It’s baseless to link CJN’s trial with election — Falana

It’s baseless to link CJN’s trial with election — Falana Human rights lawyer, Mr Femi Falana (SAN), speaks on the false asset declaration charges filed against the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Walter Onnoghen Will you say the judiciary is on trial with the CJN’s case? For sure, I believe that the nation’s judiciary is on trial. Although the Chief Justice of Nigeria is not one of the public officers covered by immunity in Section 308 of the Constitution, it is anomalous to parade him before a criminal court or a quasi-criminal court. Because the Chief Justice is the principal interpreter of the law he cannot afford to break the law. His integrity must be intact and as such he has to be above board like Caesar’s wife. As the primus inter pares among all judicial officers in the country he is required to lead by example. Since the Chief Justice heads the juridical organ of the state, charging him at the Code of Conduct Tribunal for alleged contravention of the Code of Conduct Act has put the entire judiciary on trial. The judiciary has been on serious trial on three occasions in the past. The first time was when the Chief Justice, Prof Taslim Elias, was summarily removed from office by the Murtala Mohammed military regime during the 1975 purge of the public service. Even though the CJN was not specifically accused of engaging in corrupt practices he was sacked over his ex cathedral statement stopping the filing of affidavits to expose corrupt public officers by concerned citizens under the Yakubu Gowon regime. The second time was when Justice Ayo Salami, the then President of the Court of Appeal, accused Chief Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu of perverting the course of justice in the appeal arising from the Sokoto State governorship election petition in 2011. The crisis shook the judiciary to its foundation. The third occasion was when the armed operatives of the State Security Service carried out a nocturnal raid on the homes of some judges on October 8, 2016 on the grounds of alleged corruption. The judges were arrested, detained and dragged to criminal courts to face corruption charges. This is the fourth time and it is the most trying period for the judiciary in the chequered history of the nation. Many lawyers have accused the Buhari regime of intimidating lawyers and judges by charging them with criminal offences. Do you share the view? The facts on the ground do not justify the allegation. I have observed a proclivity on the part of some senior members of the legal profession to practise law in an atmosphere of impunity. At the annual conference of the Nigerian Bar Association which held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State in 2006 or thereabouts, there was a heated debate by lawyers over the decision of the EFCC to charge lawyers with money laundering and allied offences. At the end of the debate there was a move to pass a resolution asking (former) President Olusegun Obasanjo to remove Mallam Nuhu Ribadu as the Chairman of the EFCC at the material time. I was in the hall when (the late) Chief Gani Fawehinmi called to find out what was amiss. As soon as I briefed him he roared like a lion in his condemnation of the reactionary resolution. Since lawyers are not above the law of the land I mobilised young lawyers at the conference to ensure that the resolution was defeated. It is part of our political history that long before the current political dispensation, judges and lawyers had been charged with criminal offences and arraigned in courts in this country. The earlier that lawyers are reminded that heavens did not fall when a couple of sitting judges were charged with murder and armed robbery in the 1980s, the better for the legal profession. In the same vein, scores of lawyers who were alleged to have contravened the penal and criminal codes have been put in the dock. Some were acquitted while those who were convicted were derobed and removed from the roll of legal practitioners.