The Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, has tackled the Nigerian Bar Association over its comment on the emergency declaration in Rivers State.
Wike who disclosed his previous subscription to NBA’s projects in his recent meeting with the Body of Benchers led by Chief Adegboyega Awomolo SAN at Life Camp Abuja, slammed NBA with the allegation of running after State governments for the sponsorship of their projects while they have the courage to tackle judges over contributions from the executive.
He further revealed the association’s opposition to the emergency declaration in Rivers as a child of its discontentment with the suspension of Governor Siminalayi Fubara who already promised to fund and host its Annual General Conference.
In his words: “When NBA was building their National Secretariat, NBA wrote the governors who are lawyers. I was the only one who contributed to the building project as governor and I said name a floor after Rivers not me. NBA didn’t see it as bribe but when we contribute to judiciary, it is bribe but when we contribute to the NBA, it is not bribe.”
“The same NBA will rely on the State government for whatever activity, that one is not bribe. NBA today is talking about State of Emergency in Rivers because Fubara promised to host their Annual General Conference, now there is no government to give the money. That made them say they didn’t support the emergency declaration. What kind of hypocrisy is this.”
He further nudged NBA to punish baseless writings in the media by lawyers (referring to Professor Chidi Odinkalu) who despite not digesting pronouncements of the court are in a rush to impugn on the integrity of judges.
He said: “But it will be unfair to let you go if I dont talk about one or two things that border on our legal profession. We must tell ourselves the simple truth. We cannot sit, we cannot shut our eyes to see individuals for whatever intensities, to kill this profession. It is not acceptable.”
“For the first time I have seen in my life as a lawyer, it is unfortunate that NBA as a body and without reading the judgement of the court will come out to say the judgement of this court is unconstitutional, illegal. I only react to a judgement after reading it. It is just heard that judgement had been given, you have not even had the opportunity of reading it, the next thing is to go to the National Television. To begin to criticize. We have so much scared our judges that when they are going to church or to mosque, they cannot greet someone they know; they run away, fearing that if they shake the person, they will say they have collected bribe. Before you know it, someone would have put up a petition saying he saw a judge shaking someone and you will even sit down to entertain such petition. I have never seen this in my life.”
“On Saturday, I went to University of Calabar. Unknown to me while entering, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court was among those to be conferred with honour. I greeted and told him I didn’t know the University of Calabar is his alma mater.”
“The next thing I saw was that the Justice of the Supreme Court escorted me to the honours event and somebody will sit down to read, write all sorts about it. You don’t wait for a petition on that, you write him.”
“If you don’t discipline somebody, nobody will learn a lesson. We cannot continue to allow our profession to go down. I cannot believe as lawyers, you make a contribution to help. When I was governor, body of benchers invited all of us who are governors and lawyers, asking for our assistance. I was there, Sokoto Governor was there, Plateau Governor was there, Tambuwal was there, Bayelsa Governor was there, Abubakar Mohammed of Bauchi governor was there and Late Akeredolu of Ondo State. What is bad in the fact that your own profession invites you by virtue of your position. Saying how do you help us in budgeting and resources to see that we complete our projects. I was the only one who contributed, not with my money, from the pulse of the State government.”
“As a Minister of State for Education, I built the Faculty of Law, University of Port Harcourt. That’s my alma mater. That’s where I had my first degree.”
“And when we do all these, people will sit down to write all sort of things. No discipline, nothing. Time has come for you to say enough is enough. We cannot continue to disparage our judges and justices, it is not done anywhere. If you dont hit the silk on them, they wont learn. I have not seen a profession where the members of the profession are those who bring it down.”
