Social media causing students’ failure at law school — Okocha

Okocha

A former President of the Nigerian Bar Association and Chairman of the Council of Legal Education, Onueze Okocha, in this interview with CHUKWUDI AKASIKE, speaks on sundry national issues, including the falling quality of law graduates

THERE has been a controversy over the defection of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, from the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressives Congress. Do you think this controversy is necessary?

We have to be honest; it was a controversial decision that the Speaker took. I have to say that Aminu Tambuwal is my friend and professional colleague. I remember vividly when I contested to be the President of the Nigerian Bar Association in 1998, Tambuwal was the secretary or assistant secretary of the Sokoto branch of the NBA. He was elected into the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. It cannot be denied that his position has become controversial, having been elected on the platform of the PDP as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

How will you react to the calls for his resignation?

It is before the Federal High Court in Abuja and I prefer not to make any comment.

A senator in the National Assembly is said to be taking more than N20m as monthly pay, even when the national minimum wage is N18,000. What is your view on this?

I hope it is not true because we know that salaries and wages are fixed by the Revenue Mobilisation and Fiscal Allocation Commission. Repeatedly, we in the civil societies, including my professional body– the Nigerian Bar Association, have been at odds with our elected representatives in the various legislatures, including the National Assembly. I think that some factual information is still necessary to determine what exactly the senators and the members of the House of Representatives earn. Now, the salaries are one thing as they tell us, but then there are allowances and other perquisites of office, which nobody is ever able to determine what those amount to. I think it is imperative that members of the National Assembly come clean and tell us exactly what they earn as salaries and receive as allowances. It would be sad if, as alleged, they earn in the neighbourhood of N20m per month. That amounts to nearly N240m per year. It is even higher than the President’s salary and it is unheard of. If that is true, it must be condemned in no uncertain terms. But as I said, nobody knows the real facts and figures and we call for all concerned to be honest and truthful about the matter.

There has been a drop in the quality of lawyers being churned out by the country’s Law School. How can the situation be rescued?

As you may know, I am also the Chairman of the Council of Legal Education. That is the council that runs the Nigerian Law School’s six campuses across Nigeria. It was a most unfortunate development the way the last Bar final exams turned out. Nearly 33 per cent of the students who sat for the Bar finals failed and only about 51 per cent passed. Even though the press and some fifth columnists had alleged that over 50 per cent of the students failed, it is not true. Thirty-one or 32 per cent failed. But even at that, it was not a happy development. We have looked at it and you know that the Council of Legal Education has a Board of Studies that looks through the exam results and then approves them before they bring it up to the council. When we saw it, there was nothing we could do. The students who failed performed poorly and when we inquired into the matter, we discovered that some of the students were not taking their studies seriously. Some of them were using their iPhones, iPads, BlackBerry phones and other mobile gadgets to communicate with their friends on social networking sites while classes and tutorials were going on. Therefore, we thought we needed to send the signal to the students; they must rise up and take their studies seriously.

You also made a comment about standards falling in the legal profession.

That is the unfortunate truth. As you have just heard, students would not take their studies seriously. We tried to analyse the situation and we found out that the problem had its origin in less intelligent students entering universities. Our educational system in Nigeria is not what it used to be. Students with poor Ordinary Level certificates are entering universities. Some of them have C6 in English and can’t speak passable English. You don’t teach English in the university; you don’t teach English in the Law school. English is the basic tool for a lawyer.

We have to take a critical look at education at all levels. We must ensure that those that should enter the universities are those who have proper secondary school education. That is the reason why there is a drop in the standard of legal education. But the Council of Legal Education is taking some steps; we have set up a committee to liaise with the National Universities Commission to redesign the curriculum for legal education in Nigeria. We are now imposing strict measures on the universities that have faculties of law. And even those who are not measuring up, we are withdrawing their accreditation to run faculties of law. This is already in place and I believe that in no distant future, we will soon begin to see the result and we believe that properly trained lawyers will be released from the Nigerian Law School to be called to the bar in Nigeria.

