Says both mess up anti-graft warIN a no-holds-barred that has become customary of his public address since he ascended office as the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Dahiru Musdapher, yesterday deplored the plea bargain facility offered to suspects standing trial for corrupt enrichment and sundry financial crimes by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), saying it makes a mess of the war against corruption.Justice Musdapher who described plea bargain as a novel concept, said it has a 'dubious' origin aimed at shielding high profile crooks who rape public treasury by offering them soft landing.Speaking at the fifth yearly conference of the Section on Legal Practice of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Abuja yesterday, the CJN, represented by Justice of the Supreme Court,Nwali Sylvester Ngwuta, declaredthe system of plea bargain as alien to Nigerian law - substantive or procedural.'It was invented to provide soft landing to high profile criminals who loot the treasury entrusted to them. It is an obstacle to our fight against corruption; it should never again be mentioned in our jurisprudence,' he stated.Plea bargain system became a prominent feature during the trial of former Inspector General of Police, Mr. Tafa Balogun and former Edo State governor, Chief Lucky Igbinedion, who were let off the hook by EFCC after some horse-trading that received the disapproval of most Nigerians.He also said those who get court injunctions to restrain law enforcement agencies from arresting and prosecuting them, may just be guilty of the alleged offence brought against them.He said: 'The guilty are afraid and when a man who has abused the public trust reposed in him feels the heat of the approaching long arm of the law, he rushes to a judge with flexible conscience who makes him untouchable to the law enforcement agents. It is another obstacle to the struggle to uproot corruption in this country.'Making a case for the review of some portions of the country's criminal laws, Justice Musdapher said: 'May I also draw your attention to our prisons where fellow human beings are reduced to the barest level of humanity. I think time is ripe to include a provision for suspended sentence in the criminal procedure code and criminal procedure law, after all, as Roscoe Pound said in his introduction to the Philosophy of Law (1922) 'The law must be stable but it must not stand still.''On the on-going debate of holding charges, he noted that every legal practitioner is familiar with the term by which citizens are dumped in prison by a court, which lacks jurisdiction to try them.'It is largely responsible for the congestion in prisons across the country. The state cannot incarcerate its citizens while scrambling for evidence to build a case against them, and if it has a case, it should take the accused to a court of competent jurisdiction. As often in the case when he is set free because he has no case to answer, he goes home in shame, a damaged man, without apology, without compensation,' he lamented.
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