Date Published: 08/28/11

NJC Panel Report: An Orchestrated Cover-Up

If Press accounts of the conclusions of the Abdullahi Ibrahim Investigative Panel are accurate, we wish to react as follows:

 THE SOKOTO CASE:  

The Panel found that Ayo Salami perjured against the CJN.  Perjury, a criminal offence under Sections 117 and 118 of the criminal code, is punishable with 14 years imprisonment...  The National Judicial Council, however, came up with a nebulous proposition; asking the erstwhile PCA to apologize to the CJN and NJC; thereby trivializing a criminal matter.  This obnoxious development undermines the notion of justice.  We demand that the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice prosecute Ayo Salami if the shattered confidence of Nigerians in our judiciary must be restored.  And, restoring public confidence in the judiciary will take some doing.
 
OSUN AND EKITI CASES:
 
Petitioners alleged grave injustice and denial of fair hearing by the Appeal Court Tribunals on the Osun and Ekiti cases. In spite of  skepticism that a system as conservative and protective of its ‘’territory’’ as the judiciary would neither be willing nor able to carry out self-examination or self- cleansing and purge itself of entrenched corruption, petitioners still approached NJC – hoping against hope that the body would expose its own soft underbelly.  Alas, nothing of the sort happened. At the Panel’s inaugural sitting, Justice Abdullahi made petitioners believe it (the Panel) was interested in facts and not legal technicalities.  Evidently though, the Panel buckled under pressure and was clearly intimidated by the assemblage of 6 senior advocates of Nigeria who came to defend Salami. The 6 senior advocates, curiously, were those alleged to have been constantly communicating with Ayo Salami during the pendency of the Osun and Ekiti Tribunal proceedings.

 We know for a fact that 2 pieces of evidence critical to proving the case of the petitioners were rejected based of legal technicality:

A)   Evidence that the judgment delivered on the 15th of October 2010 in the Ekiti case was posted on an internet website controlled by the ACN at 9.00am on the same day - one clear hour before Salami started reading the judgment in Ilorin.
 
The  same Panel now stated in its report ‘’Secondly, assuming that there was a leakage, there is no evidence of circumstances or fact of that leakage to justify a reasonable conclusion that such was traceable  only to the telephone calls, about which evidence has been led in this matter”’
 
B)    MTN’s covering letter, which accompanied the call logs obtained by the Police, was rejected because it was notarized rather than certified; in what patently was an exercise in hair-splitting.  When petitioners’ legal team sought a 12-hour adjournment to enable them present the document through the Police, Panel refused; saying it was too late (the record of proceedings will reveal this.)   It is worthy of mention that Ayo Salami and his lawyers were by contrast, granted an adjournment of 7 days to “arrange” the appearance of an MTN staff who appeared at the erstwhile PCA’s behest; after the telecoms company had turned down the Panel’s official invitation.  
 
The Panel’s conclusion that the call logs were not authenticated amounts, therefore, to obfuscation of the basest variety; a total travesty.
 
Our expectation was that a fact-finding panel would be interested in getting a document related to its assignment, rather than rejecting the vital piece of evidence - solely on the ground of legal technicality.
 
 When the legal team of the petitioners drew attention to the fact that Ayo Salami never denied the calls made and received, and in fact, one of his witnesses, Turaki Kabiru Tanimu SAN (ACN gubernatorial candidate for Kebbi state) testified; affirming that he did exchange text messages with Ayo Salami, the Panel was strangely still of the view that non-denial of the calls did not confer authenticity on the call logs.“It is trite law that what is admitted needs no further proof.” We sadly, have come to the realization that the Panel was, ab initio, interested only in a whitewash; to protect ‘’one of its own’’.

Concerning another piece of evidence which  linked Bola Ahmed Tinubu with Ayo  Salami  (AFFIDAVIT OF SENATOR DAHIRU), the Panel stated  “This issue raised by counsel for (sic) Chief Oni in his closing  address did not form part of the petitions referred  to the panel when it was  set up, it is therefore inexpedient to visit the issue’’. We ask: Will NJC now set up another Panel to deliberate on this issue?  Or, are we to assume that it would be treated by NJC itself?  

 What should interest Nigerians is the conclusion reportedly drawn by the NJC on the EKITI AND OSUN CASES that there wasno sufficient evidence provided by petitioners to prove that communication between Salami and ACN CHIEFTAINS AND LAWYERS during the pendency of the Tribunal cases WAS UNETHICAL.      
     
 Pray, what else would be sufficient to prove clandestine relationships, after petitioners provided evidence of regular communication between Salami, ACN Chieftains and its lawyers?

We call on the National Assembly to save the judicial arm of government from itself, by instituting a public hearing on the rot that has devastated the judiciary and rendered it prostate in the eyes of Nigerians.  The NJC Panel has clearly demonstrated that the judiciary has neither the will nor the capacity to self-cleanse.

It is only at such a forum that individuals, organizations and institutions that participated actively in obstruction/perversion of the course of justice would be exposed and sanctioned appropriately.

Finally, NJC’s recommendation to President Goodluck Jonathan that Salami be retired is indulgent, lenient and capable of sending the wrong message out that judicial malfeasance pays.

Ayo Salami should be dismissed and handed over to the security agencies for further investigation.
 
Gabriel Odum
Coordinator

CDR Release Letter: