Will Nigeria Surrender DCP Abba Kyari to the FBI?

Since the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) investigation of Nigeria’s Internet fraud sensation, Ramon Olorunwa Abbas aka Hushpuppi, threw up some most unexpected names, it hasn’t been a tea party for Deputy Commissioner of Police, Abba Kyari. The ‘Super Cop’ has been linked and indicted by the FBI, in connection with Hushpuppi’s alleged multiple transnational scams, particularly a $1.1 million scam against a Qatar Businessperson. Will he get a respite from his home country? Are his alleged offences extraditable? Does Nigeria have the moral courage to allow the extradition of Abba Kyari to the US to face his trial? Is his suspension by the Police Service Commission, an indication that Nigeria might give in to the US request? In this Discourse, Emeka Eze, Dr Ayodele Akenroye, Francis Moneke and Dr Kayode Ajulo dissect the complex issues in this saga which could end up putting a strain on Nigeria-US diplomatic relations, if it isn’t handled properly

‘There Must be Robust Funding for the Judiciary’

Being a judicial officer in Nigeria can be quite daunting, given the peculiar challenges in Nigeria’s justice delivery system. This arm of Government has been struggling with gross underfunding, poor welfare, paucity of even the most basic infrastructure for the rather herculean task of adjudicating cases, bearing in mind that the Nigerian judicial dockets are one of the busiest in the world. The intricate responsibility of catering for Judicial Officers of Superior Courts of Record, including appointing, monitoring and disciplining them rests squarely on the National Judicial Council (NJC). However, for this body to effectively carry out its constitutional mandate it must be administered by highly competent personnel headed by the Executive Secretary, who is directly responsible to the Chairman of the Council, the Chief Justice of Nigeria. O

You were appointed NJC Executive Secretary in July 2017 after you had served as the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court for about two years. How would you compare your experiences in the two positions?

Let me start by expressing profound gratitude to the Almighty, for His limitless favour. It is by His will and grace that I was given the opportunity to serve in various capacities in the Administration wing of the Country’s Judiciary. Having said that, let me also state that the office of the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court and that of the Secretary of the National Judicial Council (NJC) are similar, in the sense that both are chief accounting and administrative officers of their entities; yet they are different in many other aspects.

Yes, the Chief Registrar of the Supreme Court has got enormous challenges that naturally arise from the status of the Court as the apex court in the land. As the Chief Registrar, you deal with daily matters bordering on first ensuring everything is in place for a seamless court system, welfare and well-being of the justices of the Court, the welfare of staff, the infrastructure needed by both Justices and staff of the Court, as well as general matters pertaining to the core constitutional and statutory functions of the Apex Court. These challenges are truly daunting, and capable of over-stretching even the most energetic personality.

However, the office of the Secretary of the NJC, presents even broader challenges. Here, apart from being the accounting officer, you are also saddled with the responsibility of providing clerical, administrative as well as technical support, to an Institution that superintends over the Nation’s Judiciary. If you look at the powers of the NJC under Part 1, 3rd Schedule to the 1999 Constitution, you will appreciate the enormity of the task before the NJC and those saddled with the responsibility of managing its affairs. So, the challenges are definitely massive here, but not insurmountable. We thank the Almighty for the grace, energy and wisdom with which to handle the affairs of the Secretariat of the Council.

What are the specific changes or what impact do you think you have made so far in the Council, as its Executive Secretary?

In all humility, we have done quite a lot since 2017, across the various facets of the Council, to improve on the legacy and hard work of our predecessors. If you like, you can categorise our efforts into two broad sectors: human and infrastructural developments. In the human development aspect, we paid deliberate attention to the welfare of our staff, recognising the importance of a well-motivated work force in driving policies and programmes of an organisation. We all know that salaries of Civil servants are meagre, and there is little an organisation can do to cushion that immediately, but we have tried to cushion or mitigate the effects of their salaries by impacting on the various areas of their welfare, such as the health services offered by our in-house health clinic, improved and prompt payment of sundry allowances, provision of reliable staff transportation systems, trainings, etc. etc.

In the area of infrastructural development, we have paid premium attention to the provision and/or improvement of the general infrastructure of the Council, particularly ICT.

On assumption of office, we noticed that the Council affairs were manually managed, this included Council Meetings, Committee Meetings and all other businesses of the Council. We therefore, fashioned out the means of improving on the quality of the Council Secretariat and its operations. We felt the compelling need to continue to leverage on ICT in order to achieve optimal performance and service delivery.

