ABUJA, Federal Republic of Nigeria. The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, has challenged lawyers to expunge from their ranks corrupt persons.
Justice Mahmud who spoke in Abuja at a seminar by the Nigerian Bar Association’s (NBA) Anti-Corruption Commission said that corruption in the bench would be much reduced if lawyers who will later become judges are upright.
According to him, the bench is a product of the bar.
He said: “Unless we work in synergy to ensure that only fit and proper persons remain in our midst, it will be impossible to expect a different Bench when its origin remains the same.
”I hereby call on the leadership of the Bar to expunge from its ranks, such persons whose conduct may be unfit, improper, dishonest or otherwise unethical.
“The time has surely come for us all to take concrete, meaningful and lasting action to exorcize the pernicious ghost of corruption from the most noble of professions.”
The CJN who spoke through another Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice John Fabiyi, said the time had come for the legal profession to exorcise corruption from its midst so that the bench could be free of unethical practices.
He said that although there were corrupt judges in the judiciary, “corruption within the judiciary is only imbibed by a minute minority.”
The CJN however noted that while the judiciary continued to discipline erring judges, the beneficiaries of such corrupt acts were never punished.
He said between 2009 and 2014, there were 64 judges among the serving 1,020 judges of the superior courts who “were disciplined as appropriate” with some of them sacked by the National Judicial Council.
Credit: ThisDay (Nigeria)
