Salami Was Unjustly Treated, Say Uwais, Tinubu, Soyinka, Others

Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais

•Retired jurist: I've no regrets

Dignitaries, including a former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais, former Lagos State Governor, Senator Bola Tinubu, and Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Wednesday revisited the circumstances that led to the exit of former President, Court of Appeal, Justice Ayo Salami, from office, with a verdict that President Goodluck Jonathan and the National Judicial Council (NJC) were unfair to him.

They spoke at the launch of a book, entitled, ‘Isa Ayo Salami: Through Life and Justice’, where the retired jurist recalled why he got into trouble and said he had no regrets for the steps he took while in office.

Salami, who retired from the bench early in October, was on suspension for over two years for alleged insubordination and conduct unbecoming of a top judicial official.

Uwais, a former chairman of the NJC in his speech, said the council was wrong when it suspended Salami, adding that the president had no role to play in the suspension of Salami. He cited section 153(2) of the 1999 Constitution to support his position.

He explained that since all the committees of the NJC set up to investigate Salami did not find anything against him, the council ought not to have asked him to apologise.
He said: “It follows that Justice Isa Ayo Salami has been unfairly treated by the NJC. It is disturbing, to say the least, that the NJC, whose membership consists of eminent and experienced judges and lawyers, should act in the manner they treated Justice Salami.”

He noted that Salami was suspended for over two years, adding: “To the best of my knowledge, this is the longest period in the history of the Nigerian judiciary that a judicial officer had been sent on suspension for alleged misconduct.”

Before asking him to proceed on suspension, Uwais said the NJC should have asked Salami to explain why he refused to apologise to the then CJN, Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu.

In his contribution at the book presentation, Tinubu said the way Salami was edged out of the bench portended a grave danger for the judiciary and attributed his travails while in office to political persecution.

He added that Salami ran into trouble because he refused to pervert the course of justice by delivering judgments against the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that enabled the people of Ondo, Ekiti, Edo and Osun States to reclaim the mandate they freely gave out to winners of the 2007 governorship election in the four states.

He said rather than being vilified, the retired jurist deserved to be celebrated as an emblem of justice in the country.

Tinubu, a national leader of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which one of the NJC committees accused Salami of having an unholy relationship with, deplored the allegations that the retired jurist was a sympathiser of the party.

He said: “Whenever the history of the Nigerian judiciary is told or written, the name of Justice Ayo Salami, former President of the Appeal Court, will occupy a place of supreme honour and respect. Many have said he is the finest jurist of this generation. They may well be right.

“Justice Salami represented the judiciary a true democracy needs. We are yet to achieve this judiciary simply because those in power do not want it. They do not want judges who are objective arbiters of the law.

“They want jurists who cheer for them not jurists who cherish the law. They want judges who believe power and might are the law not judges who believe in the power and might of the law.
“For being forthright and objective, Salami was taken from his deserved position on the bench by the ruling party. An innocent man was made to suffer, pilloried for the sin of being good and forthright. Those who forced him into retirement saw him as an obstacle because he did not play favourites when it came to the law; he did not play at all.

“He held the law in great esteem and protected it as one should protect the cornerstone of a just society.
“Salami's account is the story of Nigeria. Nigeria stands in the cross winds of history. Unless we find more men with the gravity and sobriety of Justice Salami in the judiciary, we shall be swept in the wrong direction by the terrible gales of unbridled ambition and mean power.”

Tinubu lamented that the PDP-led federal government wrongfully ended Salami's career because he refused to sacrifice his integrity and subvert the course of justice in order to whip other judges handling election cases in which the ruling party has interest.

“Justice Salami will remain the thorn in the flesh and the hammer in the minds of those who seek to clip justice to gain undue political power and advantage. Yet nothing they do can eclipse his courageous contribution to democracy and to the restoration of hope in our judiciary.

“Someday, Nigeria shall erect a monument in his name. But the best monument to give this man is a living one. Let us continue to demand electoral reform. Let us demand judicial independence so that other jurists can act in the spirit of this man we today honour.

