“Re: Judges Wanting to Live Like Crazy Politicians” – Akariwe SAN, Replies Ojo Adebayo SAN

Ojo Adebayo SAN and Ikeazor Akariwe SAN

Former Attorney-General of Oyo Station,  Ojo Adebayo SAN has shared a response he got from Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Ikeazor Akariwe on his opinion that Judges welfare are not as bad as is portrayed.

READ ADEBAYO SAN’S OPINION HERE

Below is the Response from Ikeazor Akariwe SAN

I don’t agree o, the great OJ, learned brother silk.

You asked:
“If the conditions of our Judges are that appalling, why the craze lobbies and untoward romance of the parliament to have their retirement age increased to 70years?”

And expatiated thus:
“I believe that if a system is hellish as they are parading, they should be eager and anxious to exit such a horrible system and not otherwise.”

My response:
Life after retirement for the judicial officer is a life of unemployment. 65 years is simply too young in this age of improved health care for a judge to retire. The peculiarity of adjudication is that, like wine tastes better with age, one who adjudicates over peoples’ problems gets wiser, more sober, less worldly and more experienced with age.

Dr. EEJ Okereke, the leader of the bar* in Enugu, turns 90 and 63 years at the bar this year and is still in active legal practice.

When two judges retired from the Enugu judiciary this year, EEJ, as we call him, could not help but observe that he was 25 when they were both born, and while he remains in active practice in relatively good health, they are retiring and cannot return to practice! (NB: *Leader of the bar is the title given to the most senior lawyer by age of call to the bar in our jurisdiction, whether SAN or not).

I have long since advocated that judges should be permitted to return to litigation practice after retirement, as they do in the United States, (perhaps) with a Nigerian flavour of barring them from practicing in any jurisdiction in which they once superintended as judges.

You said:
“I served as the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in Oyo State between 2011 -2015 and I can tell you for free that anybody who holds the opinion that our Judges are neglected and being impoverished by the executive is just being theoretical and that includes you Sir with greatest respect to you.”

I respond:
While I appreciate your insight from the inner recesses of the office of attorney-general in which you once operated with remarkable distinction, permit me to ask you, why states’ chief executives observe S. 121 (3) of the grund norm in breach?

Respectfully, LBS, I do not believe that it is the duty of the executive arm to not-neglect and to not-impoverish the executive arm, in the light of the constitutional provision, aforesaid that “all monies standing to the credit of the Judiciary shall be paid on the first line charge directly to the Heads of Court, from the consolidated revenue fund.”

You said again:
“Most people seem not to understand the real issues with our Judges. The crux which is yet to be openly said and which perhaps which may never be is that our Judges also want to live large like the politicians and especially like the members of the National Assembly and also like the top class SANs (not just like any members of the inner bar). Some Nigerian Judges desire to own private jets while to some of them , they should be living in Banana Island or Asokoro or at the Ministers’ Hill.”

My response:
This may be true of some, but cannot be true of all. All we, who are of the ‘exponentially increase-judges-salaries-and-number-of-judges’ lobby are advocating is that the current salaries leave even the most honest of judges quite vulnerable.

A person with the power to sentence to death ot remit a sentence with a stroke of the pen; to impose damages of humongous billions naira or remit to two million naira, ought to be paid in a such manner that puts him or her above vulnerability unless s/he is amoral and cannot be placed above vulnerability no matter how much paid, in which case such amoral individuals will be found and flushed out of the system.

There is a reason the highest paid civil servant in the UK, even above the Prime Minister, is the Lord Chief Justice. Is it not scandalous that the last time wages of federal judges was reviewed was 2008? Can that #500,000 monthly give four children the sort of quality education the judge received from federal universities in the 1980s, which regrettably, save for a few federal universities, is only found today in private universities?

Then you proclaimed:
“They have forgotten, however , that Nigerian legal politicians are neither normal nor reasonable human beings but some kind of people that are ravingly crazy and mentally deranged. Our politicians are unknown to themselves psychiatry patients but who just refused to seek medical care for their psychotic issues.* Otherwise how can any normal and reasonable human being rationalise owning over 10 exotic cars in a household whose members are not more than 5 and more especially in a country where majority are barely struggling daily to eat ? How can a mentally capable person keeps on acquiring properties over properties in a society where the majority are homeless? .It is sad however that some members of our judiciary are competing and comparing themselves with those deluded set of species and are aspiring to be like them.”

I respond:
I am delighted to find something we both can agree on for I have long since pontificated that the Nigerian political class (just like the Nigerian taxi driver) needs psychiatric evaluation and treatment. This one is incontrovertible.