Everybody or almost everybody has been told that I have a case to answer before the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee at Abuja on Monday the 10th November 2008. The Announcer was none other than the 'trial court' itself, and for maximum coverage used a popular national daily newspaper to advertise the “coming event.” The case has been on, at least on the cause list for five years. Five years of motion without movement, burning without heat.
Surprisingly there are many lawyers who do not know why I am on the cross of prosecution or that I am still standing trial before the LPDC. Such folks, in season, out of season, walk up to me, to enquire why the “Abuja Summons?”
This piece is actually meant for the innocent and the young at the bar and, well, the old but the forgetful. Let no one mislead you about my case with the LPDC. I have defrauded no one, I have cheated nobody. I have not committed any contempt. And no judge can say of me as an advocate appearing before him that I deserve prosecution. I am not insolent.
I am before the “Sanhedrin” for the crime, of speaking out. Speaking out, loudly, boldly, directly and truthfully. I am on the cross for having the guts to tell the truth, no matter whose ox is gored.
The Squib, I tell you and you are hearing from the horse's mouth, was born as a reaction. A reaction to rot, a reaction wrought from the fire of indignation at the abuse and misuse of office at all layers of authority in the Judiciary, as well as in the bar.
I tell you in 1996 when I became a legal practitioner, the Lagos State Judiciary was in no healthy shape. Bribery, even extortion of money was the order of the day. There were so many dirty judges and magistrates then, whited sepulchers. Lords they were, but not lords of Justice, or masters of Equity, captains of Fairness or paragons of Accountability. Rather they were judicial king-pins of mamonised proceedings and cash and carry rulings. As for the bar, it was reeking most foully of sharp practices. The bar was very scarce in the number of decent and noble practitioners. And infact, many older, senior lawyers employed crooked means to win their cases and served as no good examples to the younger ones. Such lawyers were and some still are Senior Advocates of Prepaid Judgements (SAPJ).
Things were so bad back then, that litigants preferred the services of lawyers who knew judges to the services of lawyers who merely knew the law! That, my dear, was the situation. It was a stinking corruption that gripped Lagos State Judiciary with so much swaggering arrogance and insolence.
Everybody - litigants, lawyers and the very few upright judges knew how terrible and horrible the situation was but nobody cared enough to do anything much about it.
Where was the Bar, the association of lawyers, all that while? The bar, I tell you, was on a voyage of self exile and cowardly, dumb retreat. No victim of oppression and injustice in the Judicial System could run to the bar and get succour. It was a Bar, self compromised either morally or intellectually. It was a bar which had forgotten her true mission of societal guidance and leadership.
Then thunder, in the form of the Squib, struck and the rest, as you are witnessing today, is history.
Permit to say this, the Squib is a positive factor in the little transformation of the Lagos State Judiciary from being blantantly corrupt and inefficient as it was in the 1990s and early 2000s to its present state. For those who may not really appreciate how terrible the misconduct of judges, magistrates and lawyers was in the 90s and the early 2000s in the Lagos State Judiciary, I tell you this true live story.
Four days after moving and losing a motion ex parte, a particular counsel, Barrister X, who himself is now a judge, came back to the court, very much prepared to move his motion on notice.
As he cleared his throat to do just that, Barrister X was shocked to hear the presiding judge say to the counsel on the opposing side.
“Are you aware that I have granted an injunction in this case?”
Barrister X and his junior could not believe their ears, however they managed to hide their shock and kept a discreet silence. It was later that they learnt the truth - their clients without notice to counsel, had gone to “see” the judge! Compromised, the judge had rewritten his records and ruling!
Unbelievable, you say? But that's the gospel truth. It was because of situations like this that the Squib was born. So that we can have the “good new days.”
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