Former Chief Judge (CJ) of Lagos State, Justice Samuel Ilori says the nation's judiciary has done well, in spite of public criticism. In this interview with BERTRAM NWANNEKANMA, the fearless Judge calls for proper funding of the judiciary.Nigeria will be 52 years tomorrow, but many do not feel there is much to celebrate. How do you access the journey so far'Before independence, we had a civil government made up of three regions, each pursuing heavy programmes, with heavy competition within all of them and things were moving very well, we carried that to our independence.At 1960, the North was producing its cotton, hides and skin, and all sorts of things, the East was producing coal and palm kernel, they were doing very well, the same thing with the West with their cocoa.So there was heavy competition and Nigeria was moving very well under the type of constitution we had. At that time of independence, it was the same kind of arrangement, and the country was really progressing, one thing was very important, we had true democracy.The country's hardship came, when we had military incursion into the government in 1966. The healthy democracy we had was changed to unitary government. As a result of the unitary government, democracy in each region was taken away and vested on the federal government. This made the federal government to have too much powers, to allow any region to make any progress. So we started having retardation, instead of progress and we were retrogressing. So, before you asked whether Nigeria has achieved anything or not, we have to look at the history. If we have continued the way we were before themilitary incursion, this country could have been a totally different place for everybody.Now, the military were in government for over 30 years, 30 years wasted out of 52 years and with the military misgovernment asat that time, how can we say we are talking about 52 years. We should be talking about 12 years because the military really took over and misgoverned us, did everything wrongly.Now, when we now left the military and said we came back to civiliangovernment in 1999, to start a new democracy, what did we do' We took a military man, took off his uniform, put an Agbada on his neck and said, 'Ah, we have a democratic government.' But his military background was still with him, yes, he was out of the military but the military was inside him. I mean the best they can do was to push him out of military, but you don't take the military out of him, so the same military government, the same rot continued. Some breath of fresh air we could have had was only during the government of the late Musa Yar'Adua. Of course, his health did not allow him to perform satisfactorily. The other thing we have to look at is whattype of government are we operating' The constitution we are operating today is one, which the discredited military government bequeathed too us. We do not even have a democratic government (Constitution). So we have rarely made progress.We shouldhave a national conference, re-arrange ourselves and go back to the regions,because this country is too large for unitary government to succeed. Every country in the world, even the worst democracy, that had military government before are now going back to regional government. Take England, which is the oldest democracy that we have in the world for example. Now Scotland has got self-government, Wales has got self -government today, diverting to regional government; yet we are still sticking to a military-quasi-democracy for ourselves.Nigeria will progress if we have the opportunity of going back to regional government, clean the rot that military government has given us. We have oil money, but they formed cabals and are stealing the money here and there; we have report that somebody has stolen so much billions, report that somebody has taken thousands of dollars as bribe. Do you have any result coming from those reports' Are they not bigger than government' If we have continuedwith the regional democracythat we had before, nobody will get away with that type of crime.Some say a national conference side by side a national legislature could be a bit difficult'Those representatives at the National Assembly are representatives elected under the wrong constitution given to us by the military. These people instead of allowing us to get a national constitution that will give us true democracy, they start patching the constitution, they patch it here and patch it there. How can patched cloth be like a brand new garment' I do not subscribe to it. In fact, are they representing us, let us say the truth'The average worker is asking for N18, 000 a month, now we have been told that an average senator takes away N200 million every year. Can a man with N200 million a year make a constitution for a man with N15, 000.00 a month' It is not possible. Look, wealth is subjective and everything you do with wealth, you look at it subjectively, while we need an objective approachto our governance.That isso far as the constitution and the progress of the country is concerned. Nigeria has too much blessings from God, blessed with mineral resources, we have not even tapped 10 percent of the mineral resources that Nigeria has. The same thing with human resources, but the constitution is wrong, the mode of government is wrong, the mode of government is such that makes us repeat the same sort of mistake every time. So whether we have progress or not, it is going to depend on the type of constitution we have and the type of people in government.Looking at your constituency, the