We started by deploying an Electronic Document Management System (eDMS). This enabled us to electronically manage all Council Meetings. For instance, all documents and Working Papers for Meetings are now electronically transmitted to Members, unlike in the past, where staff of the Council had to travel long distances to deliver Working Papers and other documents.

Our investments and accelerated plans for adoption of digital technologies began from my inception in office, long before the disruptions occasioned by Covid-19. The initiatives were not only strategic but also prophetic, as events later turned out in the wake of the Coronavirus outbreak.

Some of the technology initiatives that the Council has embarked upon as operating models which include the use of advance technology to automate meeting/collaboration, a fully integrated system with touch screen that can operate as a full fledge computer system, Voice tracking software which Integrates easily with the eDMS for document sharing, presentation and discussions.

Other software applications include those of Accounting, Human Resource Management (HRM), Procurement, as well as Judges Performance & Evaluation. We are still not resting on our oars, as we continuously seek to improve on the existing ICT infrastructure of Council.

The entire Judiciary you are superintending is saddled with yearly low budgetary figures appropriated by the National Assembly, just as the Judges are poorly paid despite their huge workload. How have you been managing the situations, and what do you think are the ways to improve them?

We in the Judiciary, appreciate the dire situation the nation’s economy is going through, but I would implore that we should endeavour to review and re-appraise the funding of the Judiciary even in the face of our economic crunch. The allocation of N100 billion for the recurrent, overhead and capital expenditure of the Judiciary, is clearly insufficient to tackle the myriad of infrastructural and welfare challenges facing the sector.

As you have rightly pointed out, our Judges are poorly remunerated, and therefore, ill-motivated to perform their tasking judicial functions optimally. Apart from their poor remuneration and conditions of service generally, their working environments and infrastructure are in a deplorable state. They live in unbefitting accommodations, and work in very unconducive court rooms. Our Judges still take proceedings in longhand and hardly have access to e-Law reports, e-journals or e-practice books for research. You can go on and on.

You asked how have we been managing the situation? Well, we have tried to apply the little resources at our disposal, judiciously and prudently. We in the NJC, try to set good examples of how to apply resources prudently, and we insist same for our courts. We have a robust expenditure monitoring system over the courts in line with one of our core functions and powers under the Constitution, and this has helped in keeping the courts on their toes as far as funds management is concerned.

So, in the final analysis, we wish to appeal to the Executive and the Legislature to seriously consider placing the budgets of the Judiciary under a separate budgetary regime, as against the current “envelope system”. The need for a robust funding arrangement for the Judiciary, cannot be over-emphasised.

The Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) called off its over two months strike recently after the NJC intervention. Have the objectives of the strike been achieved?

Well, whatever it is, the Union had succeeded in making a statement by drawing national attention and therefore discourse on the long standing issues of judicial autonomy. But, how much of other objectives were achieved by the strike can only be explained by JUSUN itself.

However, what the NJC simply did was to intervene in halting the prolonged strike that was taking a toll on the Judiciary.

The Council, in its wisdom, thought it wise to appeal to JUSUN to suspend its action, so as to give the Governors time to implement the terms of the Memorandum of Action they signed with the Union.

To further demonstrate its desire to bring a lasting solution to the impasse, Council also constituted a Monitoring Committee led by HRH, Hon. Justice Sidi Bage Muhammad, with the mandate to interface with parties to the MoA to ensure amicable resolutions of the issues that led to the long-drawn industrial action, and to proffer solutions against future reoccurrence.

There has been uproar from some quarters over the appointments of some Justices of the Court of Appeal recently, saying those Judges are mostly from the Northern part of Nigeria. What can you say are the reasons for the spread or non-spread of the appointments?

Appointment of Justices to the Court of Appeal or indeed, any court in the Federal Judiciary is done using the indices of merit and geopolitical zones.

The allegation about the lopsidedness in the appointments into the Court of Appeal, in fact, started since 2017 during a similar exercise pertaining to the Court. At that time, the Court had 76 Justices, the North Central with 6 States and FCT had 12 Justices; North-East with 6 States had 12 Justices plus the President; North-West with 7 States had nine Justices; South-East with 5 States had 13 Justices; South-South 6 six States had 14 Justices and South-West with 6 States had 15 Justices. Note that Section 2 of the Court of Appeal Act 2013 (As Amended), provides that the total number of Justices of the Court in addition to the President of the Court shall not be more than 90.

