Sagay Backs Jury System Against Corrupt Judges

The Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, Prof Itse Sagay, SAN, has expressed his support for the defunct jury system in Nigeria as a solution to the alleged corruption among judges.
Sagay said this during a one-day roundtable organised by PACAC in collaboration with the Jury Justice and Rectitude Advocacy Institute (The Jury Movement) in Abuja yesterday.
The PACAC chairman, who explained that the jury system originated in England, stated that, previously, he was not persuaded that Nigeria needed a jury system after it was abolished in Lagos in 1976.
Speaking on the theme of the event, ‘Jury Trials in Nigeria and the Review of the Proposed Jury Service Bill’, he explained that a judge should be a good arbiter of facts and applier of law, which, he said, would be swifter.
Sagay, however, noted that a few events in the last five to six years have changed his mind.
He said, “I think the most outstanding one was a case in which the defendant before the court was a judge. The judge was accused of looting, I would say — taking bribes of all sorts and appeared before another judge.
“Some of the facts were very interesting: N30m was paid by a counsel appearing before the judge into the judge’s wife’s account when the case was on. That same counsel, a senior advocate, bought a brand new car for the son of the judge.
“Several other things: more than $500,000 was found in his account. He had invested in blue-chip companies, as he called it with over N90m in one company and N80m in another, and so on.
“We had expected that the judge, who is a defendant, would explain how he acquired all these properties and why counsel appearing before him should pay N30m into his wife’s account and buy the car for his son.”
The anti-graft committee boss stated that “shockingly,” the judge had said the N30m was paid into the wife’s account and not into the judge’s account, so there could be no conspiracy established.
He added, “Secondly, the judge’s daughter was about to be married and the presiding judge said the money was paid to help the judge as a contribution to the wedding expenses and that was why it was paid into the wife’s account”.