‘I never had the privilege of rejecting bribe’

Justice Emmanuel Olayinka Ayoola is reputed to be one of the incorruptible Judges that shaped the Judiciary in Nigeria and Africa. Apart from heading the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) between 2005 and 2010, he was until his appointment, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairman. The eminent international jurist retired from the Supreme Court on October 27, 2003, having attained the mandatory retirement age of 70. In this interview with MUYIWA ADEYEMI at his home in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, the Octogenarian, who is a member of the National Judicial Council (NJC), spoke on the lifestyle of Judges, why they should be value drivers of society, implication of the recent DSS invasion of the residences of some Judges, the role of the NJC and why some African countries wanted to pull out of International Criminal Court (ICC).

How would you describe the life or lifestyle of an average Judge?
The life of an average Judge is a peaceful one; it is fairly isolated from the public. It is a fulfilling life, because he is committed to deepening his knowledge and every new case is a challenge to him. So, an average Judge is a person with tremendous focus and his focus is virtually limited on delivery of justice.

Why should a Judge live an isolated life?
He lives an isolated life because he needs to think about the case to determine, so he must try to avoid all kinds of distractions.
If he is not isolated, he is likely to be polluted by society, in the sense that people may want to use the familiarity to suggest undue advantage. I have not experienced that, but if a Judge makes himself too much available to the public, people will tend to cash in on that to suggest all manners of things to him.

Is that the reason why Judges do not have social lives?
Judges have social lives; they socialise among those who know what they stand for.

Do you have a social life?
My social life is going to church, unless it is a family affair that you can see me in the public. My life does not permit more than that.I think you live the kind of life you are used to living before becoming a Judge. I don’t go to social parties.

Do you expect a Judge to go to nightclubs or play golf, for example?
A Judge can play golf or polo. I see nothing wrong in that. I think it is a disciplined type of socialisation, but when it comes to night clubbing, I detest it.

Is it against the code of conduct of Judges to attend nightclubs?
I have not seen one going to nightclubs, and it is out of expectation to see that. The lifestyle of a Judge is different from others. Most Judges I have come across live an isolated life and if you see the colonial Judges, they lived isolated lives, and that is the model we started from.

You seem to be talking of lifestyle of Judges in your days. Will you say that still subsists now?
I cannot say whether it obtains or not. I would have been able to judge them if I have had the opportunity to observe them. Since I don’t attend many social events, I won’t be able to say whether Judge X was misbehaving or corrupt.

It is a matter of exposure. If you don’t expose yourself to a situation in which you are likely to be corrupted, I use corruption not in the context of bribery. If you do not live such a lifestyle, it is better. We say familiarity brings contempt. If there is excessive familiarity, a Judge will lose respect. So, excessive familiarity is not good for a Judge.

What attracted you to the Bench?
Nothing! You will rather ask what attracted me to the legal practice. I wanted to be a surgeon, without studying science. I never planned to be a lawyer. I attended Ilesha Grammar School and in those days, we never studied science, but some of us became engineers and medical doctors without studying science in secondary school.

I was one of those who wanted to become a surgeon without studying science and I was looking for a science teacher. My eldest brother, who was a lawyer, took me to the University College, now University of Ibadan, and we were directed to Government College to meet a science teacher, who will teach me Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

When we got half way, my brother asked why all this trouble. He said, “why can’t you become a lawyer,” and I accepted and just changed like that. I didn’t want to become a Judge, because being a practicing lawyer was very exciting and financially rewarding. Exciting because you travel a lot and meet several people. Advocacy is a game; it is a game that deepens your knowledge. You rejoice when you win a case and you wait for another time if you are not victorious. I was invited to become a Judge and it was a tough decision for me to accept the offer.

Looking at the salaries and allowances of Judges now, are you comfortable with their welfare package?
My salary when I became a Judge in 1976 was N1, 000. I was among those who had full salary, because some came from the civil service and had advance salary. Some went home with N850, some N750, but since I didn’t have any advance, I was having a full salary of N1, 000.

But there was a big problem for me when I was invited. In those days, you don’t apply to become a Judge. I had to consult several people and everybody I consulted said it was a good idea. I went to my father and he approved it. That was how I became a Judge.

