Kwara NBA Chairman laments corruption in judiciary system 

By Saka Laaro, Ilorin

The Chairman of the Ilorin branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Barrister Kamaldeen Gambari has lamented the conduct and prevalent corruption among some staff of the judiciary in Nigeria.

According to him, the corruption has been responsible for the inadequacies in the judicial system in the country.

Barrister Kamaldeen Gambari made the remark during a chat with journalists in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital.

Gambari highlighted the exploitation of both the legal practitioners and the litigants by some staff of the judiciary.

However, he said there are some who perform their duties diligently among the judiciary staff without any corruptive tendency and assured that the Bar is doing its best to resist them.

“The  exploitation is so endemic that legal practitioners and the litigants can  hardly do anything free without some segment of these staff making some unholy demands either from the legal practitioners or the litigants,” he lamented.

“Everytime they do this, as a Bar, we try to resist them, yet we have not achieved the intended result. We shall put this corruption tendency before the new Acting Chief Judge, Justice Abiodun Ayodele Adera when he resumes  office properly,” Gambari further stated .

Speaking on alleged partisanship of some judges in politics, the NBA Chairman noted that he doubts that any judge who know his onion, bearing in mind the codes of his office, will venture into such unholy journey as the ethics of the profession negates such action, describing such action as being a disservice to the judiciary and capable of bringing their offices to disrepute.

He said, “The ethics of their office prohibits that, if anyone of them is found involving in that, it will be unfortunate, it is a great disservice to the judiciary and they are doing that at their own peril because that will bring the office they occupy to disrepute.”

The Chairman stressed that, “If truly there is corruption in the judiciary, I can vouch that we have no corrupt judge in Kwara State judiciary, all of our judges are full of integrity regardless of who the litigants are, they don’t bow to any pressure and they discharge their duties with utmost and purest of intentions based on the facts presented before them.”

Gambari stressed the need for the government to exploit the experience of retired judges by incorporating them into other roles rather than letting their knowledge rot away.

He said this in reference to the recently retired Chief Judge of Kwara state,  Justice Suleiman Durosinlorun Kawu whom he described as “highly knowledgeable, full of wisdom, mentally sound and has the fear of God in the discharge of his judicial duties.”

“We will continue to push to get them engaged and useful for the State, starting from the Kwara State Government up to the Federal Government especially through the National Judicial Council (NJC),” he added.

“The  judges have acquired so much knowledge, experience and training whereby public funds have been expended on them to acquire  trainings. Just because they have clocked certain years, they will now have to disappear into the backstage,” he said mentioning that “such investment shouldn’t just be thrown away.”

“They should be put into use as it happens in other nations of the world, whereby they are engaged to come and preside over some other matters especially where they have their specialities.

“Especially at the Supreme Court where we are having number of judges fewer than we needed and there hasn’t been any appointments and people are retiring every day, the versatile ones amongst these people can be made used of to fill these voids so that their knowledge shouldn’t be wasted,” Gambari stated.

The State NBA Chairman also dismissed the claim of conflict issues between the two units that made up the Justice system, the Bar and the Bench, saying that, “there shouldn’t be any conflict between the Bar and the Bench as the two are like siamese twins; we are conjoined from the start.

“No one can be a member of the bench without being a lawyer first, so their first catchment is the bar. There is no way they will be on the bench and now turn their backs on us and vice versa because we still remain one,” he said.