Corruption has reduced courts to market stalls, retired justice warns

The former Supreme Court justice, Amina Adamu Augie, urged the legal profession to ruthlessly disciplined judges and senior lawyers to restore public confidence in the administration of justice.

She warned that unethical practices by judges, lawyers, and court officials are eroding public confidence and reducing the courts to ordinary market stalls.

Speaking in Abuja during the 40th-anniversary celebration of the Nigerian Law School Class of 1986, the retired justice condemned the decay in the legal system. She called out senior members of the Bar for manipulating proceedings and demanded that guilty practitioners face sanctions immediately, irrespective of their influence or seniority.

Justice Augie identified political interference, chronic delays, and inadequate funding as major threats crippling the administration of justice. She stated that a judiciary relying on the executive for basic infrastructure, such as courtroom roofs or vehicles, cannot claim true financial autonomy.

“Where it exists on the Bench, at the Bar, or in the Registry, it poisons everything by turning the one place that a citizen should find impartiality into one more market stall. When a few senior members of the profession have been found to traffic in the corruption of justice, the damage is not to them alone; it stains the gown we all wear.”

The legal luminary also called out government authorities for their repeated failure to obey court orders, making reference to the prolonged detentions of former National Security Adviser Sambo Dasuki and Islamic Movement leader Ibrahim El-Zakzaky. She lamented the burden of trivial cases on the Supreme Court, making reference to a prolonged dispute over 12 goats that eventually reached the apex court.

She reiterated her commitment to defending the rule of law and urged the government to ensure that justice is dispensed within a reasonable time and remains accessible to ordinary citizens.