By Prof Chidi Odinkalu
In the week in which we buried the longest-serving Justice of Supreme Court of Nigeria and the second longest-serving Chief Justice, we find ourselves once again in a situation that calls attention to the need to address tone-deafness to judicial integrity.
Two days after the Edo State Governorship Election Petition ended up in Supreme Court, the second most senior Justice of the court was where he did not need to be and in the company he didn’t need to keep in Benin-City. Only the wilful would dismiss the implications of that for optics of judicial impartiality.
Since I disclosed this yesterday, I have received lots of calls from political and judicial insiders explaining why he was in the state; telling me that judges need to have a social life; and saying that a judge still should enjoy the fullest of constitutional rights of free movement.
There are also claims that he couldn’t have gone to Benin to collect a bribe. That is silly and I will begin with that.
S. 36(1) makes an independent and impartial judiciary a constitutional right. We have a duty to defend it as citizens. We defend judges and ourselves when we do.
No one has said or suggested that the judge in question went to Benin to collect a bribe. The fact that those who say this think it is a defence shows how serious our crisis of judicial integrity is. The constitutional standard is appearance of bias, not active bribery.
Those who claim that a judge can mix with anyone or go anywhere are either deliberately uninformed or wilfully illiterate.
The Judicial Code of Conduct imposes clear constraints on the social networks and movement of judges. Those constraints are not artifices. They are mandatory. There is no right to be a judge nor a duty to remain a judge after appointment.
A person who prizes their social networks above the judicial office has a choice: they can resign from the bench in order to fully access the right “to enjoy”. That would be both honest and lawful.
Let me be clear: Being a judge is a very serious privilege and a call to service. Those who are appointed to that office were traditionally held up to standards that are divine. So we call them #MyLord. It comes with obligations too: being a judge is a constraint on social life. In recognition of that, society offered judges a place of respect reserved only for the divine.
This #implicitbargain has now been retrenched in favour of judicial impunity. Those who justify this want us to normalize the casualisation of judges. We refuse….!
Any judge, no matter how senior, who chooses to remain in office, is bound by these standards. The provisions are clear. The leadership of the National Judicial Council(NJC) has a duty to ensure consequences for infractions that compromise perceptions of judicial integrity.
No one seriously denies the facts I put out. Instead, facts have been provided which corroborate the essential contours of everything I said.
If the Supreme Court or Senior Advocates don’t realize that the optics of this situation are destructive for the Court at this time, then we’re in crisis. The judiciary is too important to be ignored and the Supreme Court is a shrine in whose sanctity every citizen must have an interest. It would be prudent for the leadership of the judiciary to police itself. To the extent that they have failed to do so, citizens must help and remind them.
To adapt the late Thandika Mkandawire, we cannot behave as if our judiciary can be transformed by the force of impunity or wilful ignorance. On this, I hope, we can achieve critical consensus.
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