Eight more senior judges are under investigation and
will soon be arrested by the Department of State
Services (DSS) as part of its latest attempt to cleanse
the judiciary of corruption, Daily Trust gathered
yesterday.
Seven judges were earlier arrested in different states
across the country between Friday night and
Saturday morning over alleged corrupt practices.
A top official of the service told Daily Trust that the
seven senior judges arrested were still in custody
and would be arraigned in court any moment.
The judges in custody last night are: Inyang Okoro
and Sylvester Ngwuta of the Supreme Court, Adeniyi
Ademola of the Federal High Court, Abuja, Kabir Auta
of the Kano High Court, Mu’azu Pindiga of the Gombe
High Court, Mohammed Tsamiya of the Court of
Appeal, Ilorin and the Chief Judge of Enugu State
Justice I. A. Umezulike.
The DSS said Saturday that it recovered over N93
million and $530,000 cash from three arrested
judges. The source said the judges were allowed
access to their families and were cooperating with
the agency.
“We still respect them. They are not being treated like
common criminals,” he said.
As part of the investigations, three registry staff from
various courts were also invited for questioning, the
source said.
He added that the corruption cases against the
judges were disturbing and investigations were
carried out with “facts and figures.”
He said the current clampdown on the judicial
officers was based on intelligence, and not on the
perception of ordinary Nigerians.
“We received petitions against these judges on cases
they are handling.
The worst part of it is where they collected money.
We knew the issue would be controversial even
before we started,” he said, adding that the
corruption in the judiciary was so enormous that
some judges took money with both hands from
litigants.
“A particular judge entered a departmental store and
collected bribe from a go-between. He didn’t even
bother to buy anything. He just came out with the
money. That is how bad it has become,” he said.
He said Nigeria had lost so much money due to the
compromising posture of most of the judges. Citing
the corruption cases of Halliburton, Malabu and
Siemens, the security chief said: “In the past four
years, Nigeria lost multi-million dollars cases against
foreigners because of the corruption in the judiciary.
Nigeria lost $1.9billion in one swoop case.”
He said those organizations criticizing the current
actions of the security outfit had the right to
challenge its constitutionality or otherwise in court.
He said the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) which
earlier condemned the DSS operation, “should have
the courage to take us to court.”
He said the DSS intervened because it had the
mandate to protect the internal security of the
country.
“No any other agency is constitutionality mandated to
handle the issues of subversion, sabotage and
espionage apart from us,” he said.
The National Judicial Council (NJC) had earlier
recommended the sack of justices Auta, Tsamiya and
Umezulike for alleged corrupt activities. But the
security chief said that was not enough, adding, “The
NJC gave soft landing to the three judges. What
happened to the proceeds of crime running into
hundreds of millions?”