Your initial income will take a dip into your savings, but I encouraged myself. I saw many of my colleagues who became Judges and I saw they had a thrift lifestyle and were able to make headway with their meagre salaries. So, I saw it as a challenge.

But gradually, I adjusted to that lifestyle. I discovered that it was not as financially stressful as people thought, if you develop a habit of thrift.

So, to survive as a Judge, you must cultivate a habit of thrift?
Definitely, yes!

Is that not a huge sacrifice?
It is a sacrifice, but the way to look at is that you are trained by that sacrifice to cut your extravagance and you suddenly discover that you can survive without an extravagant lifestyle. Let me say this, in those days, particularly around 1976 when I became a Judge, my children were just developing.

Incidentally and coincidentally, government took certain responsibilities. My children went to secondary schools without paying a kobo and without buying exercise books. And that was how they also had university education.

Maybe we were able to live a thrifty lifestyle because government assisted us a lot. That was a period of Universal Free Education.
But how many people or Judges enjoy that now? Things have changed; people pay a lot to get quality education for their children now.

Now that salaries of Judges can hardly send their children to good secondary schools, not even private universities, what will you recommend as a living wage for Judges?
I think if we are going to be realistic and insulate our Judges from temptation, why not give them an allowance that will make them send their children to decent schools?
I am not saying that any Judge is complaining and I have not done any survey to conclude that they are not happy with their salaries.

If you compare their salaries with other public officers, it may look good, but if you compare it with their contemporaries in the legal service, it is nothing to write home about. Let us say a Judge’s salary is N500, 000 or N600, 000 per month, if you ask a public officer, that is heavy amount. But when you look at what a successful lawyer can earn in a month, then it becomes a challenge for a Judge, because their children mix and they socialise.

It is a bit frustrating now to be a Judge. It was a different thing when we had good missionary schools and good public schools, like Kings College, Government Colleges, etc, which were schools of excellent quality.But now, we don’t have such excellent public schools again and you have to pay for your children by sending them to special private schools.

What do you think can tempt a Judge to collect bribe?
Nothing should tempt a Judge to collect bribe. It is as simple as that.

Have you ever being offered a bribe?
That is what I complain about, and I feel somehow that I never had the opportunity of rejecting a bribe, because nobody has ever approached me throughout my career as a Judge, here in Nigeria or elsewhere.

Let us put it this way: Have you been given a gift to influence a judgment or has there been any pressure from your kit and kin or friends to deliver a judgment in their favour?
I am saying it again that I was not given a privilege to reject a bribe, because I was never approached, and there are many Judges like that.

Are you saying no Senior Advocate (SAN) has come for that or people so close to you?
I became a Judge in 1976 and I ceased to be a Judge in Nigeria in 2003. Throughout the 27 years, nobody approached me to assist him or her to decide a case in his or her favour. And I used to say I don’t know what happened that I was not given the privilege of rejecting a bribe.

Is it because you don’t socialise or people just see you as unapproachable?
I don’t know, I think God just put a fence around me and kept me away from temptation, and there were many of us like that in those days. It was rare you hear anybody talk of corruption when I was a Judge. Apart from God, the dignity of that office makes you unapproachable.

Even when I worked as a Chief Justice of Gambia for 10 years, it was when I was about to depart and come to Nigeria that they held a reception for me and one of their senior Judges said they never knew I could smile.I think the way they saw you created an aura around you and they came to the conclusion that you are unapproachable.Now, where did we learn that attitude? In the Supreme Court that we met our Justices in those days, they believed that court business was court business. You don’t mix fun with business.

If you were sitting, you were in charge of a court and there was no room for chatting or frivolity. Those were the Justices we found there, such as the late Sir Tokunbo Ademola and Justice Idowu Taylor, who never smiled in court. They behaved like white Judges. The business of the court was the business of the court. You tried to crack a joke, they looked you down that you rethink of yourself.

I have watched some senior lawyers try to display familiarity with the Judges and I have seen them staring them down until those senior lawyers realised that they were making a fool of themselves. They could not understand why they should be exchanging banters with lawyers in the courtroom. I understand things have changed and there is a lot of familiarity between Judges and lawyers now, and that is the beginning of approachability. Familiarity leads to approachability.

If you are in court, you are in court and if you are not in court, you go to your house. As a Judge, you need more than 24 hours to find solutions to some cases. You have to read and dig deeper to deliver a credible judgment.When you are captured by the case you are doing, you rarely have time to do anything else.

