By Olufemi Oni, Ilorin
The Chairman of the Ilorin branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Barrister Kamaldeen Gambari, has decried prevalent corruption among some staff of the judiciary, saying the nefarious activities are responsible for the prevailing inadequacies in the judicial system in the country.
Barrister Gambari, who stated this while fielding questions from journalists in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, specifically rued the unending exploitations of both the legal practitioners and the litigants by some staff of the judiciary.
Noting that there are some judiciary staff who are above board and are performing their duties diligently without any corruptive tendencies, the Chairman gave the assurance that the Bar Association would continue to do its best to resist and expose the corrupt elements among the judiciary staff.
He said: “The exploitation is so endemic that legal practitioners and the litigants can hardly do anything free without some segments of these staff making some unholy demands either from the legal practitioners or the litigants.
“Every time they do this, as a Bar, we try to resist them, yet we have not achieved the intended result. We shall put these corruption tendencies before the new Acting Chief Judge, Justice Abiodun Ayodele Adebara, when he resumes office properly.”
Speaking on alleged partisanship on the part of some judges in politics, the NBA Chairman expressed his reservation about this, saying any judge who knows his onions, bearing in mind the codes of his office, would not venture into such an unholy journey as the ethics of the profession negate such action.
He added: “The ethics of their office prohibit that, if anyone of them is found involving in that, it will be unfortunate, it is a great disservice to the judiciary and they are doing that at their own peril because that will bring the office they occupy into disrepute
“If truly there is corruption in the judiciary, I can vouch that we have no corrupt Judge in Kwara state judiciary, all of our Judges are full of integrity regardless of who the litigants are, they don’t bow to any pressure and they discharge their duties with utmost and purest of intentions based on the facts presented before them.”
Gambari stressed the need for the government to always exploit and make use of the experience of retired Judges by incorporating them into other roles rather than letting their knowledge rot away.
According to the NBA boss, the Judges have acquired so much knowledge, experience and training whereby public funds have been expended on them to acquire their trainings, adding that such investments on them shouldn’t just be thrown away simply because they have retired.
He debunked any claim of conflicts between the Bar and the Bench, saying: “There shouldn’t be any conflict between the Bar and the Bench as the two are like Siamese twins, we’re conjoined from the start.
“No one can be a member of the bench without being a lawyer first, so their first catchment is the bar, there is no way they’ll be on the bench and now turn their backs on us and vice versa because we still remained one.” he said.