'Lagos,Lagos, Where Are Thy (High Court) Judges? By Adesina Ogunlana

Vol.13.No3  (12-11-12)

A saying may be popular, perhaps very popular; that however does not validate its veracity. A maxim may have spawned from time immemorial, and be quite memorable, but those realities cannot vouch for its truth content.

I gave an example. When you ask people, what is it that does not succumb to change, the invariable answer is “only change does not change” or “only change is permanent” or “no condition is permanent?”

The answer is popular and universal but so so wrong. After all there is one other THING that does not change, and in fact cannot change.

And, ladies and gentlemen, I respectfully mention HIS name, God…………. Oyigiyigi Eledumare, Atererekariaye 

God does not change. His ways are immutable. In the days of yore, He spoke to people and people heard HIS voice.

I tell you the Good Lord still speaks to people, or situations and some other people are privileged or very fortunate to be given the right of spectating and others the liberty of reportage.

This columnist falls to the last category and so I must my duty do. A few days ego, some geckos who monitor the skyscape, and are known as either “Open Heavens Geckos (OHG)” or “Inter-galaxy Geckos (IGG)” bore witness to the following fabulous lines.

According to my “OHG”  or “IGG” reporters, Lagos State (hereinafter referred to as Lagos) was in deep slumber in the night of 5^th November 2012 when a voice, the voice, that voice in a melodious but penetrating boom enquired- : “Lagos, Lagos, where are thy Judges?”

Now Lagos was a heavy sleeper. Her legs sprawled on the Mainland, the torso rested on the Lagoon while her head nestled on the Atlantic. She stirred but did not immediately come out of the stupor of her slumber.

THE VOICE: (booming deeper) Lagos, Lagos, I say where are thy Judges?

LAGOS: (jumping up in numbed puzzle and frozen fright) “Good morning Sir. Good morning Lord of Lords.

THE VOICE: Lagos! Lagos! Lagos! Where are thy Judges?

LAGOS: (now up-standing and quaking) My Lord, Lord of Lords, the Owner of the Day of Judgement, they are in Gabon sir, sorry they are in Gambia sir, ah, so sorry sir, they are in Canada sir.

THE VOICE: All your judges are not in Nigeria? Why, why, speak, for I your Lord heareth!

LAGOS: (now a bit calmer and less afraid) My Lord, Lord of Lords my judges went on a training course, so that they can know more and do their job better.

THE VOICE: Really? Are they student-judges? Are they newly appointed judges?

LAGOS: (her fear returning) No my Lord but, but judges are better off with continuous education.

THE VOICE: Were you not supposed, to appoint the wise as judges in the first place?

LAGOS: Yes my Lord.

THE VOICE: Did you?

LAGOS: Em, em, em,em, Not all of them are wise my Lord but I had to appoint those others because, because, em, em, em, because…

THE VOICE: Because of what? You mean you fear and give respect to the wishes of mortals above my commands that only the wise and the just should be appointed judges over their fellow men? By the way how many judges did you take to EUROPE for “more education?

LAGOS: Em, em, about fifty Sir

THE VOICE:  How many are their teachers?

LAGOS: The Chief Judge said they are just about six, my Lord.

THE VOICE:  Lagos! Lagos! You mean you took 50 students to meet 6 teachers, in a foreign land. Would it not have been much easier, cheaper and better to bring 6 teachers to meet 50 students here?

LAGOS: (shaking uncontrollably?) My Lord, My Lord.

THE VOICE: The students you took to meet teachers, is it not true that you will pay them “estacode” “disturbance allowance” “out-of-station allowance,” yet they went to receive knowledge?

LAGOS: Ah My Lord, My Lord.

THE VOICE: Lagos! Lagos! Is this trip of ‘special students’ to the foreign land not costing you up to 150 million naira?

LAGOS: Ah My Lord, My Lord

THE VOICE: In a state like yours where poverty is grinding for many of your people, is this the best way to spend the money and the sweat of your people?

LAGOS:  My Lord, My Lord

THE VOICE: Lagos! Lagos! I ask you - this special trip of special students is it really a journey in search of education or an avenue for a jamboree or a junket?

