 Every once in a while, a truly iconic figure comes by this way. Usually one who excels, an account of a unique talent. And these are the sorts of people that are described as icons. But not often is it the case that the icon is multi-talented and gifted in several different ways. We had one such 20 years ago, Bankole Aluko, senior advocate of Nigeria. Bankole lived outside my school, Igbobe College. In the home of his parents, the legendary professor Tia Maluko, a distinguished professor of engineering and renowned author of The One Man, One March at Fame. His wonderfully kind mom was our French teacher at Igbobe in those days. Bankole had that rare quality of a cross between the Igbobe boy and the KC boy. He played the bass guitar excellently in different bands. He played football competitively. He was a debater, a dapper dresser, a great dancer, and he was incredibly clever. He was a year ahead of me at the Faculty of Law Unilag. And I was intrigued by his capacity to enjoy himself so thoroughly and still excel in his academics. He chose to do a masters at the LSE, and so did I. And Kole, just an incredible human being, would import his star bear from Nigeria. He would watch live football at Wimbledon, party at night and still sound better about his work than anyone else that you knew. Years later, he would be head of chambers at Routimi Williams. He was also, at that time, my preferred lawyer for practically anything. He drafted pleadings with language, and I'm sure so many here who worked with him will agree with me, with language that was so powerful, so poignant, so expressive, that you are actually persuaded of his case before he even argued it. When he argued, he had that gift, a way with words, but he was always deeply respectful of opponents. And that's something that always came across when he was in court. He just got the sense that he was always courteous, unfailing curses at all times. When I was adviser to the then Federal Attorney General, I was the extradition agent in the case of two, the extradition of two notorious drug barons. It was colleague that I engaged to represent me in the prosecution of these individuals. And then again, when as Attorney General, I was prosecuting the killers of Kudirata Biola and others. And one of the accused persons libeled me as well as the judge in the case. It was colleague who we engaged to prosecute the contemptors in a criminal contempt case, perhaps one of the very few that has ever been tried in our courts. It was in every sense a landmark case. The accused counsel eventually pleaded guilty and was disciplined by the court. When I myself was sued for libel, he was my counsel. He filed my counter claim. We won the case. Collier was just brilliant. I'm not to date met with an advocate with his oratorical skills and his charisma. When with Benga, Benga or Yebode, they founded the firm Alukwani Yebode, I knew the firm would be phenomenal. Benga's nose for the juiciest transactions. I'm Collier's mastery of the courtroom. I was right. Alukwani Yebode took everybody's lunch off the table and we're still recovering from that impact. Collier once told me that his life ambition was to be a judge. And when I became attorney general in Lagos, we began the reform of the justice sector. Appointment of judges was taking place and he was the first person I spoke to. But we both agreed after talking for a while, at this time, of course, he was already enjoying the fruits of his labor in Alukwani Yebode. I would both agree that he needed to make a little more money before accepting such an appointment. One of his favorite subjects was justice reform and we spent hours analyzing the issues, which is why the topic today would have intrigued him. The administration of justice, the ideal standard, the dream reality and our potential. And this is a topic which I think is important today because of all the work that's going on in the area of reform of our court systems. First there is a need to clearly establish that the administration of justice system is the foundation of law and order, commerce as well as democracy, the democracy that we practice. When the system of administration of justice fails, these pillars of governance and orderly society also collapse. So for example, the proliferation of criminal activity is directly related to the weakness of the administration of criminal justice. In Nigeria, where we have a population of somewhere in the order of about 200 million, we have about between 15 and 20,000 convicts in jail. In America, with a population of about 300 million people, they have about 3 million people in jail. The UK, with a population of about 67 million people, have 80,000 convicts in jail. So we, with almost three times the population of between half times the population of the UK have 15,000 in jail. They have 80,000 in jail. It's either we are remarkably well-behaved people here or there's something wrong with the criminal justice system. As for commerce, we all know that investor hesitancy or reluctance is also a reflection of the inefficiencies and lack of confidence in the integrity of the commercial dispute resolution process. Delays, especially in commercial trials, is particularly disastrous. The UK Court of Appeal had occasion to comment on delays in Nigerian courts, in a case that I'm sure some of the lawyers here will be familiar with, IPCO and NNPC, as a case that was decided sometime in 2015, where a challenge to the enforcement of a Nigerian seated arbitration tribunal award came before the English Court of Appeal. The Court referred to the delays in the parallel proceedings taking place before a Nigerian court as catastrophic and that it would take 30 years to resolve. Incidentally, the expert witness who testified on delays in the Nigerian court system was a former justice of the Supreme Court who testified that it could take up