Indicted Judges: EFCC writes CJN, NJC meets on them

The National Judicial Council (NJC), is meeting today to possibly consider the reports of different panels set up to look into the cases of judges indicted for alleged unethical conducts and non-performance.

The meeting which started on Thursday, saw appointment of new judges, considered, with Chief Judges who had nominations from their jurisdictions, asked to come and defend such nominees.

One of such Chief Judges was the Chief Judge of Cross River State, Justice Okoi Itam, who was at the council to defend the nomination of a legal practitioner (names withheld), as a judge.

This came as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), wrote the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mariam Aloma Mukhtar, demanding for a meeting as exclusively reported by the Nigerian Tribune.

A commission source disclosed to the Nigerian Tribune, that the request got to the CJN’s office last week.

As at press time, the CJN had not picked a date for the meeting where the indictment of some judges for alleged corruption is expected to feature prominently.

Five judges were reportedly indicted by the commission, while others were still said to be under probe.

The commission was said to be preparing for their trial.

Some of the judges said to have been indicted by the commission had also been reportedly indicted by panels set up by the council.

The case file of one of the allegedly indicted judges was moved from the office of the CJN to the council on Tuesday, preparatory to Thursday’s meeting and today’s consideration.

She reportedly refused to answer the query issued her by the CJN over a controversial judgement she granted in a political case involving certain elected persons from a North-West State.

To ensure fair hearing for the judges facing the council’s probe panels, it was learnt that the panels were asked to bring their reports straight to the council, in order to allay the fears in certain quarters that some persons were interested in their cases and might want to influence the outcome.

Five judges were probed for non-performance.

The council had hinted that they might be on their way out of service if they could not effectively defend their abysmally low performance.

The CJN had also publicly declared that cases of about 23 judges had been listed for consideration over alleged unethical conducts.

Though, it was gathered that initial investigation had indicted a lot of them, the council decided to set up another probe panels to look into their cases again following agitation by a couple of council members that some of the judges sanctioned were not given fair hearing.
TRIBUNE