judiciary, has it played its role as a vital arm of government'I will say this with the highest sense of modesty. Until I became a Chief Judge of Lagos state,Nigeria's judiciary was still operating 19th century method ' writing in long hands, missing out what is important, having a prison mentality. Our litigation was done under the adversary mentality; that you are my enemy, I am your enemy, which does not allow justice to be done fairly; because we believed that every litigation is a war between the two parties. That is an adversary mentality of looking at things. Upon my acceptance as the Chief Judge, I told the governor at that time, that my first duty will beto stopthe 19th century approachto justice; so he agreed with me and for the first time in this country, I introduced verbatim reporting, which meant that judges will not be writing everything in long hands. So, in Lagos State judiciary today, with verbatim reporting, you have some sort of confidence that what you said will be recorded and not whether the judge likes your or not. When the judge was recording everything manually, if he does not like, he will not write what you said. There was a situation, where the judge refused to write and when the lawyer complained, the judge said, 'come and write it now'. But once you have verbatim reporting, then you have true justice.The next thing I did was to introduce computing into the judiciary. I opened a computer school, made sure that every judge learned computer, then we had a good measure of guaranteeing fair trial, fair hearing and fair justice. That time, prisoners were taken like rams in useless Black Marias, but I made sure that I built courts right in front of each prison as the best way to decongest the judiciary and give justice. So, when we are complaining about the judiciary, as whether they are performing or not performing, we are asking what inputs that had been made in the judiciary' I am sure that quite a good percentage of thejudiciary in Nigeria still writes inlong hands. We now have verbatim reporting, where what you said will be there, so that you can have your records for appeal easily,in case the judge has pervertedthe fact, it will be evident because injustice comes out ofthe perversion of the factsandfacts are perverted where they are not well recorded.So far as I can see, our judiciary, labouring under the sort of situation they are labouring has performed creditably well. They laboured under a lot of disabilities, except in some states, where they now say, 'justice must be a priority thing, we will fund ourjudiciary very well, pay the judges very well and make sure that justice is done.' So within the sort of perimeter, which the courts are operating, the judiciary is doing fairly well.Corruption seems to have found its place in the judiciary, what is your reaction on that'This question of corruption in the judiciary, I think is being over blown. Don'tforget that the judiciary is operating within the environment of Nigerian mentality. I am sure thatno judge will come out to say that is your case, come and give me money on it. It is still our people that go for them, to offer them bribes. I am notsaying the Nigerian judiciary is 100 percent clean, there are bad eggs, there are in fact bad eggs, but the National Judicial Commission (NJC) is doing its best to weed out the bad eggs. I have said it before that if any judge in Lagos State is found to be corrupt, a rope should be tied round his neck with a stone and thrown to the sea, because Lagos State government is payingjudges well, providingevery comfort for their judicial officers. It is quite a far cry to the time when we were judges. My salary asthe Chief Judge was N32, 000 up till 1999. But the Lagos State government looked at it and said, wow. Is that what these judges are being paid' How do you expect them to be comfortable' Now judges are well paid, they are well catered for and if they are well paid and catered for, there should be no need for corruption.How do we move our country forward from where it is now'We must avoid concentration of powers at the Federal government. When the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) was to be established, I told the President at that time, that if somebody collects bribe at Badagry, you have to go to Abuja to report, but if you haveEFCC's section in every local council, then it is easier for you to report the act. So we must avoid concentration of power at the federal government, we should devolve power so that the regions will be doing much more than they are doing now. The Federal government is looking after a limitednumber of items like we had in the 1958 and 1960 constitutions, so that the federal government's duty must be limited, while the states must be allowed to do much more than they are doing at this moment.For Nigeria to progress in the future, we must go back to regional government, except in this time, it may not be region but autonomoussix geo-political zones in the country. What are we even talking about' The population of Lagos State alone is almost equal to the population of Ghana. So why can't Lagos State be an independent country under a confederation' So instead of a federation, why can't we have a confederation' And if we are going to have a federation, why don't it be a true and proper federation where residual power is in the region' And limited powers on external affairs, the army and on currency should be left for the federal government, once we do that, Nigeria will progress.
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