Prof. Attahiru Jega, former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission in his lecture at Owolabi Afuye Memorial Lecture stated that Some Judges sell judgements and retire to escape sanctions.
The lecture was organised by the Nigerian Bar Association, Ibadan Branch as one of the events to mark its 2021 Law Week.
Also speaking, the former Vice-Chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, said that these judges who corruptly enrich themselves by selling judgments to the highest bidders, quickly retire to avoid being sanctioned by the National Judicial Council.
Jega said:
“Some senior lawyers have become stupendously wealthy defending corrupt public officials or handling electoral litigation for governorship and presidential candidates.
“Similarly, many judges have become notorious for corrupt enrichment for ‘cash and carry’ judgments, especially in election matters generally and in election tribunals, more specifically.
“Some election tribunal appointments were in the past widely said to have been made to senior judges about to retire, who allegedly ‘sold’ judgments, most likely to the highest bidders, enriched themselves and quickly retired to avoid being sanctioned by the National Judicial Council.
“When lawyers use technicalities to subvert justice and ‘win’ cases without regard to the perpetration of injustices, they basically help to undermine, rather than enhance national development, peaceful coexistence, and security.
“They discard ethical and professional conduct, and put parochial and/or self-serving objectives in the forefront of their practices.”
“Specifically, on insecurity, a combination of militancy, insurgency, banditry, farmer-herder conflicts, kidnapping for ransom, and ethnoreligious or communal conflicts, with evident lack of competence and capacity to address these challenges, has unleashed generalized individual and collective apprehension, palpable insecurity, and fatalistic resignation.
“Many citizens have been killed, maimed, raped, displaced, and properties stolen, confiscated, and/or destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have been staying in Internally Displaced Person camps for long, with the future of children compromised by malnutrition, diseases, and prolonged abandonment of schooling.
“In some areas of the country, notably North-East and North-West geopolitical zones, famine is imminent, as insurgents and/or bandits have obstructed farming and agrarian food production and destabilized the rural economy, with the outright killing of whoever ventures out to their farms, or imposition heavy taxation on those allowed to farm.
“Indeed, things have been so bad for so long that, some scholars are beginning to perceive Nigeria now, perhaps exaggeratedly, as a ‘failed state.’”
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