The Chairman of the Ilorin branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Mr Kamaldeen Gambari has alleged that the conduct and prevalent corruption among some judicial staff has been largely responsible for the inadequacies in the judicial system in the country.
In a chat with newsmen at weekend in Ilorin, Gambari highlighted the exploitation of both the legal practitioners and the litigants by some staff of the judiciary.
He however said there are some judicial staff who perform their duties diligently, without any corruptive tendency. He assured that the Bar association is doing its best to resist the activities of the bad eggs.
“The exploitation is so endemic that legal practitioners and the litigants can hardly do anything free without some segment of these staff making unholy demands either from the legal practitioners or the litigants.
“Everytime they do this, as a Bar ,we try to resist them, yet we have not achieved the intended result. We shall put this corruption tendency before the new acting Chief Judge, Justice Abiodun Ayodele Adebara when he assumed office properly”, Gambari further said.
On alleged partisanship of some judges in politics, the NBA chairman said that he doubted if any judge who know his onion would venture into such unholy journey as the ethics of the profession negates such action, describing it as being a disservice to the judiciary and capable of bringing their offices to disrepute.
He said: “The ethics of their office prohibits that, if anyone of them is found involving in that, it will be unfortunate, it is a great disservice to the judiciary and they are doing that at their own peril because that will bring the office they occupy to disrepute”.
Gambari stresses that, “ if truly there is corruption in the judiciary, I can vouch that we have no corrupt judge in Kwara State judiciary. All of our judges are full of integrity regardless of who the litigants are. They don’t bow to any pressure and they discharge their duties with utmost and purest of intentions based on the facts presented before them”.
He stressed the need for the government to exploit the experience of retired judges by incorporating them into other roles rather than letting their knowledge rot away.
He said this in reference to the recently retired Chief Judge of the state, Justice Suleiman Durosinlorun Kawu whom he described as highly knowledgeable, full of wisdom, mentally sound and has the fear of God in the discharge of his judicial duties.
“We will continue to push to get them engaged and useful for the state, starting from the Kwara State government up to the Federal Government, especially through the National Judicial Council”, he added.
According to him, the judges have acquired so much knowledge, experience and training with ereby public funds expended on them. And “just because they have clocked certain years they will now have to disappear into the backstage”, he said, stressing that such investment should not be thrown away.
T”hey should be put into use as it happens in other nations of the world whereby they are engaged to come and preside over some other matters, especially where they have their specialities.
“Especially at the Supreme Court where we’re having fewer number of judges than we needed and there hasn’t been any appointments and people are retiring every day, the versatile ones amongst these people can be made use of to fill these void so that their knowledge shouldn’t be wasted,” Gambari counselled.
The state NBA Chairman also dismissed the claim of conflicts between the Bar and the Bench, saying that “there shouldn’t be any conflict between the Bar and Bench as the two are like Siamese twins; we’re conjoined from the start.
“No one can be a member of the bench without being a lawyer first, so their first catchment is the bar. There is no way they’ll be on the bench and now turn their backs on us and vice versa because we still remained one”.
