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Analysis

Babalola case against Farotimi exposed the corruption in the Nigeria’s criminal justice system have ever achieved

By Emeka Ugwuonye

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Of course, the Nigerian criminal justice system is one of the most corrupt in the world. By the justice system, I refer to the police, the courts, and the body of lawyers, otherwise known as the Bar Association. They are about the most corrupt in the world. That was the point Dele Farotimi tried to expose through his book, with specific allegations directed at one of the most influential lawyers in Nigerian history.

I commended Farotimi for his courage because he said what I have been dying to say, and I have stronger evidence to show that. The Nigerian justice system is like a vicious secret society or an evil cult. It has a way of punishing those who try to expose it. It controls the entire process of ventilating the truth. In a well-coordinated plot of destruction, the police can frame you with the worst of offenses on earth, a judge will remand you even on the most impossible allegations, and the same judge will jail you as arranged. The entire system of truth-finding and verification has been corrupted. Ironically, corruption is perpetrated by those who swore to uphold justice.

You all saw how it played out against Dele Farotimi. They procured a special team of policemen and mobilized them across the state line to get the target. They procured a special set of judges to remand him at sight and impose impossible bail conditions. If not for the public outcry, Farotimi was headed for the belly of the whale. He would still have been in detention with new charges added every day.

When they saw the tide of public opinion against them, they quickly invoked the Bar Association’s disciplinary process. That was one fast way the cult can eliminate an opponent. I was not surprised to hear that the LPDC, which is the disciplinary body in the Bar, was reported to have declined to intervene. I knew they just dodged the bullet. They could not face the public outcry. Otherwise, the reasons given by the LPDC for not intervening were just as wrong as anything could be.

According to the reports, the LPDC refused to entertain the case because the allegations were about things Farotimi did as a writer and not as a lawyer. In other words, they said he was only acting in his capacity as an author rather than acting while practicing law. This is a very wrong reasoning, but one that I welcome with a happy heart. First and foremost, it is not only when a lawyer is acting as counsel that his conduct could be amenable to disciplinary proceedings. For instance, if a lawyer is found drunk and misbehaving in the street, anywhere else, he would be disciplined, though he was not acting as a lawyer. Also, if a lawyer is found to have committed domestic violence, he would be amenable to discipline even though he was not acting as a lawyer when he beat his wife. Likewise, if a lawyer had knowingly spread falsehood against judicial officers with an intention to discredit the court system and undermine public trust in the system, that could make such a lawyer amenable to disciplinary proceedings. So, the rationale by the LPDC is meaningless. The truth, however, is that Farotimi said the truth in his book, and the people know that to be the truth. The LPDC did not want to face the wrath of the people. This is because the LPDC, like other organs of the Nigerian Bar, is not governed by law or principles but rather by politics and personal relations.

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There were different considerations that would have affected the decision of the LPDC. One such consideration is that Farotimi had publicly declared himself as “retired from the practice of law.” It is never clear what this meant in the context of the Nigerian legal profession. But it would seem that Farotimi understood that he was about to expose the Nigerian justice system and its leaders in ways that might attract retaliation from them. Every lawyer about to do such would anticipate that one of the things they could use against him would be to cook up some kangaroo disciplinary process and use that to take him out of play. To preempt that, Farotimi made sure they knew he had stopped practicing law on his own. So, telling him at any point that his license would be taken would mean nothing to him.

For me, the good thing about the LPDC’s reasoning in Farotimi’s case, as faulty as the rationale is, is that every other lawyer who has some negative truth to tell about the Nigerian justice system can do it through a book without fearing disciplinary action. This is actually a welcome development because I am sure that Farotimi is not the only lawyer who has come face-to-face with the massive corruption and oppression in the Nigerian Bar and Nigerian courts. They can now write about it. Thanks to LPDC v. Farotimi.

