Rotten inside
When a top-level insider exposes internal rot, it speaks volumes about the issue. The President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Afam Osigwe (SAN), delivered a keynote address at the
When a top-level insider exposes internal rot, it speaks volumes about the issue. The President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Afam Osigwe (SAN), delivered a keynote address at the 17th Ralph Opara Memorial Lecture, on February 13, in Enugu. The theme was “Judicial Corruption in Nigeria: A Menace to Democracy and Social Justice.”
He said: “Metaphorically, a corrupt judge has been described as more harmful to the society than a man who runs amok with a dagger in a crowded street.
“The latter, as you know, can be restrained physically.
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“But the former deliberately destroys the moral foundation of society and causes incalculable distress to individuals.”
He cited a 2024 survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), revealing that Nigerian public officials received about N721bn in cash bribes in 2023, with judges ranking among the top recipients.
Furthermore, he noted that a survey by the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) estimated that N9.4bn was involved in bribes within the country’s justice sector between 2018 and 2020, with lawyers and litigants identified as primary bribe-givers.
“When rulings are allegedly influenced by envelopes rather than evidence, the judiciary ceases to be the last hope of the common man and becomes the first refuge of the powerful and the corrupt,” he argued.
He lamented that public confidence in the country’s judicial system is abysmally low, and the desecration of the temple of justice means it is “increasingly perceived as a marketplace where justice can be delayed, manipulated, or purchased outright by the highest bidder.”
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Importantly, he argued that corruption survives because “there are both ‘corrupters’ and ‘corruptees,’ and the fight cannot be won unless citizens refuse to participate... and lawyers stop acting as agents of graft.”
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In this context, judicial corruption thrives because there is often a corrupting lawyer who facilitates the bribe or advises their client to “settle” the court; a corrupting litigant who is willing to pay to bypass the law; and a corrupting system where the court registrars and administrative staff act as middlemen.
Interestingly, the critical observations of the head of the Bar triggered a conflict within the legal community, with some members criticising the statements as too sweeping, while others hailed them as necessary truths.
Indeed, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Muritala Abdul-Rasheed, described Osigwe as “a president who publicly disparages the integrity of the very profession he leads.”
However, Osigwe’s honesty about corruption within the Bar and Bench is commendable and thought-provoking. It is true, as he maintains, that the NBA cannot claim to uphold the rule of law if it is afraid to speak the truth about its own internal rot.
