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Lawyers condemn Justice’s attack on Tarfa’s defence
• As EFCC clamps down on SANs
LAGOS High Court Justice Aishat Opesanwo is taking flak from a league of lawyers for alleging intimidation by the 90-lawyer team defending Rickey Tarfa, a senior lawyer the EFCC arraigned Wednesday for bribing a judge and shielding criminals.
“It was injudicious of the judge to have descended into the arena of conflict by making the statement she did,” Abdul Mahmoud, president of the Public Interest Lawyers League, told the National Daily.
Justice Opesanwo complained about the truckloads of Senior Advocates of Nigeria that besieged the court Wednesday. “I find no need for this magnitude of support. It is to harass and intimidate us on this side,” she said.
PILL believes that the 90 SANs who turned up in court cannot be faulted in light of the constitution. “Tarfa is entitled to legal representation under section 36 of the 1999 Constitution,” Mahmoud said.
ALSO SEE: Judge accuses Rickey Tarfa of harassment, intimidation
According to him, Tarfa’s was not the first time a huge bar of lawyers would be defending a client in Nigeria. “In 1993, over 150 lawyers represented the late Moshood Abiola at Dolapo Akinsanya’s court in Igbosere.”
Perhaps what is causing all the chinwags in Tarfa’s case was the charged atmosphere the on-going anti-corruption fight has created. The EFCC appears to be at daggers drawn with Nigerian senior lawyers and judges it believes are frustrating the war on graft.
The commission chair, Ibrahim Magu, has been screaming blue murder over the roles of certain members of the judiciary in sabotaging prosecutions. According to the commission investigation, Magu said recently that no fewer than 133 SANs have vowed to battle the EFCC in its fight against corruption.
Magu, in some way, is amplifying his boss President Muhammadu Buhari’s earlier complaint that the Nigerian judiciary has become a pain in his neck in the fight.
Tarfa, owner of a law firm boasting four chambers packed with about 60 lawyers, is not the only long silk the anti-corruption fighter is out to ruffle with sleaze. (The EFCC said the SAN bribed Justice M. Yunusa, before whom he had a case, with N225,000, and secreted two suspects under investigation.)
Damian Dodo, another SAN and owner of D.D. Dodo & Co, was grilled for eight hours, days ago, for collecting $45 million as legal fee in the old $180 million Halliburton bribery the EFCC just dusted off.
Five other SANs, including former Attorney-General of the Federation Mohammed Adoke, involved in the bribery scam are also under investigation.
As the anti-corruption battle rages on, the fear gnawing at the preppy class of Nigerian lawyers is that in the days ahead, many of them will soon get some shakedowns from the commission.
“All of us are being investigated by the EFCC. So we are all waiting for the day they will come and carry us,” said Joseph Daodu, a SAN and ex-president of the Nigeria Bar Association. Daodu leads the SANs defending the former NSA Sambo Dasuki in the unfolding $2.1 billion arms purchase scandal.
To the NBA, the EFCC is either playing the Johnny-on-the-spot or embarking on a witch hunt tackling these SANs. “A situation where lawyers are arrested in court while performing their lawful duties must be condemned in unequivocal terms,” Rotimi Akeredolu, a SAN and ex-NBA president, said when the EFCC initially refused Tarfa’s bail.
But many Nigerians are not sold on the NBA conclusion. “I cannot comment on the question of witch hunt,” Mahmoud told the National Daily. “It is for the EFCC to establish the guilt of all the accused persons.”
The NBA first president, Bola Ajibola, was even more forth-coming in his advice to the SANs joining forces with the corruption-fight-back rank. “Members of the bar should not allow themselves to be grouped among crooks of this country,” the former judge of the International Court of Justice said while commenting on Magu’s claim.
“This is a stage in which all these anti-corruption crusades should have backing of the Nigerian Bar Association as well as all our lawyers,” he added.
A group of pro-EFCC senior lawyers who want to act the lily in the valley are already heeding Ajibola’s counsel. Led by Lagos lawyer Femi Falana, the group tried to convince Magu there are still honest lawyers and judges ready to help the commission stave off intimidators.
“Let us name and shame corrupt judges and lawyers. The good ones are prepared to work with you,” Falana said when the group visited the EFCC boss in Abuja weekend.
While Magu draws the name-and-shame list, a couple of these officers of justice will continue to be smeared with corruption allegation in the open.
ALSO SEE: EFCC to arraign senior advocate Tarfa for calling judge, hiding suspects
Apart from the SANs, like Tarfa, fighting in court to cleanse the corruption allegation stain, some judges are just getting theirs splattered on their wigs.And those convicted, as Justice Minister Abubakar Mallami vowed, will go to jail.
Early in February, an Area Court Judge Umar Y. Gwani was remanded in prison by a Federal High Court sitting in Gombe for fraud allegation the EFCC filed against him.
An Enugu Chief Judge Justice I.A. Umezulike is also in for it. Mallami recently petitioned the National Judicial Council and the inspector-general of police to investigate the judge for forgery.
The NBA has described most of the EFCC activities as overzealousness, especially for detaining Tarfa for five days before arraignment. Defending his colleague, Akeredolu, for instance, believes the commission should have known a SAN is too learned to jump bail.
And if anybody can take Akeredolu’s claim to the bank, it may mean SANs are too learned to go to jailfor corruption. Magu and his agency will then be fighting a losing battle with Nigeria’s bench and bar.