If you want to understand the nature of the problem with the Nigerian Bar, you must look at the case of NBA v. Emeka Ugwuonye. That case is still pending on appeal at the Supreme Court. So, I will not say much about it here. However, in that case, a man whose wife died the night before she was to open her case in a divorce petition was the head of the LPDC panel against Emeka Ugwuonye. Interestingly, Emeka Ugwuonye had recently established in Nigeria an organization known as DPA, whose main work is to fight against domestic violence and spousal abuse. So, the leader of the LPDC then was clearly a man who would face questions from DPA for the sudden and convenient death of his wife. “What happened to your wife? What about the rumors of domestic violence? Why did she die the night before she was to open her case in a divorce petition against you?” The leader of the LPDC panel obviously hated Emeka Ugwuonye without Emeka Ugwuonye realizing that then.

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In the Ugwuonye case, there was no witness. Indeed, maybe there was not even a complainant. Yet, the allegation remitted to the LPDC was that Emeka Ugwuonye failed to disclose an apparent conflict of interest when he agreed to render service pro bono to the supposed complainant. The section of the Legal Practitioner’s Act involved was mentioned. It deals with conflict of interest. Anyway, other than the letter that was purportedly written by the complainant, nothing else was ever heard from the complainant. The complainant never made any statement on oath. No sworn statement anywhere. Nobody from the Bar Association ever saw or met the complainant. No complainant was called to testify. In fact, there was no complainant. But this did not matter to the leader of the LPDC. He had a mission, and that was to eliminate a lawyer he feared might expose the cause of the tragic and timely death of his wife.

Despite the clear lack of merits in that case, the LPDC found Emeka Ugwuonye to have violated two rules (the rule on conflict of interest which was charged in the documents and the rule on fraud which was never charged or even mentioned anywhere before the recommendation) and the LPDC recommended that Emeka Ugwuonye’s license to practice law in Nigerian be taken away. But, of course, if you follow the law, such recommendation would not be able to take away Ugwuonye’s license.

The law of Nigeria says that: The recommendation of the LPDC SHALL NOT HAVE EFFECT until and unless one of three things happened – (1) if no appeal was duly filed against such recommendation, (2) if the appeal was dismissed, (3) if the appeal was withdrawn. In other words, once an appeal was filed, only the Supreme Court of Nigerian can take away the license of a lawyer in Nigeria. You would need the judgment of the Supreme Court justices signed by five justices to be able to tell that Ugwuonye’s license has been revoked. Ugwuonye duly filed his appeal, and everything was duly complied with. What happened?

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The same gang connived with someone in the office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court to write a letter stating that Ugwuonye did not file an appeal. The appeal is in the court. The parties are waiting for a date to argue their appeal. Yet, someone in the office of the Registrar wrote a letter and shared it on social media. The letter was supposed to have been written to Ugwuonye. But in fact, it was written for social media and was duly circulated on social media.

The corruption was so extensive and quite petty. Someone deliberately made sure that they published the recommendation of the LPDC in the Nigerian Weekly Law Report as if it were a judgment of the court. This is the first time the Direction of the LPDC was ever to be published in a law report in Nigeria. Why? All this happened because a powerful man in the Nigerian Bar did not want DPA to ask questions about what killed his wife the day she was to open her case in a divorce trial against him. So, you think you could destroy the career of a man earned over many years just because you have some corrupt ways within the bar. Only in Nigeria could such happen.

It didn’t end there. They mounted the worst campaign of smear against Emeka Ugwuonye. Thank God Emeka Ugwuonye happens to be a lawyer in America. So, as embarrassing as it may appear, he knows that what happens in a corrupt enclave such as Nigeria will not eclipse his place in the world. Besides, in the limited perspective of the world, these corrupt men did not realize that the legal services industry has changed globally. It is no longer the petty and primitive things they do in Nigeria. It is far more dynamic and complex.

Farotimi’s book is a tip of the iceberg. Nigerian criminal justice system is infested by criminals and highly corrupt people. Thank God that the current leaders of the LPDC did not want to disgrace themselves any further. Let’s hope that Farotimi’s case will be a watershed.


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