LAGOS: My Lord, My Lord

THE VOICE: (In a thundering, roar) Stop Milording me! I am the Lord and I am no respecter of persons. I am slow to anger but sure to punish all injustice, all inequalities.

The groans and the cries of the multitude of the poor in your midst have reached my ears. You help the rich to get richer and make the poor, poorer. You increase the comfort of the rich but you make the poor to shed more tears.

I am the God of Justice. I am the God of Justice. I am the God of Justice.

LAGOS: (terrified to stupefaction, lay prostrate on the ground, in a faint).

'Gateway to What' By Adesina Ogunlana

The average or do we say ‘normal’ human being, naturally craves the good life. Now, what is the good life? The answer, you get, I guess will differ from various respondents. Certainly the Epicurean’s understanding of the Good Life will hardly match the Stoic’s talk less the Socratic’s or the Cynic’s.

However I think I can reasonably speak for the class of the people slapped about, trod upon and generally stigmatized as ‘the common man.’ After all, I am and have always been a member of the much said pilloried class.

 

The common man’s idea of the G.L is the one that easily assures him of a constant gratification of his appetites and the attendent vain glories and vanities. The common man wants to have the satisfaction of salacious meals, thrilling kindling, rippling riches that provide beyond basic necessaries of life but luxuries that flatter the ego, warm the cockles, swell the pride and make man mistake mere terra firma for the clime celestial.

In ages past, where might more brazenly spoke, the good life could be acquired by brutal force and brutish might. But no longer, except you are a king-pin in a banana republic or a king-kong in a rapidly fading state.

In these times, you need more subtlety than brawn to succeed at getting the good life. In Nigeria there are many sensible ways of getting the good life such as becoming:

a high level politician and national or state or local government ‘cake-minder.’

a ‘yahoo-yahoo’ wonder specialist.

a prosperity minister and miracle worker.

a mega-bank owner.

a repentant militant turned oil-pipe ‘protector.’

 

All the above options are good but offer a lot of stress. There are, I tell you, less stressful ways of getting the good life, at least in obodo Nigeria.

I tell you one - try and become a high court judge in Lagos State. You just try and you will see what will become of your purse in a short-while. You may be a struggling private legal practitioner now, struggling to pay your cribbed office rent, struggling to pay staff salaries, struggling to maintain your car, struggling to maintain your children in school, struggling to develop a property. In short, struggling to keep afloat.

You may be a miserable state counsel now, don’t mind those big and deceptive titles they add to your ‘state counselship,’ “Rat na Rat.” As far I know  the only titles worth their ring in the Ministry of Justice belong to the Generals, to wit, the Atannije-General and the Solisuitor-General.

As a state counsel we all know your life of civil service salary struggles. Your struggling may even be more active than that of the private legal practitioner. It’s generally a life of “patch and watch” except for those who know how to fraudulently add 2 to 2 in order to get 2000.

You may be a Chief Magistrate now, the poor Lords and Duchesses of the well known lower Bench. The lower Bench, everybody knows, is occupied by the “poor cousins” in the Judiciary.

When the “rich cousins” a.k.a “high court judges” gobble caviar and swill champagne you only exist on “asoro elepo rederede” (Yam Pottage) and your imbibation is limited to Zobo!  But whatever your condition, should you manage to become a judge of the Lagos State Bench, your purse will suffer or rather enjoy the density of obesity. Almost immediately.

These are part of the goodies that will cling to you evermore:

Minimum of 1.5 million naira monthly salary.

Ownership of stately jeeps, (no Tokunbos) and changeable every four years by the government.

Yearly allocation of between 10 – 20 million naira under many “ welfare package headings.”

Ownership (not tenant ship) of at least of a choice home in a choice location (worth no less than #150 million naira).

Stewarded Life of drivers, secretaries, orderlies, assistants and sundry man-Fridays and girl-Saturdays.

Job-security, except you become extremely stupid, reckless and without a functional God-parent.