“If we do this, Nigeria would have executed the proper turn to its better future. And whenever the story of the judiciary of this nation is told, the name Ayo Salami will find powerful and true mention,” he added.

In a keynote address, Soyinka said Nigerians had adopted a “siddon look” attitude to the many injustices taking place in the country.

According to him, resigning to fate was not the best option as he urged Nigerians to protest against injustice.

He recalled many unresolved assassinations, including that of a former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, the late Chief Bola Ige, and called on the authorities to resolve these murders even as he said there were enough trails that could lead to unravelling the killings.
He noted that while grave injustices were being committed, state agencies were busy arraigning suspects for forging documents to get visas.

He also said the national conference being proposed by Jonathan should be used to dig into the past, adding that no nation could move forward without understanding its past.

“The national conference – if it does take place - must insist on a standing commission, an independent judicial commission to exhume that past and re-open its case files. The late (Umaru) Yar’Adua was not courting votes when he ordered the police agencies to re-open such files and provide the nation with answers. Please recall that I did meet Yar’Adua both in company, and immediately after, on a one-on-one meeting during the upsurge of MEND violence.

“His order had been issued even before those meetings, at the very beginning of his tenure, and was a response to the consciousness of a huge, ominous cloud that weighed upon both governance and the governed polity.

“That undertaking was a call for national exorcism, without which the nation not only continues to live a lie, but invites the perpetuation of the homicidal culture of impunity,” he added.
Also speaking, Zamfara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulaziz Abubakar Yari, expressed concern that Salami, a senior member of the bench, could not get justice from the judiciary and wondered what would happen to an ordinary Nigerian.

He also agreed with Uwais that NJC did not treat Salami fairly.
He bought 250 copies of the book on behalf of 11 progressive governors.
In his speech, Salami restated the facts surrounding his suspension and said he had no regrets for refusing Katsina-Alu’s request to pervert the course of justice.

He said: “I realise the public interest that my feud with the NJC and former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Katsina-Alu has generated. It is obvious that people want to know what the fuss was actually about, and briefly put, this is it.

“I was invited by the then CJN, Justice Katsina-Alu, to his chambers on the 8th of February, 2010 using Justice Dahiru Musdapher’s phone, and when I got there, I met them together. He (Katsina-Alu) instructed me to direct the justices on the Sokoto Appeal to dismiss the appeal of the Democratic Peoples Party (DPP) governorship candidate and I responded that I could not do so.

“Contrary to the deposition of Justice Katsina-Alu that he called me into his chambers in respect of leakage in the judgment of Sokoto matter, which he gathered from petitions, there were no petitions against me or the justices in the Sokoto appeal panel as at the 8th day of January, 2010 on the Sokoto matter or any other matter.

“Ironically, the petitions in question only emerged on the 15th of February, 2010 seven days after I had unequivocally informed the CJN that I would not direct a competent court on what its judgment should be.

“After showing me the petitions on the 15th February, he asked me to disband the Sokoto Appeal Panel in view of the petitions. I responded that I would not disband the panel as the petitions did not contain any allegation of impropriety against the members.

“The investigating panel set up by the NJC under Justice Umaru Abdullahi rejected his claim that there was allegation of leakage in the petitions as well as his defence that the judgment had leaked. In spite of this, they concluded that he was acting in good faith. On this, I won't say more.”

He said he was happy he refused to pervert the course of justice, adding that disbanding the panel or persuading them to dismiss the appeal was not the right thing to do.
“It would have offended the principle of the independence of the judges which I so much respect and believe in,” he added.

He said it would have been hypocritical for him to appear in public and talk of honour and integrity if he had agreed with Katsina-Alu to pervert the course of justice.
He said: “But I am proud to be here today to talk about these values. I have no regret about what I did and the God of truth has vindicated me. All the NJC committees’ reports have said that Salami did no wrong as well as the report of the committee set up by the Nigerian Bar Association.”