Don’t you think this was only possible when there was sanity in the system?
There is still sanity in the system! I have not experienced the change and it is difficult to transfer from that system to what obtains now. But I think it is wrong to compare our period with the current situation. The comparison is a bit flawed, because I will be comparing one background with another one. The era I was talking about was the era of lawyers trained abroad. I am not talking of the quality of education; I am talking of the environment where you found yourself and which you are coming from.

What is that environment?
In that environment, you go to Oxford, I go to Cambridge, the other man goes to London, so we were spread all over the place and had no opportunity of familiarity. But now, if, let us say you attended Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife and there are 150 law students, you are already familiar with each other, both the rascals and truants. The familiarity is already there and some will become Judges later.

Even when you become a Judge, they do not see the transformation. Some don’t see the difference. If you are Yinka, my classmate, you remain that Yinka, even when that Yinka has become a Judge. I was very close to Justice Ogunkeye before he became a Judge. We always exchanged pleasantries while going to our chambers, but when he became a Judge, I was conscious that the level has changed and I wasn’t waving at him anymore. One day, he met me and said: “Have we quarreled?” I asked why and he responded: “When you are passing by, you never waved at me again.”

I said: “You have become a Judge and the level of familiarity has gone.” He laughed. That was how we related in those days. But I noticed that lawyers don’t relate to Judges like that anymore. They see themselves as old classmates, old colleagues in the chambers, which is not healthy. We should learn to build an aura of respect around our Judges. If you remove that aura, they become accessible to every Toms, Dicks and Harrys.

Can that be partly responsible for why Judges are now being accused of corruption?
Until I find the allegation true, I cannot say some Judges are corrupt.

But the National Judicial Council (NJC) had sanctioned some Judges and found them guilty of corruption?
But not all of them were alleged or sanctioned for corruption.

In those days, it was never heard that Judges could be sanctioned for corruption. Why this now?
I think the reasons may not be too far from what we have been discussing since.

With your background, how do you feel seeing a Judge accused of corruption?
I think it is a shame that such a thing is alleged to be happening. I am a member of the NJC and the cases in which we recommended that Judges be removed are not many cases of corruption. But we have few cases of corruption against Judges.

As one of the most respected Nigerians, will you say that Judges can be honestly insulated from the societal values that are depreciating by the day?
I think so, because we have the choice of creating a segment in the system that will be value drivers of society. In those days, you put Judges in the same bracket with Priests and traditional rulers. You are not likely to show excessive familiarity to your priest. If he is as old as your junior brother, you must regard that office. Even Magistrates in our days, they clothed them with tremendous aura. If we had maintained a value-driven group that will be role model, it could have been better for the society.

But once we broke down that group and merged it with the rest, we break values. Successive administrations from the 1966 coup contributed to breaking down of groupings in the society when they started retiring all sorts of people. They virtually destroyed value system in society and that is why we are where we are today. When you look at the Nigerian society today, you find that there is no value-driven group anymore. The religious leaders are their own specific value leader category, where they offer value leadership.

When you look at the traditional rulers, you find them in a special group. So also Judges and senior public officers. But we have destroyed all that.We have to reconstitute the value driven groups. How we are going to do that is not that very clear, but I think Judges should take a leadership, the traditional rulers should take a leadership and all that we need to recreate that group is an encouragement of self-discipline. If we can have discipline at all levels, our problems will be more than half solved.

In fighting corruption in Nigeria, you have once led ICPC. What was your experience like?
The experience was beautiful. I gave myself a time limit of five years. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to accomplish all what one set out to do. Though I created strategies and structures, my approach to the fight against corruption was strategic. You can fight corruption with emotion; you can fight corruption with strategy.As chairman of ICPC, I wasn’t emotional about the fight against corruption. I was more strategic; I was in the strategic lane and being in the strategic lane is for you to plan the strategy that will be durable. The ICPC has multiple mandates; it involves investigation and prosecution. It is involved in system review, public enlightenment and mobilisation. The Act that created ICPC had holistic view on how to fight corruption, not limiting its functions to investigation and prosecution, which is a narrow segment.

