Judges’ Welfare, Boko Haram and Bar Exams

By Onikepo Braithwaite

The Judge and his N10 million Loan

Two weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine – a Judge, and I felt so embarrassed and ashamed of Nigeria. He told me that he had applied to the Bank where his salary is domiciled for a N10 million loan a few years ago, to complete the construction of a house on a piece of land which his father bequeathed to him, so that he could earn some extra income to augment his salary and give his children a decent education, and also not end up being homeless on his retirement. The Bank flatly turned him down and refused to grant the loan, because they said his salary was too paltry to support a N10 million loan.

When I then read the illuminating article authored by Ahuraka Yusuf Isah which we featured last week, titled ‘The Sorry State of Judiciary Budgets and Judges’ Salaries’, I realised why the Bank refused to lend the Judge the money. Mr Isah’s article revealed that the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) earns less than N300,000 per month as his basic salary, and the other Justices of the Supreme Court (JSCs), about N206,000. With other allowances, the CJN’s monthly take home pay amounts to N480,000, while that of his brother JSCs, N751,000. If the CJN and JSCs can be paid such peanuts, the High Court Judges would be getting less. As for the Magistrates, I believe they earn less than N200,000 per month. Worse still, Judicial officers have not had a salary increase since 2008! God knows how many years it would have taken the Bank to recover their N10 million plus interest from the Judge, if they had granted him the loan. In Banking parlance, if there’s anything longer than a long term loan, that is what the Judge’s N10 million loan would have qualified as – ‘Eternity or Infinity’ loan! According to Mr Isah, while our CJN does not go home with up to N10 million per annum in salary and allowances, a High Court Judge in South Africa earns about N47 million per annum.

The Judge went on to inform me that, if not that the Lagos State Government augments their salaries monthly to increase it to about N500,000, they would go home with something in the region of a little more than N200,000. For goodness sake, are our judicial officers clerks? Yet, Lagos State High Courts for example, have one of the busiest dockets in the world.

We talk about the Doctrine of Separation of Powers – that is, the three co-equal arms of Government, the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary, as espoused by Baron de Montesquieu and enshrined in Sections 4- 6 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended in 2018)(the Constitution), but it is obvious that it remains a theoretical doctrine only, and not one that is practiced in Nigeria. As I have always maintained, the Judiciary comes a distant third vis-a-vis the Executive and the Legislature in terms of everything, including remuneration.

When the Judge went on to tell me how he and his colleagues jostle to be included on official trips, in order to be able to receive esta code to boost their meagre incomes, it just sounded so tragicomic. I couldn’t however hide my amusement or suppress my laughter, when the Judge concluded by telling me about one of the other Judges who is so stingy, that while on trips, he would not even buy a colleague a cup of tea. Can you blame M’Lord?!

Holistic Review of Judiciary Funding and Salary Structure

If the Judges could go on strike, I would have advised them to do so. In 2008, a JSC’s N750,000 monthly take home pay was about $6,2000, today, it is approximately $1,500. A Lagos High Court Judge’s N500,000 salary would have been about $4,100 or so in 2008; today it is about $1,000! And prices of all commodities, including the basics like food and fuel, have been on a steady increase. And, while I’m not saying all Judges are corrupt, I can say without equivocation that our judicial officers are grossly underpaid, and by virtue of this fact, the Government is creating an enabling environment for judicial corruption. See Section 17 of the Constitution, particularly 17(2)(c), (e) and (3)(b).

With the JUSUN Strike still on, this is as good a time as any to review the issue of the funding of the Judiciary and salary structure of judicial officers holistically. Some have advocated that the salaries of High court Judges should be categorised in accordance to their years of service; that a Judge of 10 years standing should not be earning the same salary as a newly appointed Judge. that is, the salaries should be staggered into maybe 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-19, 20 years and above. In the Civil Service, a person on Grade Level 8 does not earn the same as a Grade Level 14 worker. Likewise, in the Police Force and practically every other institution, seniority is not only reflected by rank, but also in salary and allowances. For the High Court Judge, why should it be different? It is bizarre that seniority is only reflected by court numbers and not in terms of salary, as I believe it is done in England on which we base our legal system on.

It is time to increase the remuneration of all judicial officers. Where will the money come from? For starters, a part of the allowances and running costs paid to NASS members can be reduced and diverted to the Judiciary. I saw a headline of a report that BudgIT released, claiming that there are 316 duplicated capital projects in the 2021 budget to the tune of N39.5 billion. All this wastage can be put to better use, like funding the Judiciary.

Boko Haram Violence

Nigeria is plagued with insecurity, due to the various types of violence we are presently grappling with. Though I can never absolve this administration and its predecessor for what Nigeria is going through today, I must say that apart from Boko Haram (BH), Farmer/Herdsmen crisis, kidnapping, armed robbery, cultism etc, there seems to be a concerted effort by some unknown persons to instil fear into Nigerians and make the country ungovernable. There are just too many attacks, the latest being on law enforcement facilities in different States. As for Lawyer Lai Mohammed and his absurd cockeyed statement that kidnapping and banditry are not Federal Offences, I implore him to peruse the Terrorism (Prevention) Act 2011 (and the Terrorism (Prevention)(Amendment) Act 2013), particularly Section 1(2) which more or less covers most of the different types of insecurity we are experiencing, including GBH and Murder – Section 1(2)(c)(i), Kidnapping – Section 1(2)(c)(ii), Destruction of Government or Public Facility – Section 1(2)(c)(iii), amongst several others.

