Salami calls for restructuring of Nigeria’s judicial system

HENRY OJELU & JAMIU YISA

The former President of Nigeria’s Court of Appeal, Justice Isa Ayo Salami, has called for the restructuring of the county’s Judicial System.

Salami who was the Chairman of the 10th Gani Fawehinmi annual lecture organised by the Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Bar Association, held at Airport Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, southwest Nigeria, said this while delivering his keynote address at the event.

Part of the restructuring he envisioned is that the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, should cease to be the Chairman of the National Judicial Council so that the occupants of the office would stop taking undue advantage of the powers of the CJN as Chairman of the Council as enshrined in the constitution to abuse their office.

He recommended that Federal High Courts, State High Courts and National Industrial Court should be vested with the same jurisdiction to avoid cost of litigation and delay arising from contentious jurisdiction.

He added that members of the National Judicial Court should not accept executive appointments including briefs from the Executive during their tenure.

Salami said under no circumstances should Justices appointed to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court on ground of Sharia or Customary Law be permitted to participate in Common Law as well as Constitutional Cases.

“Each of the federating states should be allowed to have its own Court of Appeal and Supreme Court to better adjudge on the respective disputes and appeals on matter falling within their legislative competence.

“There is no gainsaying the fact that a Judge from the core South may not know how better to resolve disputes of the man from the core North and vice versa.

“If this cannot be financed by States, then the Zones should create such for the States constituted in them. Constitutional issues and issues between States can then be left to the Federal Court of Appeal and the Federal Supreme Court,” he said.

Speaking further, Salami extolled the virtues of the late Fawehinmi and encouraged lawyers present not to allow his labour to be in vain.

He also advised the Nigerian elites to come together and reason if they want Nigeria to be saved from impending doom.

” Gani gave voice to the voiceless. There is no gainsaying the fact. His struggles for fundamental human rights will not be in vain. Nigerians do not want the truth to be told. Whoever wants to tell the truth is is always marked for destruction”.

“If Gani were alive and in charge, he would not have allowed the matter to be swept under the carpet” he said.

Guest lecturer at the event, Pastor Tunde Bakare warned those laying emphasis on the 2015 general elections to desist from placing the cart before the horse by jettisoning the proposed national conference because of its closeness to the election.

The Convener of Save Nigeria Group (SNG), made the remark while speaking on the topic: “Nigeria at Centenary: A Nation Still in Bondage?.

While bemoaning the rot in the system, Bakare said past leaders have kept Nigerians in total bondage for years and that the country is yet to attain some measure of freedom even with the coming of democracy in 1999.

He singled out former president Olusegun Obasanjo, whom he said raised the mountain of corruption to an unimaginable peak despite the golden opportunity presented to him to liberate the country after his ascension to the highest office in the land.

“Genuine liberty was not attained in 1999. Not with a culture of corruption, impunity and sectional interest that pervades every sector and every level of the social cadre; not with pseudo-federal structure that constrains the birth and development of true nationhood and the capacity of the constituents to develop at their respective paces; not with institutions that serve the interest of a privileged few who have cornered the resources of our country”.

“Not with a constitution that was forced on the people by the military and which gives fundamental human rights with one hand and takes them away with the other. Not with a judiciary that will set free perpetrators of multi-billion naira theft and send pepper and onion thieves to jail; not with legislatures that consume the greater percentage of the country’s recurrent expenditure, making laws that have no bearing on the welfare of the people and defending positions like child marriage that perpetuate socio- economic bondage”.

According to him, the way forward out of this national quagmire is for Nigerians to take full advantage of the opportunity the national conference presents to restructure and rebuild the nation.

“To move forward from this national quagmire, we must go back in order to go forward and we must approach the task on all fronts. First, we must get Nigeria out of the cesspool in which the young Nigerian nation was dumped with the bath water on the 24th of May 1966. We must reach out for her, retrieve what is left of her, wash her clean and nurture her back to life. That is why we welcome the idea of a constitutional conference and insist that the modalities must be genuinely people-driven” he said.