NBA demonstrates support for undemocratic ideas – Boms

On Wednesday, February 19, 2014, the Federal High Court sitting in Port Harcourt (Coram, Akanbi J.) entered judgment in a suit challenging the constitutionality of the Rivers state governor’s appointment of the Hon Justice P.N.C.  Agumagu as the Acting Chief Judge of Rivers State.The court voided the appointment on the ground that His Lordship, the Hon Justice Agumagu, belonged not to the state High Court, but to the State Customary Court of Appeal, where he, in fact, was the president before the appointment which has since been served out. In this encounter, the Rivers state Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Hon. Worgu Boms, Esq sheds light on the emasculated position of the NBA on topical national issues among sundry other matters. AMEH EJEKWONYILO reports

The purported order on Governor Amaechi
The Court did not make any Order on the Governor. Indeed, it declined granting the 3rd Relief as sought by the Plaintiffs who prayed for an Order that a particular Judge, whom they named as the most senior Judge of the state High Court, should take Charge as the Acting Chief Judge of the state, pending the appointment of a substantive Chief Judge.

On that same day – even before the ink with which the Judgment was written had dried up and afor tiori, before a copy of the Judgment could be obtained by any person including the parties – the Learned President of the Nigerian Bar Association issued a statement along the following lines:
That the Rivers State Government should, regardless of how it feels about the Judgment, obey the same and that it is the only way to end the impasse.
The NBA President’s statement was emphatic that whatever misgivings the Rivers State Government has about the Judgment should not matter; the Government should just obey.

The Learned President’s Advice is casuistic
The Learned Bar President’s position amounted to a foreclosure of the right of the Rivers State Government to appeal against a Judgment it does not accept as legally right.

We state, that in course of the proceedings, the Rivers State Government strenuously objected to the jurisdiction of the Court in the matter, arguing that nothing concerns the Federal Government or any of its agencies, not even the National Judicial Council, (NJC) in the appointment of an Acting Chief Judge and that, that being so, the Federal High Court had no powers to entertain the matter.

That it is only on the issue of appointment of substantive Chief Judge that a Federal High Court can have jurisdiction since the NJC has a role to play in that process by virtue of Section 153 (i) and Part 1 of the 3rd Schedule to the Constitution, which, respectively, established the National Judicial Council and empowered it to make recommendations to the Governor on who gets appointed to the office of the Chief Judge of a state.

This preliminary issue was taken and the Court ruled against the Rivers State Government which Ruling was promptly appealed against and is still pending at the Court of Appeal.
Following the Judgment, the Rivers State Government also appealed against the same on the substantive ground of lack of jurisdiction, amongst others.

The Bar President’s swift statement on the Judgment did not reckon with or reflect the dissatisfied party’s Constitutional Right of Appeal, nor the fact that an interlocutory appeal against the jurisdiction of the Court was already pending. It did not even advise that if the Rivers State Government does not agree with the Judgment it could appeal against it. No.

The statement is simply that whatever error or misgiving that is contained in the Judgment, the State Government should not bother; it should simply obey and not complain. As far as the Learned NBA President’s statement is concerned, any attempt to challenge that Judgment should not be contemplated.
This is dangerous as ‘Obey without complaint’ is the philosophy and language of the military and certainly not that of the Law, especially in a democracy.

The Rivers State Government has since the institution of the suit maintained that there is nothing in the Constitutional Provision of appointment of Acting Chief Judge [Please see Section 271(4)] that requires the input or involvement of any agency of the Federal Government. That the Constitution does not provide that the Governor shall make the acting appointment based on any recommendation or approval of the NJC or of the Federal Attorney General or any organ or agency of the Federal Government howsoever, as Section 271(4) is clear in that respect. On this basis, the State Government had difficulties locating the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court to hear the suit.

 The precipitous Statement of the Bar President on the Judgment is curious
There was no Order made by the Judge which the Rivers State Government could be enjoined to obey or could be said to be disobeying. At the August 2013 NBA Pre Conference NEC, in Calabar, Cross Rivers State, NEC rejected, unanimously and without a vote, an attempt, by an interested person, to have NEC issue a statement on this same issue of the Acting Chief Judge of Rivers State.

The ground for NEC’s rejection of issuing a statement was that there have been several allegations of ‘many wrong doings’ and breaches in Rivers State by the Police, then headed by the immediate past Commissioner of Police in the state and by the opposition allegedly with the police support and also counter allegations from the opposition against the State Government, and yet the Bar or its President, had not bothered to issue any statement in condemnation and that that being so, it would amount to selective intervention to issue any statement on one and leave out the others; that rather, a holistic statement  on the (contrived) political crises in the state would be preferred and more in keeping with the Bar tradition on intervention than the intended selective approach.

NBA’s culture of silence
It was the same curious culture of silence from the Bar and its President when the Rivers State Governor won a clear election in their Governor’s Forum and the losing minority decided not to abide by the result of the election to which they freely submitted. The Learned Bar President did not speak in aid of Democracy or Rule of Law but chose not to comment.

When it no longer mattered and after several honest-hearted Nigerians and groups have spoken in vindication of the winner’s right to enter into the office he freely won, the Bar President, whilst in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, for the NEC Meeting, decided to draw a red herring across the clear issue of who won or lost the Governors’ Forum Election; demonstrated support for undemocratic ideals by advocating the dissolution of the Governors’ Forum should they not be able to put their House in order. The Learned President carefully chose not to say a word about the crucial issue of refusing the winner the fruit of his victory in an election freely contested. This curious posture of the Learned President of the Bar earned the Bar a condemnation from a Governor who concluded that the Bar had lost its voice and from another Governor who stated that the Bar President speaks according to his location.

How the Learned Bar President, despite all the above, would, within seconds after the Judgment, so proficiently, promptly and keenly (in contradistinction to the self imposed culture of not speaking at all on the Rivers State crises) issue the statement under response, must give room to genuine dubiety in the mind of any sincere observer of the events in Rivers State vis-à-vis the posture of the Bar under the present Presidency, as to the objectivity of and the motive behind the statement.

Position of the Rivers state government:
For the avoidance of doubt and for the information of the Nigerian public, the Rivers State Government hereby states that:
It is, and, will remain, Law-abiding even in the face of the determined efforts by some persons and their silent collaborators in High Places, who have refused to distinguish between Politics and Governance to ground governance in the state in the name of politics, using all means;
It has exercised its Constitutional Right of Appeal and has thus appealed the Judgment of the Hon. Justice Lambo Akanbi and the same is being pursued expeditiously;

Further and finally, the Rivers State Government restates its respect for the Nigerian Bar Association and its Learned President, asserts that it esteems the Association very highly and hereby expresses its continued readiness for continued partnership with the Bar for the sustenance of the egalitarian promotion of the Rule of Law in our country for the enjoyment and happiness of all our citizens and persons living in our country, but in a manner that easily demonstrates, on the part of the Bar, undoubted neutrality and objectivity in political conflicts and interventions therein, and not in a manner that gives the sad impression, which has now been gained by the Rivers State Government, that the Bar is unwittingly being primed for use to assist one party, unjustly and unfairly, in the Rivers State contrived political crises.