Corrupt Judges Should Suffer Fate of Ordinary Men - Prof Itse Sagay

 

Foremost constitutional lawyer Prof Itse Sagay (SAN) yesterday said corrupt judges should suffer the fate of ordinary men, according to The Nation.

 

This is coming after the raid of allegedly corrupt judges by security operatives at odd hours across Nigeria during with suspicious amounts of money were found in their homes.

He said the judiciary, which used to be revered in the past, had lost is dignity due to high level of corruption. According to him, the Federal Government is left with the option of either “twiddling its fingers” and doing little or taking drastic steps.

According to Sagay, the National Judicial Council (NJC) has become “ineffective” in its ability to handle “monumental” graft in the judiciary. The Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACAC) chairman, in a statement, said the good old days where the judiciary was held in the highest esteem were gone.

He said that “dreamlike era” had degenerated into “the world of mammon, where cash dictates justice”.

His words: “The searches of the premises of judges by the DSS is a sad development in our legal history brought about by inevitable circumstances.

“Although no judges had ever been subjected to search of premises and arrest, from the colonial period until recently, this was not because there was any law protecting Judges’ immunity against arrest and criminal prosecution. Rather, it was based on a convention arising from the need to respect the dignity and sanctity of the Judiciary.

“In other words, the practice of respect for members of the Judiciary was a convention, not a binding rule of law. Members of the judiciary do not enjoy immunity against searches, and arrests under any law. Therefore the sustenance of sanctity of the person, office and residence of a judge depended on the continued maintenance by the judge of decorum, dignity, honesty and integrity.

“The explosive and expanding epidemic of judicial corruption, which has taken an alarming character since the 2007 elections, has totally overturned the culture of respect for the judiciary and brought the revered institution into disrepute and ignominy.

“The epic and corrosive nature of the problem has made the system expressly laid down for dealing with judicial indiscipline, that is, the NJC system, totally ineffective. The level of moral depravity and the enormous number of culprits engaged in aggressive or rampaging corruption was just too much for the orthodox system of discipline to deal with.

“The amount of raw cash recovered in the process of the DSS searches is mind boggling. We, therefore, have a situation in which a deadly disease was threatening the very existence of democracy and the Rule of Law.”

Sagay said ultimately, the very foundation of Nigeria’s democracy was in danger of collapsing.