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 on Thursday.

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.

“As for car bought for the son, the judge said, well, it was bought for the son and not the judge. For all the other amounts of money, he said, ‘The judge comes from a wealthy family. He inherited property.

“He has been in the judiciary for a long time. He goes on courtesies; those courtesies are paid in dollars. He must have been saving those amounts of money until they got to more than $500,000, and so on.”

According to Sagay, the judge became the chief defence counsel in his judgment.

“That turned me round completely on this issue because it was clear that judges, as knowledgeable as they are, could no longer be relied upon to be impartial or objective when they feel the interests of those in their class is concerned.

“It then occurred to me that the idea of choosing 12 independent people who, using a random type of method, have no connection to the matter and represent the ordinary men in society, will come to the court, listen to the argument.”

However, the reviewer of the Jury Service Bill on the occasion, Mrs Olufemi Fatunde, argued against the adoption of the jury system.

According to Fatunde, who is also a former Director of Public Prosecution of the Federation, cited ethnic bias and the high cost of housing, feeding and paying the allowances of jurors in an already financially challenged judicial sector, among several other factors militating against the jury system in the country.

She said, “I believe that we don’t need it. We have sufficient legal infrastructure on the ground, which, if we only develop, we will be able to cope and our system of criminal justice will be more efficient and effective.

“We don’t need the jury system as of now. The present system will work well once all stakeholders are effectively sensitised and they key into it under the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015. “

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