no provisions for the subjects you here propose?
D. You already acknowledge that the problem is essentially one of character and quality. How would merely mandating their annual attendance with the concomitant cost to already starving citizens change a corrupt or incompetent judge determined to use the conference as an opportunity for dozing and shopping?
E. Is there compelling evidence that those three subjects have the silver bullet for curing judicial rascality and incompetence? The evidence in seminaries and Philosophy departments of universities where these are taught show, don’t they, that even many priests and professors grounded in those subjects have proven themselves sometimes more base than the judges we wish to better. So?
The devil is always in the details.
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