A close examination of the succession pattern for the Chief Justice of Nigeria reveals that it has been enjoyed by the North. Don’t you think it negates the Federal Character or zoning principle?

No, I do not believe so. The Bench in Nigeria—the judges and the magistrates—are professionals and in the legal profession, appointments to the Bench are not by federal character; it is by qualification. First, you must be qualified to be a magistrate or a judge. Of course, in arranging the politics of it, what they call the Federal Character principle will ensure that when you are employing judges and magistrates, you don’t have all of them from one particular area of any particular state. After you have employed them, they begin to rise in their careers. In the legal profession, we say those who go to the Bench have chosen a judicial career while those of us who stay at the Bar have chosen the legal practitioners career. By the time you enter the High Court, your performance will now dictate whether you merit to be elevated from the High Court to the Court of Appeal. And then your performance in the Court of Appeal should indicate whether you merit to be elevated from the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court. In keeping with the tradition of the profession, it is the most senior in any particular court that should assume the position as the head of that court.

Therefore, in the High Court, the most senior judge invariably is usually recommended to become the chief judge. In the Court of Appeal, the most senior justice is usually recommended to become the president. In the Supreme Court, the most senior justice is usually recommended to be the Chief Justice of Nigeria. At that level, it has nothing to do with where one comes from. Seniority determines whether one will get to the position and once one merits it, one will become the most senior and invariably, one will eventually assume headship of that court. Recently, I watched on the television, while the Senate was screening Justice Mamud Mohammed, a sagacious judge and a dispassionate judicial officer. I have appeared before him on several occasions, even when he was a justice of the Court of Appeal in Benin, which was where I first appeared before him over 10 years ago and I was impressed by his demeanour as a judge. He is certainly a worthy successor to the current chief justice and as I have said, it has nothing to do with the fact that he is a northerner. He got there by merit and I am sure he will serve meritoriously as the Chief Justice of Nigeria.

Kidnapping is a challenge to Nigeria. As a lawyer, do you think it is morally right for lawyers to defend kidnappers in court?

May I say this with all due respect to you and to those who think lawyers are the problem sometimes because I have heard this on several occasions. Lawyers are duty bound to represent any client whose instructions we have accepted. Even the vilest criminal, the vilest offender is entitled to legal representation. I know, as a matter of policy, when even a person accused of murder is arraigned before the court, he is entitled to legal representation. If he cannot afford a lawyer, the state, through the legal aid counsel and through the Ministry of Justice and even through the court, is obliged to appoint a counsel for him because there are certain cases you cannot defend without legal representation. It is better for nine criminals to go scot-free than for one innocent man to go to jail. Thus, kidnappers, even murderers, are entitled to legal representation.

Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State met recently with members of the NBA on how to resolve the judiciary crisis in the state, but the meeting ended in a deadlock. What do you think is the way forward?

I am the leader of the Bar in Rivers State. As the most senior of the Senior Advocates of Nigeria practising in the state, I have called several meetings; I have interfaced with the elected chairmen of the branches. I have even held meetings with the governor and have suggested with all humility that our governor should respect the provisions of the constitution and laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on this matter in the selection of who should be a chief judge or acting chief judge. The provisions of the constitution are clear. They accused me of teleguiding, and influencing the National Judicial Council to go for the second choice of the Judicial Service Commission of the state, merely because she happens to be my sister. I have told them that the position I have taken is without any sentiment. If it had been any other person that was nominated by the National Judicial Council, I would have supported that person and would still tell the governor to follow what the NJC had recommended and appoint the person who had been recommended to be the chief judge of the state. But they don’t want to listen to me. I have distanced myself from that problem. Let them have their way if they will ever have their way. The truth is that the administration of justice is currently in limbo in the state. For now, the matter is in court and let the court decide.

Corruption has been the bane of the country’s development and some are saying President Goodluck Jonathan is not doing enough to tackle the problem. What is your view on this?