If you are going to fight corruption, approaching it from that multi-mandate framework- investigations and prosecutions- is good, because they are deterrence and there is no impunity. Systems review is good, because if the administrative machinery is not qualitative and efficient, your fight against corruption will not last. System review is to design a system that will make interference with resources of government impossible. One of the dangers we have in Nigeria, apart from corruption, is ignorance. We are a people not driven by knowledge, but by emotion and sentiment.

You find people talking of what they know nothing about and feeling credible about that. So, public enlightenment is important.Finally, we have mobilisation, which is very key. I strongly believe you need to mobilise people so they can be anti-corruption group themselves.

If you mobilise the people, you get them spread around the nation and they become anti-corruption fighters.That was what we were setting up, apart from developing integrity centres, and we divided our society into segments- education, commerce, etc. We wanted to plant integrity and anti-corruption group at every facet, so we created local government integrity initiative and private sector integrity initiative, consisting of enterprises and so on.

We created education integrity initiative and encouraged each of them to create their own charter. So, we had all these things, but the problem we have in this country is that we lack the spirit of continuity, not only in the fight against corruption, but also in every other group.

How did you feel when you heard about the manner the DSS arrested some Judges?
What came to my mind was that we have started to destroy the Judiciary, because there was no justification for that type of action, if what I heard is the truth. Do you need a battalion to arrest a Judge? A Judge is not a terrorist. A Judge is not an armed robber. He/she does not deal in violence. Two police officers are enough to arrest a Judge, with the greatest courtesy. People don’t understand the essence of power, which is not physical. The essence of power is in the word. If a policeman comes in as we speak and says, please, stand up, I can’t resist. He does not need to carry a gun; the authority lies with his position.

So, when we read in the papers that they were attacked at ungodly hours of the night, not one or two persons, but a group of persons, with masks and carrying guns, you ask why all these? Till today, nobody has explained why that was necessary.

But the DSS was reported to have said the sting operation became necessary to arrest them, with huge amounts of money allegedly found in their homes?
So we need a battalion to take the money? They thought what they did was right, but the rational-thinking members of society think otherwise.You don’t need more than five police officers to arrest anybody, unless he is an armed robber or a kidnapper.

How will you react to impressions that NJC is not doing enough to fight corruption, because you are all brothers, as you call yourselves?
So, we are brothers in fraternity? (Laughs). Let me correct one impression, and this is the ignorance I am talking about. Before you (not you as a person I am referring to) can comment on the activities of the NJC, you must know its mandate. The NJC is not a criminal investigation outfit; the main function of the NJC, apart from policy formulation, is to appoint and discipline.

Investigation comes into the mandate of the NJC because, to discipline a person, there has to be allegation and you must investigate the allegation.

When people hear of investigation, they will go to town and think of criminal investigation. If your driver misbehaves and somebody reported him to you that you should sack him, won’t you investigate the allegation whether it is true or not?
You must hear from the person being accused of a wrongdoing before you can take action. That is investigation. This was the position of the NJC.

We don’t have any allegation against these Judges. How do you investigate when there was no report?
But the DSS was said to have complained to the NJC about malfeasance against the affected Judges?
No! There had been no complaints against the affected Judges you are taking about. Yes, there were complaints against some Judges and the NJC has dealt with them and recommended their removal, but there were no complaints about Judges keeping money in their homes.

Besides, what stops me from keeping N20m in my room if I want to? That does not amount to a crime yet. Suppose I just sold my father’s house or my house?
You don’t just say Justice X, you have 10million dollars in your house, follow me. You must investigate the source of the money, whether somebody kept it with him/her or other source of possibilities. You don’t just fix your mind on one single suspicious circumstance.

How will you react to the opinion that retired a Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) or a retired Supreme Court Justice should be made head of the NJC?
I have a different opinion about that. I would not think that is necessary, because in some countries where they have a similar body, they do not invite outsiders to be participants.The judiciary takes care of such things by itself. I still prefer the serving CJN to chair it and the successive CJNs have not shown that they are not good enough to be the head of the NJC.

If you want to deal with somebody from the National Assembly, do you bring somebody from outside?
The Judiciary is an arm of government. If you want to deal with somebody in the Executive, will you ask the President to step aside, so that you can bring an outsider?

