The judiciary, hope and despair TUESDAY, 11 JUNE 2013 00:00 EDITOR OPINION - EDITORIAL WHEN an Ikeja High Court, Lagos the other day sentenced Olaolu Salau, to 168 years imprisonment with hard labour for defrauding a businessman, the nation’s judiciary threw itself up as the butt of jokes. Had the said term been imposed in any of those corruption cases involving public office holders, ears would not have tingled in the least. Rather, Nigerians would have gone dancing in the streets and the judiciary would have been celebrated to high heavens. But that was not the case. The person on whom it was imposed is the same ordinary Nigerian against whom the judiciary is known to vent its spleen all the time for small infractions. Of course, all crimes must be punished and a fraud is a high crime, but the sentence of 168 years for theft of N2.5 million committed by Salau has shown the judiciary for what Chief Justice Aloma Mukhtar echoed the other day: not the hope but the albatross of the common man. How on earth could a judiciary notorious for passing fickle-minded sentences on big time looters and enemies of the nation now deem it fit to impose the maximum sentence under the law on a man who stole N2.5 million? What principles of law came into play in arriving at that punishment? In what way was that offence involved more severe than that of many official treasury looters and big bank fraudsters who were sentenced to sometimes as little as three months imprisonment? What about the recent pension fraud case of Yakubu Yusuf, who reportedly stole billions of naira but was asked to pay a fine of N750,000 to earn his freedom? Is there a difference between fraud committed against an individual and one against the public treasury? Indeed, the one committed against the public should attract stiffer punishment than the one committed against an individual. This was the rationale adopted by the court in the case of Ibeabuchi v. C.O.P where the thrust of the judgment was that offences involving the abuse of position of trust deserve to be more severely penalised than similar offences which lack this feature. And it makes sense in view of the guidelines mapped out by the Supreme Court on how to sentence offenders. According to the Supreme Court, seriousness of the offence committed, prevalence of the offence and the offence of abuse of position of trust are some of the important considerations in sentencing an offender. There is no doubt that the biggest trouble with Nigeria today is corruption and allied offences and to that extent the one deserving the heaviest penalty. What this means is that if Olaolu Salau deserved seven years imprisonment for defrauding a businessman to the tune of N2.5 million, the big time looters who steal billions of naira and bleed the nation dry deserve several times heavier terms of imprisonment, considering the multiplier effect of their action on the nation and its citizenry. It is disturbing that years after Justice Atanda Fatayi-Williams, Chief Justice of Nigeria as he then was, warned that “one of the main defects today of our criminal law is the incoherent, irrational and incredibly intricate variety of sentences legally pronounced by different courts exercising the same jurisdiction in respect of the same or similar offences”, the Nigerian judiciary is yet to rise above these challenges. Serious discrepancies in sentencing as is the case with Olaolu Salau abound in far greater proportion today than what it was at the time Fatayi-Williams raised the alarm. Today, the magnitude of the discrepancy has made the judiciary a laughing stock, an object of ridicule and public opprobrium all going to show that public trust in it has waned considerably. This fact is happily not lost on CJN Aloma Mukhtar, who recently decried a situation which she described as “the poor gets jailed while the rich gets bailed”. As has been observed by notable jurists, justice must be rooted in confidence and confidence is destroyed when right-minded people go away thinking the judge didn’t do justice. In other words, it is not enough that justice is done, but it must manifestly be seen to have been done. The popular notion today is that the judiciary blows muted trumpet in cases involving high profile offenders and bares its fangs only in cases involving the little man. This anomaly has been perpetuated by the nation’s penal legislations, which often time prescribe only the maximum sentence, thereby giving the court a wide discretion between the minimum and the maximum. These wide discretionary powers are directly responsible for the contradictory and incoherent sentences handed down by the courts. And it is so because the powers which are supposed to be exercised judiciously have fallen prey to extraneous factors such as relationship with the offender, offer of gratification and feeling of obligation towards the offender for favour once dispensed by or received from him. Cynics now rightly say that most judges are as good as political appointees, indebted to their appointors or political godfathers and so would be wary of ruffling feathers and imposing heavy sentence in corruption cases involving politicians or political office holders. To restore sanity therefore, it is necessary to regulate the discretionary powers of judges in the area of sentencing. One of the ways of doing this is to ask every judge or magistrate to state in writing his reasons for the sentence imposed on an offender. This will invariably bring about consistency in sentences, and will ensure that decisions are rationally and properly reasoned and will prevent the sentence from being influenced by emotional or other extraneous reactions to the offence or the offender. Above all, judges would be forced to bring to bear proper reflection and reasoning on their sentencing. Otherwise, the judiciary would remain an object of ridicule as the case of citizen Salau tends to portray it.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 14:04:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015