Paul Usoro, president of the
Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), says judges in the country are afraid to
perform their duties as expected due to fear and intimidation from the
executive arm of government.
He spoke while delivering an
address at the association’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting, which
held at the NBA secretariat in Abuja, on Thursday.
Usoro also spoke about the high
level of insecurity and poor state of the rule of law in the country.
He expressed worry over the
“intimidation of judges by members of the executive arm and security
operatives”, saying that judges now “operate under an oppressive and pervasive
climate of fear and insecurity.”
“Our Jjudges are threatened,
intimidated and blackmailed mostly by the executive arms of government and
their agencies both at the federal and state levels,” he said.
“Our judges cannot deliver
justice under a climate of fear and intimidation. Justice thrives where and
when there is an independent judiciary. There can be no such independence when
there is no security of tenure for our Judges. There can be no independence of
the judiciary when our judges are intimidated, threatened and blackmailed by
state agencies and their officials.
“There can be no independence of
the judiciary when our judges are actively coerced by state officials to think
and reason only in the manner that those officials and, presumably, government
want them to think.”
The senior advocate of Nigeria
also lamented over how some members of the association were victims of the high
rate of insecurity in the country.
“My dear colleagues, as you would
observe, I have given you three illustrative instances of the insecurity that
pervades our land from the three NBA Nigerian Zones – East, West and North –
and that, by itself, makes the point that no part of our country is safe,” he
said.
“No region is safe, and no tribe
is safe. No one indeed is safe. And yet, we have governments in place, at the
federal, state and local government levels and the primary business of
governments is the protection of lives and property. Indeed, without security
of lives and property, everything else grinds to a halt.”
He called on the federal
government to address the security challenges in the country and urged public
officials to adhere to the rule of law.
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