Mr. Jibril Samuel Okutepa (SAN) earned the prestigious title of a Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 2011. In this interview with AMEH EJEKWONYILO, he speaks on the purported inciting advertorials being placed by some political parties and other sundry issues in the country’s justice delivery sector.
Continued from last Monday
Some youths have allegedly threatened to attack Daar Communications facilities in the North, owing to some advertorials being carried by their channels that tend to portray some political office seekers in bad light. What are your thoughts on that?
For me, my advice to media houses is that they must make a distinction between monetary consideration and national interest. Where a newspaper or radio or television house allows itself to be used to cause tension; to incite people or take advertorials that have the capacity or the tendency of setting one section of the country against the other, then it smacks of journalistic irresponsibility on the part of that media house.
So, if I were to be chairman of INEC and this is where I think my hammer should come. Because if you look at the provisions of the electoral act, section 95 up to section 102 or thereabout, it prohibits all that we are being fed with on a daily basis: Hate speech, religious bigotry, attending churches and mosques for purposes of soliciting for political supports or standing on the pulpit to say one or two things against a candidate of a political party; are all criminal offences under our Electoral Act.
What happens to a situation where somebody is called names such as being a religious bigot; he wants to islamise the society? Candidates are moved from churches to churches and from mosques to mosques soliciting for votes in the name of seeking prayers. Why shouldn’t our security agencies go after these persons?
Constitutional provisions
If you take a look at section 95 of the Electoral Act, “a political campaign or slogan shall not be tainted with abusive language directly or indirectly, likely to injure religious or ethnic conduct as a group or political, tribal or sectional feelings. And Abusive, intemperate or slanderous or base language or insinuations or innuendoes that are aimed or likely to provoke violent action or emotion shall not be employed or used in a political campaign.
And what you see on national televisions is not only intemperate language; they are abusive, they are intended to showcase some of the candidates of a political party as ethnic jingoist, religious bigot.
A serving governor would put an advertorial that a certain section of the country had produced Presidents and the Presidents died in power. And the other person coming from that section will also die in office if care is not taken. We encouraged it and put the advertorial in the name of a political party in breach of the provisions of the Electoral Act, and INEC is folding its arms doing nothing?
If you look at some of those hate speeches that are being broadcast on national televisions, radio stations and even newspaper houses, you would discover for those of us who are living witnesses to those things, that falsity is being attributed and promoted as truth.
There are things that never happened that are said to have happened under a particular person. There are a lot of them that some of us know didn’t happen yet they said they (things) happened. In order to hang the dog, you now give it a bad name.
Issue-based political campaigns
How does the draconian tendency of a particular candidate under military regime advance the cause of our democracy? How has that conduct been an issue in your own capacity of what you intend to do for us? How do we expect from you that our schools will not be closed? Teachers will not be owed salaries running into years? University students will have the environment to study.
Lecturers will have the good environment to teach. Universities will no longer be like mere kindergarten centres. Electricity will be twenty four hours. We will have good roads; people will no longer migrate to urbane centres for greener pastures.
There will be equitable distribution of amenities. How do we sleep with our two eyes closed? How would Nigerian graduates get jobs? How do we ensure that the person who executes his contract is paid his money without kickback? How do you go to court and argue your matter without a judge expecting kickbacks from you or without a lawyer interfering with the judicial process?
These are serious issues that should engage the attention our political class and providing answers thereto than to wake up and weep sentiments and setting one section of the country against the other. How do we do away with it is our turn to rule? How do we ask a leader to respect the law and stop perpetuating himself in power? These are serious issues, but Nigerians being who we are as gullible as we are; some are buying the theory of one man islamising the society hook, line and sinker without asking questions.
How do we let go the proliferation of religious bodies everywhere and evils are thriving every day. We need to ask questions.
I appeal again to media houses because the power of the pen is mightier than the power of the gun. And I think journalists owe a lot of responsibility. Journalists should be the vanguard of change. The change we are talking about could come from the PDP or the APC.
I pray that politicians who are the chief beneficiaries of the blood of Nigerians; who fought for democracy should not do anything that will take us back to the era where freedom was limited.
Finally, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Justice Mahmud Mohammed recently inaugurated members of the Election Tribunal for the forth-coming general elections with the charge on them to avoid gifts or favours from politicians. What are your thoughts on this development?
Now let me take from the warning of the honourable CJN, you see, when you say a he-goat should not fornicate, it requires the she-goat to cover her private part. It is a popular saying in African tradition.
There are some judges who even go behind lawyers to meet litigants; using proxies, fronts. And there are some lawyers that read the body language of the judge and charge not only their professional fees but also fees for those judges which may not ultimately even get to the judges.
Nigeria is a corrupt society and the political class does not even believe in paying lawyers. They believe in going behind to settle. And so corrupt has eaten so deep into the fabric of our society that even some religious leaders are involved in the process.
So, the warning of the CJN is not only timely but welcomed by some of us.
So, what am saying in essence is that it is not the absence of law that is responsible for what we are seeing in justice delivery system, in our political system, in our economic system, in our policy system; It is our inability to respect laws and due process that brought us to this level. We need prayers to come to the right position God has made us to be.
Concluded.