For the past few years, BH insurgency was topmost on the list of our security concerns. In my humble opinion, in order to be able to resolve a problem, you have to understand it! The BH ideology is as unclear as that of the political parties in Nigeria. Nevertheless, let us examine a couple of their core beliefs or rather, core misconceptions. One of them is that it is ideal that an Islamic State be established, and all Nigerians must be converted to Islam. The Shahada, the profession of faith, which is the first pillar of Islam, is a testimony borne out of true belief and conviction, and does not support their mandate of forcible conversion – “La Ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadan rasulu llah (There is no deity except God, Muhammad is the messenger of God)”. The Shahada cannot be obtained by compulsion/force. Therefore, keeping Leah Sharibu in prolonged captivity because of her refusal to renounce her Christian faith for Islam, is contrary to the Shahada and un-Islamic. Furthermore, Sections 10 & 38(1) of the Constitution provide that neither Nigeria nor any of her States shall adopt a State religion, and we enjoy freedom of religion and propagation of same. Additionally, BH’s indiscriminate attacks on innocent towns and villages, and killing of people, including Muslims, also goes against the tenets of Islam and Section 33(1) of the Constitution.

Again, BH’s erroneous belief that Western education is forbidden when in fact, Islam encourages the quest for knowledge, is baseless and contrary to Section 18 of the Constitution. The sayings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in the Hadith, do not support this assertion. For example, the Prophet (PBUH) said: “Whosoever follows a path to seek knowledge therein, God will make easy for him a path to Paradise”; “Education is not only the right, but the duty of every Muslim male or female”. These sayings do not limit the quest for knowledge, to Islamic knowledge only. If it did, how, for instance, would the sick be healed if nobody studied medicine? It seems as if there is no middle ground between BH’s beliefs and the Constitution of the Nigerian State, and the only solution available to Government may be to annihilate the sect. And, even if BH members decide to shift ground and reverse their beliefs, those who have committed heinous crimes in the name of their beliefs, must be brought to book.

BH popularised the kidnapping of students, starting with their kidnap of the 276 Chibok girls in 2014. Thereafter, we have had numerous other student kidnappings, and we no longer know whether BH is responsible for them all, or other criminals who have decided to join the kidnapping bandwagon, not by reason of any warped ideology, but as a lucrative business enterprise. What we do know however, is that institutions with boarding facilities, especially those in the North are not safe, and Government cannot guarantee the security of any child. The Parents of the Kaduna Forestry students clearly stated that, anybody who claims that they did not negotiate and pay a ransom to the Kidnappers to secure the release of their children, is a liar. The Kidnappers have become even more vicious, killing five innocent children of Greenfield University, Kaduna to show that if their demands are not met, they are extremely capable of murdering the rest of the abductees.

Law School and Bar Exams

I therefore, appeal to all who may be involved in making the decision, be it the AGF, the Body of Benchers, the Council of Legal Education, or the Director General of the Nigerian Law School, to decentralise the Bar Part 1 Examination which will begin on May 17, and let the students sit for the examination in the other Law School campuses closer to their homes, since their safety cannot be guaranteed in Bwari on the outskirts of Abuja, FCT. Should students be constrained to continue to stay in Bwari, in order to prove to the world that Nigeria is safe, when we all know that the level of insecurity we are facing today is unprecedented, and students in boarding facilities are the primary targets of Kidnappers? Should we wait until the criminals/Kidnappers abduct Bwari students, before we take precautionary measures to secure their lives? Should we not be proactive, since it is better to be safe than sorry? Should we play Russian Roulette with the lives of our children? Leave them vulnerable and open to attack, and then rush to the scene after the worst has happened, as has been the case in the various incidents we have witnessed so far? I think not.

#EndSARS Update

I watched a videoclip of the evidence given by Ms Sarah Ibrahim, one of the #EndSARS co-ordinators at the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Enquiry for Victims of SARS, and I was shocked at what I saw. Ms Ibrahim was led in her evidence-in-chief by her counsel, Yinka Olumide-Fusika, SAN. The videos which Ms Ibrahim took with her iPhone, leaves us in no doubt that truly, soldiers shot at innocent unarmed Protesters at the Lekki Tollgate that evening of October 20th, 2020. Undoubtedly, there is also a conspiracy of silence and concealment involving the Lekki Concession Company and the Government, with the former conniving with the latter, by refusing to make the video footages of the incident available for viewing by the Panel or the public. Ms Ibrahim in her testimony, confirmed the allegation that the soldiers spirited away dead bodies in their trucks, when she told the Panel that one Lekan Sanusi who was presumed dead by the soldiers, was also loaded up into their truck with other corpses. The young man apparently counted 11 corpses in the truck which allegedly conveyed them to Bonny Camp, Victoria Island.

My next point? A Government whose Army has been indicted in the killing of innocent youngsters because they had become a thorn in their flesh, and goes to such copious extents to cover up their misdeeds, including attempting to bring international organisations like CNN and Amnesty International into disrepute to achieve their goals, with all due respect, is a Government that is more interested in keeping up appearances (like Hyacinth Bucket in the British sitcom ‘Keeping Up Appearances’), than ensuring the safety of their students in boarding facilities.

To right thinking people, it seems that the lives of these children are dispensable in the view of the Government. As a mother and a human being, I do not share these sentiments, and therefore, join my voice to that of those calling on the management of the Law School, to not only decentralise the upcoming Bar Part 1 examination, but, going forward, to make better arrangements for the students so that they can carry on with their studies in peace, without the fear of attack from bandits, which will obviously prevent them from concentrating on their studies and giving their best.

My dear colleagues, kindly share your opinion on this matter. Thank you. I will certainly keep you informed, as to whether this appeal fell on deaf ears or on fertile ground.