Tobi: Lawyers Who Win All Their Cases Must Have Influenced Outcome

Wale Igbintade

A jurist, Justice Ebiowei Tobi, yesterday, said no lawyer could win all his cases in court, but that whoever did must have influenced the outcomes of such cases.

Tobi, who at the ongoing 62nd Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA-AGC) in Lagos, however, appealed to legal practitioners to allow Judges to their work without any interference.

According to him, “If as a lawyer in 10 years of practice, you win all your cases, then, you are a suspect. It is my earnest plea that lawyers do their work and allow the judges do theirs. It is most likely that a lawyer, who wins all his cases in court, influences its outcome.”

On the contribution of lawyers to inconsistencies, Justice Tobi noted that lawyers were also complicit in facilitating the much talked about issue of inconsistency in judgement delivered by the courts.

He said, “Not all clients have the audacity to approach a judge to influence his case; they have facilitators and these facilitators are lawyers. Yet, same lawyers are complaining that judges are corrupt when you are involved in forum shopping.”

Tobi explained that, the provisions in the codes of conduct might not be a rescue to the much-touted judicial inconsistencies after all, but it could only regulate the  “people who  are  agreed to be regulated by it.”

He also said the people should stop the blame game of putting inconsistency on the judges and rather see it as a community problem that all could work together to solve.

Dwelling on the theme for the plenary, which he claimed was contemporary as it has given the judiciary and legal profession a bad name within the public domain, he noted that, “The topic tends to give the impression that there are more inconsistencies in judgements of court than consistency and I hope that was not the intention of the organisers.

“The narrative is not as so damaging as it is in the public domain. There are more consistencies in our courts than there are inconsistencies. If you look at the scenario of inconsistency, it is like a man wearing a white cloth with an oil spot on it. No one sees the white but only the stain. Everyone is guided by social media report of cases rather than reading the judgement itself. They, instead, proceed to shred the judge, and the judgement

“We must stop the blame game of putting inconsistency on the judges and rather see it as a community problem that we all can work together to bring about a solution. If we do otherwise, it is not just the judiciary we bring down but the entire legal profession,” he said

Explaining that one could not completely eradicate inconsistencies but stem the tide to its barest minimum, Tobi said, “Yes we have a problem to tackle, but is the code of conduct the solution? If a judge sees a situation from his perspective, are we going to see it as an inconsistency because other judges see it differently?

“A judge’s exercise of a discretion that does not fall in line with the decision of others cannot fall within the description of inconsistency. No doubts, there are inconsistencies but the next stage is to identify the problem and then proffer solution.”

He however, identified lack of knowledge and laziness of judicial officers as reasons for inconsistencies in judicial pronouncements.