PROPER?: ATTACHED FURNITURE IN USE IN CHIEF JUDGE SECRETARY’S OFFICE

One of the odious practices of the Nigerian police is the wrongful appropriation of the properties of criminal suspects.
When the police swoop on criminal suspects, for good or base reasons, they often impound their chattels like furniture sets, cars, television and radio sets etc and bring same to their stations.
After a time, the impounded chattels are taken away into the various offices in the station and put to use. So one can find a situation where the rug belongs to suspect A, the table is owned by suspect B, the coat hanger, the property of suspect C and the television set is the property of suspect D. It is not uncommon to find impounded vehicles, driven by investigating police officers.

The Squib can however reveal that this abuse of office and powers is not limited to the police. Another important institution in the administration of Justice at least in Lagos State, the Judiciary is involved in similar practice.
In many administrative offices in the judiciary and even in some court rooms, are furniture not owned by the judiciary, but put to use there. These pieces of furniture and even electronic sets are goods seized by the police of the judiciary, to wit the court-bailiffs, otherwise known as bailiffs, during execution of court judgements and brought into the custody of the court.
The attached goods, under the law never become the property of the court but are meant to be sold off to satisfy judgement debits or be redeemed back by their owners upon payments of their judgement debts.
Unfortunately quite a few of such attached goods are converted with impunity, by staffers of the Judiciary, with the obvious knowledge and compromise of the bailiffs themselves.
The use of attached goods in the judiciary, particularly in the high courts is so rampant that such goods are in upon use in the office of the Chief Judge of Lagos State. In the reception of the office of the secretary of the Chief Judge of Lagos State at the Lagos State High Court-Igbosere, are two seats (see cover) part of a set, obviously attached goods, labeled LD/490/05. The (abbreviated) name of the attaching officer ‘sho’ is also stated also.
In some other courts (Hon. Justice Williams, Hon Justice B. Shitta-Bey) are such goods also in use.
Some sources in the judiciary informed the Squib that the unsavory situation arose for two reasons - lack of adequate storage facility in the Lagos State Judiciary for attached goods and inadequate supply of office-furniture and equipment for junior staff of the judiciary said a source-“The focus of government in the judiciary is mainly on judges. They always try to satisfy them but care less for other workers. So we have to find means of looking after ourselves. You need chairs, tables, etc to work in the office, but it is either we don’t have or the ones we have are badly damaged and nobody cares about repairs, so we have to arrange with our friends the bailiffs to help us out”.
Clearly there is no lawful justification for the conversion of attached goods for use in the judiciary. In fact it is another indication of the rot in our institution and our distorted value system as a people. Things have gotten so bad that the public institution of Justice becomes a blatant and shameful misappropriators of goods in her care.
We urge the new authority of the Lagos State Judiciary to take urgent steps to correct the grossly anomalous situation.

HOW SHOULD LAWYERS DRESS?

On 28th September 2009, no less than two hundred lawyers turned up at the Cathedral Church, Marina, Lagos, for the Christian service marking the new Legal Year Day for 2009/2010.

A particular barrister stood out of the lot but for negative reasons. While most of his colleagues at the occasion looked sharp and clean in their suits, Mr. Olusesan Aknalaja (called 1991) cut such an extremely shabby appearance, that he could easily be mistaken for a tramp about loud or an academic who had just embarked on a journey of innocuous insanity.

Akinlaja’s shoes were a pair of black; he of course had no socks on. His trousers a blue khaki jeans no shared no affinity with his jacket and was dirty. But the light blue stripped jacket Akinlaja had on was even dirtier, 'grimy' actually is the word. His shirt had lost its whiteness may be as far back in time as 2007 and his bib, wrinkled and browned as it were, would serve as fair camouflage for an aparo (patridge).

Akinlaja had a bag in his hand; that was about the only neat item on him, but it was simply out of place, being more like a small travel bag or a woman’s hold-all than a male lawyer’s bag.

To complete the story picture Akinlaja presented an unshaven cheeks and chin that sprouted short white hairs.
Indeed Akinlaja was an unsightly figure on the said day but most just kept their thoughts about him to themselves yet this was a legal practitioner, who for the sheer terrible sight he presented on that day, properly deserved a suspension from the profession, except it be proven that he was suffering from insanity!

Concerned members of the legal profession are worried about the slovenness and general inappropriate dressing of many practicing counsel these days.

There are some lady lawyers including magistrates and even judges who, in the course of their jobs practice various forms of undress and imbibe the practice of loud jewelry wearing including leg-chains, heavy multi-coloured face make-up, drop ear-rings, big brooches, punk hair styles, multi-coloured braids, etc.