When a former President was there, by our nature, we call him bad President, so we are now saying bring him back. When he was there, we said he was not good, but when he left, we now say bring him so he can help in re-organisation. We don’t think as deeply as we should. If he was not good when he was there, what now makes him good after leaving office? I cannot understand the logic.

We are talking of Judiciary?
What is the difference? Is it not an arm of government? Are you saying when the CJN was there, he/she was not wise enough to control the NJC? Is it when he retires that he/she will be good? You have criticised him/her when he/she was there, you said he/she was not good enough to perform the function. What magic will make him/she function after leaving the office?

What is your opinion about some African countries wanting to pull out of the International Criminal Court (ICC)?
I think they probably have their reasons. One of the reasons they have advanced is that the activity of the ICC seems to be tilted against Africans.

There are countries that do not subscribe to the membership of the ICC. The United States (US) is one of them. The US is not there and is not subject to the jurisdiction of that court, just as there are countries not subjected to the jurisdiction of that court, if you feel dissatisfied that your country is the target, nothing stops you from pulling out.

Some African countries want to pull out because they found out that those charged there are mostly from Africans. Do you see any rationale behind this decision or would you say the ICC is not fair to them in the dispensation of justice?
I will not believe so, because it is the concerned Africans that asked the ICC to take over in the first instance. The ICC provides that you can take care of your challenges. It is not every case that you take to the ICC. That is what is called complementarity.

That is why few African countries created their own International Criminal Division, so they apply international criminal law in their local jurisdiction. Uganda is one of those countries that I can remember.Nigeria has no cause to send anybody to the ICC yet. I think Nigeria should create International Criminal Division to try such matters within Nigeria.

You were in The Gambia, Seychelles and Sierra Leone as Chief Justice. Were there corruption allegations against Judges in those countries as it obtains in Nigeria?
I will say in my 10 years as Chief Justice of The Gambia, there was no single allegation of corruption against any Judge. As President Court of Appeal in Seychelles, I don’t think anybody mentioned corruption. In Sierra Leone, there was no question of corruption, since we were dealing with war crimes. What I am trying to explain is that in Nigeria, we jump three steps to come to a conclusion. Step one is allegation, second is investigation and the third step is revelation.But a Nigerian mind jumps from allegation, skips investigation and concludes, without revelation and will want to stone him, except there is a Judge that will insist that there must be investigation and revelation before conclusion.

If the Judge says you have to follow those three steps, they will label him a rogue. We were not like that before. In the days of our infancy in education, we would rather keep quiet or go to people who know before we speak.But now, everybody thinks once educated, they don’t need to go through that reasoning again. That is one of our problems. There are too many educated people jumping into issues they know nothing about. We have among them professors, even lawyers.

How will you explain that people who never heard of the NJC now have become pontificators of the NJC, even when they don’t know the composition of the NJC, asking for the removal of the leadership of NJC?
Some even say members of the NJC take bribe. The NJC has over 20 people as members. How many of them will you bribe and over what will you bribe them?
Some say the NJC has a pile of complaints but, as I speak, I can tell you there is no pile of complaints, as 75 per cent of issues reported to the NJC were allegations of wrong judgment, and that cannot be misconduct.

If you feel a Judge gives a wrong judgment, go to the Court of Appeal and if you feel Court of Appeal also gives a wrong judgment, go to the Supreme Court. But the man/woman does not want to go to appeal and will be quick to also accuse the NJC of corruption, because it threw out his complaints.

What does this portend for the image of the Judiciary and future of this country?
My own thinking is that we have destroyed the image of this country, because bad news sticks, even if it is false. It is a very sad thing. Even those of us who left the Judiciary for some years now are pained because of the blemish that is cast on the institution. It will be a mere story to say it wasn’t like that when I was a Judge. It doesn’t matter, because you are part of that institution. That is what makes some of us angry.

The anger is that before you condemn, why don’t you wait and go through the process of allegation, investigations before jumping into conclusion?
The implication for the country is that it is not easy to redeem your image once it is tarnished. It is sad when you now have a country that has permanent blemish of corruption. As we speak, in many countries they consider Nigeria as a corrupt country. Before, the Judiciary was the only institution not labeled, but now we have added it to the Legislature and the Executive. So, the three arms of government of Nigeria are corrupt. It is going to be difficult to redeem the image and we may have to carry the blemish for sometime.