Brigadier General Don Idada Ikpomwen (retd) is a former Provost Marshal of the Nigerian Army and a lawyer. In this interview, he condemned the seeming attack on the Department of State Service (DSS) in some quarters over the arrest of seven judges, saying that the mode of arrest does not matter when a grievous crime had been committed against the state.
WHAT is your reaction to the recent arrest of some judges by the DSS and the outcry over the mode of their arrest?
Brig. Gen.
Ikpomwen: NJC has been too accommodating
I will tell you very frankly that it was a shocking and disappointing news, but not surprising to me because I had over the years pointed out that there were lots of problems with our Judiciary, and that the judiciary, more than any organ of government, should not accommodate corrupt practices or corrupt judges because the judiciary is the last hope of the common man.
So cleansing the judiciary is the duty of any government, that puts it on a path of progress. When we say that it was wrong for judges to accept bribe and pervert justice, it is not attacking the judiciary as an institution but attacking the individual who is behaving in a perfidious manner.
Pursuing the shadow
I am surprised at how some Nigerians will abandon the substance and be pursuing the shadow. What is the substance? If a justice of the Supreme Court or the court of appeal can stoop so low as to accept and accumulate money to the tune of hundreds of millions in their houses, why are we talking about the time of their arrest and how they were arrested?
I want to say, as a trained detective arrest is an exercise of force, you don’t beg people to submit to arrest. In many cases, the element of surprise is what makes the arrest possible. If you lose the surprise, you lose the case.
Do you tell a man who has accumulated money in his house that you are coming? In doing so, you lose the case.
I was a crack detective in the Army, I headed the SIB in the Army and was Provost-Marshal.
During my period as the commander in SIB, we carried out so many surprise raids and arrested many so called untouchables in the Army, Police and banks. We contributed seriously to the no- nonsense posture of the first Buhari administration.
We invaded their houses and got important evidence for their prosecution through a surprise raid. So it is normal and has nothing to do with the rule of law. What is rule of law? This has been the problem over the years, different people use rule of law to justify their actions.
Power of investigation
Good people use it and bad people use it, but the rule of law that I know states that everybody is subject to the same law.
The law in its making is predictable and known. In Nigeria, who doesn’t know about the existence of the Department of State Service? Who doesn’t know that the DSS exercises the same power of arrest, power of investigation like the Police, though it is known that their job is mainly security based?
You and I know that security is capable of wider meaning than criminal actions, large scale crimes that affect the nation’s economic health and fraud that endanger justice administration in Nigeria.
What is even more is the establishment of the Directorate of State Security by the National Security Act, enacted in 2004.
It is such that the President can use the DSS to investigate any security breach and he can assign any other duty to the DSS. The command of the DSS has direct access to the President and the President has the power to use the Service to investigate.
Nigerians should be happy that for once there are signs that people in high places got involved in very unwholesome transaction, which government lived up to the expectation and got them picked up.
If at the end of the investigation the allegations are not true, good luck to those involved. But I cannot for one minute imagine that a state organ like DSS will want to victimize any judges. Why didn’t they come to arrest a judge in Benin here whom I know is upright and can’t be influenced? We have been hearing some of the subterranean activities of these judges before now.
Is it not in Nigeria that they said Ibori has no case to answer? Is it not in Nigeria that the Supreme Court interpreted the resource control law and defined the territorial boundary of states to be the water mark, which was completely unknown in the Nigerian legal lexicon?
We have warily laughed off at some of these happenings. We have some good judges, no doubt, and we have the bad ones too, and they must be fished out and dealt with if the society must genuinely fight corruption.
Interpretation of the rule of law
Kudos to Buhari. I believe that Nigerians must give useful meaning to the interpretation of the rule of law.
But some of your colleagues in the law profession have argued that the clampdown was an attempt to arm twist and intimidate the judiciary?
The only thing that I know and I have said so many times, is that the battle against corruption must not have sacred cows. It must be applied to everybody regardless of whatever party, whether a friend to the President, brother or sister.
I was glad to hear the Vice President saying this week that even the President’s friends found to be involved in fraud will not be spared. I urge this government to continue in this fight against corruption without looking at anybody’s face. I don’t believe it should be selective.
The National Judicial Council is being blamed for shielding corrupt judges, what is your take on that?
Yes, the NJC has been too accommodating in my view.
There is no way the NJC will not know the bad eggs among it. Sometime in the past, Abacha fished out some of these judges and dealt with them. I have the greatest respect for the judiciary as an institution but I believe they have not done enough at the same time and I must urge them as a senior lawyer of over 36 years they must do more now than in the past.
Could that be why we are seeing some conflicting judgments in the country, especially the recent judgement by a Federal High Court and that of Port Harcourt in the PDP crisis?
I cannot say that money must have been given out in those conflicting judgments. When money starts changing hands, truth becomes evasive. You can’t take money from litigants and still hold the moral high ground to pronounce against them.
Conflicting judgments
Once you are influenced, you are influenced. If a judge who has been influenced makes a judgement which has no justification or legal basis, then you are bound to have another conflicting judgement from another judge. Some of the conflicting judgments we have seen in this country are largely due to some judges soiling their hands.
I joined the Army in 1968, I was commissioned into the regular Army in 1971, and military regime started in 1966. Even during military regime in Nigeria, courts were known to be effective and fearless. I remember clearly the case of Lakumi, and other cases, where the Judiciary came down on the executive to say what they did was not right.
I think this corruption has continued to build up especially after handing over to the civilians. Judiciary is part of the society and if corruption has become pervasive, so it is not surprising that some Judges have become corrupt. That is why people are saying that corruption must be fought from the root.
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