Life is so good on the Lagos Bench now that wise lawyers don’t strive to become Silks again. Silks? Silks banza, they say. Why go for brass when gold is there for the plucking, especially if you are not just a Lagos lawyer but a Lagosian Lagos lawyer!

Curiously, despite the heavy perks and mouth-watering benefits attached to having a place on the Lagos Bench, I for one, cannot see a dramatic improvement in the quality of service delivery on the part of judges. I cannot perceive, except in a minority of our judicial potentates a keen and glaring commitment to sparkling industry and roaring productivity commensurate to the rich blessings of their employment. The inevitable conclusion is that judicial appointment in Lagos state is only so: a gate-way for many appointees to hedonism and self-aggrandizement and not for consummate and public-spirited service. Sad? Tragic!

 

'There They Go Again" By Adesina Ogunlana

I was one of several lawyers who went dutifully to Honourable Justice Gbajabiamila’s court on Wednesday the 3^rd October 2012. For we and our clients had business there. In my case my client was one of eight persons who have been facing trial for the past ten years for armed robbery. Thus for a whole decade his home has been the Maximum place, Kirikiri Lagos.

At about 9.40 am, the Registrar of the court and the only functionary of this particular temple of justice that was visibly existing in the court, cleared his sub-judicial throat and made the portentous statement:

“Gentlemen of the Bar. The court will not be sitting. The judge is dealing with N.J.C returns. Please listen as I call the cases for today and take dates.” The response from the Bar and gallery included the following: hisses, sighs of resignation, sheer indifference, fulminations, shock and bitterness. I personally felt cheated, humiliated and ill-used, considering that I had vaulted all the way from Isolo to the Mainland and shunned some early morning labours of love in a bid to make the court in time. It had been four months since we last came to the court and had high hopes that the trial of the matter would continue today.

Alas, worse was to come. When it was our turn to take dates, I told the Registrar that there was no need to get new dates since we had two more trial dates already fixed. But when I enquired whether the court would sit on the next given date which was just two days away (Friday 5^th October) the Vice-regal replied with a poignant and pregnant rebuke, “Am I the Judge?”

After a few minutes of waiting, I decided to seek the answer from the honourable judge himself, who should be in chambers, ostensibly very busy dealing with “NJC returns.” At the expense of holding his court.

So with a few other lawyers in the matter in tow, we made the short pilgrimage to the judge’s chambers. To see a judge, you need to pass through his secretaries and other staff. However we discovered to our chagrin that at 10.05a.m on this wonderful day, the office of the judge’s staff was firmly locked. The great men and women were yet to come to work.

We looked out for the judge, but the judex was certainly far away from the court. In the light of the foregoing, I beg to pose the following questions:

1.     Is it right or proper for “NJC returns” to supersede court sittings for the judge or magistrate?

2.     Where is the judge expected to be on a work day, when not sick or on an outside official engagement: home, office, church/mosque/shrine or any other place?

3.     Should judges deal with NJC returns at home or in the office?

4.     Why is it that the long period of vacation and the two or three weeks of indeterminable nature after the end of vacation are not enough for a judge to have dealt with NJC  returns?

5.     How fair is to lawyers, witnesses and litigants alike to make them come to court from all directions of the wind only to learn in the very court that the court will not sit, especially these days that most counsel file their processes with their phone numbers and e-mail addresses stated thereon?

 

Whether Lagos judicial authorities like to hear it or not, there is a clear culture of judicial impunity and inefficiency rampant in the system. For example only about a quarter of the fifty-five or so judges can be counted upon to be punctual in court or commence sittings within twenty minutes of an hour after 9.00a.m. Many others sit just when they like, if they sit at all.

At the dinner rounding up the New Legal Year, I thought I heard the Chief Judge tell lawyers present to feel free and enjoy the atmosphere they had the good luck of sharing with judges because “as from Monday, they will be at work and making Orders.”

But what I witnessed at the Justice Gbajabiamila court on Wednesday the 3^rd October 2012 was far from the picture of brisk industry, and bristling efficiency “Aunty Ayo” painted of our judges. And, that’s a pity. An unacceptable pity.