In considering appointment for the 14 vacancies, and to ensure that each zone is adequately represented, all States that had 3 serving Justices were not considered unless under special circumstances. The States not considered were Anambra, Bauchi, Borno, Cross-River, Ebonyi, Edo, Ekiti, Gombe, Imo, Kogi, Kwara and Oyo.States like Adamawa, Kebbi and Sokoto had zero representation which informed the need to include them in the current exercise.

Appointments can also be made to the Court based on the elevation of its Justices to the Supreme Court, retirement or death. That was what happened in the 2017 exercise.

Unfortunately, even after a painstaking explanation of the process, similar complaints and insinuations have also trailed the 2020 exercise, which you referred to in your question. Those who have maintained this narrative and have consistently criticised the NJC, either do so out of lack of knowledge or sheer mischief.

The current exercise just like that of 2017 was also conducted to fill vacancies created mainly by the elevation of some Justices of the Court to the Supreme Court, retirement or, in a few cases, death. For instance, you may observe that of the 8 Justices elevated to the Supreme Court, 5 of them are from the North, with the North West having 3 and North East having 2 slots. South South having 2 slots and South West having a slot. It was therefore, imperative that the Court of Appeal Appointment exercise would focus on filling the vacancies created by elevation of these Justices to the Supreme Court. Even in their elevation to the Supreme Court, their appointments were meant to fill vacancies created by the exit of the Justices of the Supreme Court from their own Zones.

For instance, they were to replace the following retired Justices of the Supreme Court among others: Hon. Justice W. S. N. Onnoghen from the South South, Hon. Justice Kumai Aka’ahs and Hon. Justice Amiru Sanusi from the North West, Hon. Justice Clara Ogunbiyi from the South West and Hon. Justice Adamu Galinje from the North East, to mention but a few.

I hope you now have a better insight into the Appointment processes done by the Council, not just in respect of the Court of Appeal but all our Courts. What just happened in 2020 was just coincidental, that most vacancies arose from a particular geopolitical zone. It could have been from other zones as well.

Let me seize this opportunity to advice those who normally criticise our processes, to do so from the position of knowledge and information. Lawyers amongst them are especially enjoined to seek for information, before passing judgement on not just the routine appointment processes conducted by the Council, but on all other matters pertaining to the mandate of the NJC.

Many have complained that the NJC merely replicates the functions of the State Judicial Service Commissions which also oversees the welfare and discipline of judicial officers in their various States. Where do the lines cross?

As a matter of fact, the functions and powers of the National Judicial Council and those of the State Judicial Service Commissions or the Judicial Service Committee of the FCT, do not in any way conflict or overlap. Whereas the National Judicial Council has Powers over the Courts established under and by Section 6(5)(a-j)of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), the Judicial Service Commission of the State and Judicial Service Committee of the FCT exercise Appointments and Disciplinary Powers over Courts that are not captured the aforementioned section of the Constitution. In other words, these are lower Courts such as Magistrate Courts, Area Courts, Customary Courts etc.

The NJC has the power of Appointment and Discipline over Judicial Officers of the Courts of Records, whereas the JSCs of the States appoint and/or discipline Judges of the lower Courts and Court Staff within their jurisdictions. The only nexus they have with Courts of Records established under Section 6(5)(a-i) is the fact that Chief Judges of the States are Chairmen of the JSCs that shortlist and advice the NJC on the Appointments of Judges of the State High Courts, Customary Courts of Appeal, as well as Sharia Courts of Appeal of the States.

So, you can say that in the exercise of its functions and powers under Paragraph 21, 3rd Schedule of Part I to the 1999 Constitution, the Powers of the NJC are in no way conflicting or overlapping with the functions of the JSCs of the States, which like I said earlier, exercise powers over courts that are not under Section 6(5)(a-j).

In the final analysis, you can even say that both entities complement each other, in the discharge of their constitutional powers.

What are your plans towards taking NJC to the next level?

Well, my plan is simple: I want to leave the NJC better than I met it. At the end of my tenure, I want to see an NJC that is truly a regulator of, and superintendent over the Judiciary in all its ramifications. An NJC that is in itself, well managed, with a crop of well-motivated and trained staff, operating a well-oiled machinery of judicial administration. An NJC that can hold its own against its peers, anywhere in the world.

Thank you E.S.

nikepo Braithwaite and Jude Igbanoi caught up with the Executive Secretary of the NJC, Ahmed Gambo Saleh, to shed some light on the functions of the Council, and let us into some of the strides he has made since he took up the mantle of office in 2017, despite the huge challenge of inadequate funding of the Nigerian Judiciary