For the men folk, quite an increasing number are finding it difficult to appear before the court wearing suits and shoes of colour black. Many also find it almost an anathema to sport starched, crisp, all white bibs as they are more at home with dirty, stained, crumpled ungainly bibs, which flop dejectedly on their chests.

Male lawyers, particularly those on the Main-land are more guilty of poor dressing than their female whose fault mainly lie in being unnecessarily and inappropriately showy.

There are many male counsel, whose constant excuse for poor, clients-chasing-appearance is “you know I am not appearing in court today” and they truly believe that is good enough excuse to appear like a palm-wine tapper or a rustic thrift collector, or just a plan old “Lagos stroller.”

This magazine believes a legal practitioner should endeavour to look his best all the time, not only for reasons of personal benefits but as part of the effort to maintain and sustain the high reputation of the legal profession.

We also believe that it is the duty of the seniors and elders in the profession to discourage legal practitioners from indulging in care-less or even worse, care-free dressing which tends to put to ridicule the noble profession.

WHY THEY ARE AFTER ME

Come 29 October 2009, all other things being equal, the Legal Practitioners’ Disciplinary Committee of the Body of Benchers would sit at their normal venue, the Court of Appeal Headquarters Building, Abuja.
At the sitting of the LPDC a prominent feature is that of Mr. Dele Kelvin Oye, veteran prosecutor for the Nigerian Bar Association. He is well known to the members of the committee their registrars and staff and of course the defendants and their counsel.
A pleasant and ordinarily amiable character, Oye would be seen interacting freely with people wearing a friendly mien even with those facing his prosecutorial harpoons.
Given the deep politics and bitter, even dangerous intrigues that sometimes colour or follow cases before the Committee, Oye’s constant strategy could be likened to that of the proverbial Lagos city rat that eats so much off the sole of slumberer’s foot by blowing cool air gently on the foot before and after every bite! The constant mantra on Mr. Oye’s lip while ‘killing the defendant slowly, as it were is “I am only doing my duty, you know we are all colleagues.”
As things stand now, it is doubtful whether Mr. Oye, a 1989 graduate of the Nigerian Law School, would ever return to his familiar turf of prosecutor before the LPDC.
In late August 2009 in the wake of the recent tsunami, violently rocking the banking industry in the country, the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) declared Dele Oye, who also to be the chairman of the Abuja Chamber of Commerce a wanted man, in connection with alleged financial crimes related to Intercontinental Bank.
Geckos informed the Squib that Oye ran into troubled waters with the EFCC, when in the course of investigating the Intercontinental Bank, some companies such as Flotsome, Prisky Gold Nigerian Ltd, Dilvent Int’l Ltd, Marricross and Circular Global had suspicious interactions with the Intercontinental Bank.
The EFCC wasted no time in tracing and finding the supposed Directors of these companies who are lawyers but who turned up at the EFCC to claim that they knew nothing about the companies. All the lawyers happened to be juniors working in Dele Oye chambers.
When their employer was summoned by the EFCC, Oye thought it best to flee instead of honouring the invitation. The EFCC has since sealed up the gentleman’s office in Abuja.
According to our sources, the alleged financial deals of Mr. Dele Oye totalled some 6.5billion naira.
Though on the run, Oye whose disappearance is now frustrating the prosecution of some disciplinary matters before the LPDC, has not been completely incommunicado.
The Squib successfully monitored Dele Oye’s off and on communications with a select few with whom he always pleads his innocence claiming that his travails is due to nothing other than fierce turf-possession politics in the banking industry, with the emergence of Lamido Sanusi as the new Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
“My indictment is nothing more than politics” he says, from hiding. Some people are however advising that the NBA prosecutor is better served by stepping out to confront the EFCC and his other detractors, with facts and figures of his innocence.
One of these observers told the Squib-“Oye should stop being a fugitive. He should come back home and face his trial like a man, if he indeed is innocent. Nobody proves his innocence by running away from the accusers, rather you suggest that you are guilty as charged. If he is afraid of detention he should know that the court will grant him bail just as they did to the bank executives. In Nigeria when the allegation of fraud against you is very weighty, the courts grant you bail, especially when you are a respectable and prominent individual, And the chairman of the Abuja Chambers of Commerce is prominent enough a person.” He can also be sure that if indeed the EFCC is merely persecuting him, that the NBA whom he has served for so many years would rise to his defence.

THE TRUE AND FULL CAUSE OF GANI'S DEATH

One spectacular event that dominated the air-waves and the press from the first to the third week of September 2009 was the passing away of the legal luminary, author, publisher, philantrophist, and temporary politician Abdula-Ganiyu Oyesola Fawehinmi a.k.a. GANI...