I always feel a tinge of sadness when everybody turns around to accuse President Goodluck Jonathan of the myriad of problems we have had in Nigeria and are still having. Jonathan as President did not start corruption in Nigeria. It was not under Jonathan as President that corruption assumed this larger-than-life image that it has become. We must be charitable to our President, who is the head of government and the head of state. Corruption has suddenly grown to become endemic in Nigeria, but I think that we must rise to the occasion and the agencies of government involved in fighting corruption must show seriousness in this war against corruption. We can fight it to a standstill. Anybody who has unjustly enriched himself or enriched another person should be brought to book. They (anti-corruption agencies) must get their acts together. A certain governor could not be convicted in a Nigerian court and yet a court in England convicted him of the same corrupt practices. Personnel of our security agencies and the anti-corruption agencies like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission should be adequately trained.

Are you saying the EFCC has not been able to measure up to the expectation of Nigerians?

The EFCC has not measured up to expectation. You see the EFCC charging somebody with one hundred and something counts of offences and it cannot even prove one. If a man has committed 20 offences, look at the one that you can prove, gather the evidence, present it to a court of law and I am sure the person will be convicted, which is what happened to that former governor that I mentioned. They could not assemble any evidence here to convict him and the court acquitted him. In England, he pleaded guilty before he was sent to jail. The EFCC should do the needful so that we can send these corrupt people to jail. And it should not stop there; when culprits are sent to jail, the EFCC should recover the loot because it is public money they have looted and we need to get the benefits of those funds that they have tried to siphon from government coffers.

Ahead of the 2015 presidential election, do you think a Muslim-Muslim ticket is the best for Nigeria?

It does not matter to me what you call Muslim-Muslim ticket. Any elected president of Nigeria is not elected as a president for the Muslims. He is elected as a president for Nigerians, inclusive of Muslims, Christians, pagan and even non-believers. My position is, let us elect the president that we believe will serve us well; the president that will give us good governance; the president that will ensure Nigerians have the basic amenities of life. I, personally, see in President Goodluck Jonathan that kind of president. In spite of the challenges we have with Boko Haram and all the other criminal elements in Nigeria, we have a government that is working.

Do you agree with the prediction some time ago that Nigeria will break up, especially when you consider the onslaught by Boko Haram?

I liken it to the predictions we hear of the end time; the world will soon come to an end. It is all scare tactics. It is all about raising the tempo. Nigeria is not going to break up. No country, these days, breaks up. The boundaries of countries have been determined after two world wars and the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, any expansionist tendencies anywhere in the world will be resisted by the civilised world. But the point is this: Nigeria is not breaking up. Southern Sudan was a conscious effort. They held a referendum; the Northern Sudan and Southern Sudan that formerly made up the Republic of Sudan held a referendum and the Southern Sudan people opted to leave that nation and form their own country. It was a conscious and well settled act. That happens only by agreement and not by somebody starting some trouble somewhere believing that the trouble will lead to separation. We tried it in Nigeria here; Biafra was to secede, but we all stood firm and agreed that Nigeria as one is better for all of us; and thank God, Nigeria is still one today.

The controversy over who will take over from Governor Rotimi Amaechi is on. Is it morally and legally justifiable for an Ikwerre man to succeed Amaechi, who is also from Ikwerre ethnic nationality?

 The ethnic nationality of a candidate is not a qualifying factor for a political office of the governor. There is no provision in the Constitution of Nigeria or the constitution of any political party that the governorship is open to an Ikwerre man or an Ogoni man or a Kalabari man. It is open to candidates who are qualified for that position in their individual ranks and capacities. But for me, it does not matter who is in the Brick House or who is in Aso Rock for that matter; all I want is a president or a governor who will give good governance. There is nothing moralistic about it. Each political party is expected to field a candidate of its choice and that is the purview of a political party. Ethnic sentiments should not be the basis upon which we elect officers into elective positions. We should always look at their ability to perform and the ability to give good governance and the ability to carry our states forward.

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