“Having just a few minutes ago sworn on the Holy Book,” he pledged, “I intend to keep my oath and serve as president to all Nigerians. I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody.
“A few people have privately voiced fears that on coming back to office I shall go after them. These fears are groundless. There will be no paying of old scores. The past is prologue… We face enormous challenges. Insecurity, pervasive corruption, the hitherto unending and seemingly impossible fuel and power shortages are the immediate concerns. We are going to tackle them head on.
Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us. We must not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism. We can fix our problems…
“Daunting as the task may be, it is by no means insurmountable. There is now a national consensus that our chosen route to national development is democracy.
To achieve our objectives we must consciously work the democratic system. The Federal Executive under my watch will not seek to encroach on the duties and functions of the legislative and judicial arms of government. The law enforcing authorities will be charged to operate within the constitution … The judicial system needs reform to cleanse itself from its immediate past.
The country now expects the judiciary to act with dispatch on all cases especially on corruption, serious financial crimes or abuse of office. It is only when the three arms act constitutionally that government will be enabled to serve the country optimally and avoid the confusion all too often bedeviling governance today.”
Besides the nagging issue of corruption, three coincidentally intertwined aspects of the speech of the returnee occupant of the federal seat of power appeared to have clicked with the people the most – respect for the rule of law, fight against corruption and reform of the nation’s scandalously slow judicial system.
Then, the euphoria of victory soon wore off and signals that the president’s pledges to defer to the rule of law, beat corruption and reform the nation’s justice dispensation machinery may have been premised on a very weak audit of the factors precipitating delay in adjudicating cases, especially those bordering on graft, began to emerge.
Just about three months into his presidency, Buhari had a broad platform to betray the fact that he was coming to terms with the nation’s judicial reality rather too late – almost. It all played out on the stage of the 55th Annual General Conference (AGC) of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) held in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja from August 21-28, 2015. With the theme: “Lawyers and National Development,” the NBA invited the president to perform the opening ceremony on Sunday, August 23.
Not many really expected the president to personally make the event. With the prominent position of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in the nation’s legal community, the convoking local and international legal practitioners had expected the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) to represent Buhari at the conference. They were wrong! At about five minutes to the 5 p.m. kick-off time for the opening ceremony, attendees were shocked to see Mr. President appear in the International Conference Centre venue of the AGC in company with the vice president.
Those schooled in protocol insist that it is unusual to have both a president and a vice president attend the same event at the same time. Yet Buhari appeared to have an urgent message he wanted to deliver straight to lawyers himself. Communicating the message through a representative might devalue and weaken the urgency of the matter – perhaps.
So, when he was eventually invited to speak, the president did not waste time in launching into the heart of the matter.
“I am convinced that law, lawmakers, lawyers, law courts and the law enforcement agencies all have pivotal responsibilities to discharge, if the change we seek is ever to materialise. As you all know by now, this administration has taken on the challenge of improving security, fighting corruption and revamping the economy, among many others.
“The fight against corruption is in reality a struggle for the restoration of law and order. Corruption and impunity become widespread when disrespect for law is allowed to thrive in society. Disrespect for law also thrives when people get away with all sorts of shady deals and the court system is somehow unable to check them… As may be expected, this has left many legal practitioners and law courts tainted in an ugly way.
“In a gathering such as this, I do not need to elaborate on the way that corruption and impunity have damaged our economy. But I would like to say more on what, I believe, should be your role as legal practitioners, in helping us back to the path of rectitude.
“First, we need to make our courts functional and effective again. This means that we must have lawyers who take the ethics of the profession very seriously; lawyers who will not frustrate the course of justice, even though they defend their clients with all legitimate means and resources. Nigeria needs ethical lawyers who always keep the end of justice in mind and will never sacrifice the integrity of the legal system to cover the misdeeds of their clients, no matter how lucrative the brief may be,” he said.
Although many participants at the NBA conference agreed that the president’s speech was powerfully delivered, not a few lawyers were of the view that it only focused on the symptoms of a more fundamental problem and left the real issue unaddressed.
Where a case is improperly investigated, they insisted, a defence lawyer had a duty to point out the lapses in court in favour of his client and the judge would be left with no choice than to properly apply the law. Conversely, where the investigating authority does its work well, no deft move by a lawyer can alter a patently bad case and the judge will then be adequately armed to impose the appropriate sanctions.
The Nigerian situation, most lawyers at the event however regretted, was such that the investigators are only content with making a media show of alleged infractions of the law while ignoring the need to build credible evidence upon which courts can base their decisions.
It is difficult to say whether the views of lawyers at the NBA event were properly communicated to the president. But when judges met in Abuja recently, Buhari again took his dissatisfaction with the nation’s justice delivery system there.
Represented by Osinbajo, the president told the All Nigerian Judges’ Conference that corruption and delay in the administration of criminal justice constituted a great hindrance to government’s efforts at recovering looted funds and punishing those who abused public trust.
He insisted that it would be difficult for the government to effectively tackle corruption and encourage investments unless the judiciary addressed its challenges and shortcomings. Again, the core issue of lack of proper investigation of cases taken to court for trial was ignored.
The nation’s economic police, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) soon joined the fray. The commission’s Chairman, Mr. Ibrahim Magu accused senior lawyers of shielding corrupt Nigerians from prosecution by frustrating the justice administration process.
Perhaps, to demonstrate that its complaints were not an empty idle talk, the EFCC subsequently went after some senior lawyers, including Mr. Rickey Tarfa (SAN). He was accused of compromising Justice Mohammed Yunusa of the Federal High Court. The case is still running in court.
Although NBA President, Mr. Augustine Alegeh (SAN) assured Buhari of lawyers’ cooperation in the anti-graft war, he insisted that his colleagues had a constitutional duty to properly represent those accused of running foul of the law and that the responsibility could not be compromised for any reason.
Other opponents of Buhari’s brand of ant-graft campaign have, however, insisted that the statements and conduct of Buhari and EFCC were simply aimed at intimidating judges and browbeating judicial officers to do their bidding unquestioningly by jailing the president’s political enemies.
Many legal practitioners have also insisted that the Federal Government and the EFCC have only worsened the trend of trying accused persons on the pages of newspapers without any credible evidence to prove the allegations against them in court. There are, however, other reputable lawyers who dispute the view that the anti-graft war is merely a media hype. (to be cont..)
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