The question of inconsistency in judicial pronouncements has been a vexed one for a while now, and it has raised questions about the credibility of the Nigerian judiciary in the minds of many stakeholders, as well as its claim to being the last hope of the common man.
The job of the 3rd plenary panel of the 2022 Annual Conference of NBA’s Section on Legal Practice in Asaba, the Delta State capital, was to find the true reasons behind this problem (if problem it is), and to proffer solutions. Chaired by the Hon.Justice Ali Gumel of the Court of Appeal, the panel’s composition cut across the Bar, the Bench and academia. It comprised of another another Court of Appeal Justice, Ebiowei Tobi, as well as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Samuel Atung, who is the current Chairman of the Public Interest and Litigation Committee at the NBA Kaduna Branch; and an academic, Dr. Abubakar A. Ahmad, who is a Senior Lecturer in Private & Commercial Law at the Bayero University in Kano. Two other scheduled panelists – former NBA President Augustine Alegeh, and Mr. Olawale Akoni, SAN, a Managing Partner at the law firm of Babalakin & Co. – were unavoidably absent, but were ably represented at the discourse.
As NEWSWIRE Law & Events Magazine’s correspondent in Asaba reports, the crux of the deliberations centred on such issues as the criteria in the appointment of judges; corruption (or allegations thereof) on the part of Judges, Justices and other judicial staff; bias against certain parties to a given matter (whether real or perceived); and the pressure to align judicial pronouncements with public opinion as expressed in the press and on social media.
On the question of whether this inconsistency is in and of itself a bad thing – or, as suggested in some quarters, a sign of the judiciary’s dynamism in the face of an evolving society – a number of panelists were of the view that while the judiciary must be in step with the society in which it operates, it must be guided always by values which are timeless. As one of the panelists put it, better a bad law operated by good men than a good law operated by bad men.
The panel also considered the advocacy in some quarters for a code of conduct for the Bench to ensure consistent decision-making by the courts. The prevailing view on this was that the National Judicial Council must be empowered to rise up to its mandate in this regard ie to ensure sanity in the nation’s jurisprudence.
The byte-size session that followed this discourse was a brief expose about the workings of the Investments and Securities Tribunal, as presented by Amos I. Azi, the current Chairman of the Tribunal, and a fomer Commissioner in the Plateau State cabinet.
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