The president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Mr. Joseph Daudu has decried the increasing level of corruption and indiscipline in the judiciary.
The NBA president decried what he called the “increasing monetization of legal services, which now includes senior judicial officers and retired judicial officers charging incredible sums of money and acting as conduit between their clients and the courts especially in election matters.”
Mr. Daudu made the allegation at a valedictory session in honour of the former Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Aniagolu, where he lamented the increasing cases of corrupt practices among legal practitioners and judicial officers and the need to check the menace before it consumes the judiciary.
He said the former justice and his peers laid the foundation of the Supreme Court and have written their names on the sand of times adding that it may be difficult to find a good number of men of integrity in the judiciary at present.
Dressed in their ceremonial outfits, the fifteen judges of the Supreme Court filed out to pay tribute to the late Justice Anthony Aniagolu, a Justice of the Supreme Court who died in June last year.
The president of the NBA who paid tributes on behalf of the bar association used the occasion to admonish the bar and the bench on the need to “imbibe integrity, fairness and justice and to shun corruption like the late justice as judicial officers.”
Chief Justice Dahiru Musdapher and the representative of the Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN), who both cited various rulings of the late justice, eulogized his contributions to the judiciary and the nation at large.
The session ended with an agreement that Justice Anthony Aniagolu has made immense contributions to the judiciary in the country and should be emulated by the bar and the bench.