to 20 to 30 years to resolve the case in the Nigerian court. The court is a taxpayer-funded resource. The wasting or abuse of its finite time and resources without strict consequence will eventually discredit the system and that's what we're seeing almost on an incremental basis. Addressing delays, therefore, must involve imposing sanctions by a more intentional regime for the award of course, adverse costs and wasted costs. Adverse costs of course are those costs that are paid to the successful party when of course at the end of the case, whereas wasted costs are those costs that are imposed against legal practitioners for poor or unprofessional standards in the conduct of a case. Severe costs should attend adjournments. If people come with frivolous adjournments and this is of course, as we all know, those of us who practice in the courts, we all know that frequent adjournments has just become almost a way of doing stuff, especially for counsel who wants to delay the case. So this is generally a waste of taxpayer's funds. For a shadowed case to have to be adjourned is a huge waste of funds and it is only heavy costs that will eventually discourage that type of malfeasance. How about democracy? The democratic rights of the people and their confidence in the notion of the government, of the people, by the people, for the people suffers when the system of electoral justice fails to see itself as a handmade of the democratic process. In recent years, courts have substituted their judgments for the declared will of the electorate. The decision of the Supreme Court, for example, in the case of APC and Marafa, which is a 2019 decision, where the Supreme Court nullified the elections of all candidates of the party who were elected by the overwhelming majority of the electorate in Zamfara State in the 2019 elections on the grounds that the votes of the electorate were wasted since the APC's primaries, which produced the candidates, were not valid. So the process of the primaries was invalid. But without recourse to the electorate, who had in the polls rejected all the other candidates or the other political parties, the court declared candidates of the parties rejected by the people as the winners of the various offices, governors, senators, members of the House of Representatives, members of the House of Assembly. For the voter, this sort of decision must have been at best puzzling. First, they had no idea that the candidates were disqualified before voting. Indeed, at least one court had declared the primaries valid. And it was on that basis that Aine gave the go-ahead for the candidates to contest. Second, rather than giving seats to those that the electorate had rejected, perhaps ordering a rerun would probably have been more in consonance with the democratic imperative of sustaining the expressed will of majority. And electoral cases are peculiar, especially as concerns democracy. The whole point of the democratic process is that people choose their leaders. And this is a cyclical once-in-four-years process, sometimes even longer. That process must be respected at all costs. And judicial interpretation must take that into account. Must take into account the fact that this is simply another pillar of our civilization. This is another pillar of our way of government. And it has to be respected, especially in judicial interpretation. But the many failings and some of the failings of our system of administration of justice are themselves sometimes consequences of philosophical, structural, or institutional deficiencies. First, let's take the philosophical. To make judicial decisions and to make sense, just to make a bit of sense, judicial decisions and reasoning must in most cases at least meet the common notions of fairness and justice. The system of justice must recognize the larger principles that it serves. In judicial interpretation, the spirit is sometimes as important as a letter of the law. Otherwise, judicial decisions become technistic applications far removed from the common notions of justice and equity. So for example, the notions of justice that would meet public expectations of fairness and equity are those that promote substance over form. And that is commonplace. Every decision of a court that promotes form over substance will always leave the people bewildered. Because people will be concerned about what should we expect from this. And people are not familiar with form in any event. They're not familiar with procedural rules. The observance of technicality over merit will always alienate the system of justice from the people that is meant to serve. So for example, when the Supreme Court held in Okafo and Uweke that signing processes in the name of a law firm instead of counsel signing was enough to nullify proceedings at whatever stage the proceedings were. And since then, the court has nullified cases that took decades sometimes to get to the appellate courts. On account of this technicality why should an error of counsel over signatures rob a party of all the merits of their case? The frequency of you know, the frequency of these sorts of challenges, you know of course increases once people realize that the courts may be prepared to listen to issues of form over substance and of course it just increases the disastrous consequences of ignoring the merits of a case especially of cases that have been in the process for years. The challenge, of course of this preoccupation with technicality is that you're always going to find that the merit will be buried and then everyone begins to wonder why did we even go to court? As you know, we love such phrases, you know, and cliches jurisdiction is a threshold issue is at the heart of litigation is the lifeblood of litigation and then counsel will cite UAC and McFoy with a glint of victory in his eye and say you can't put something on nothing and I think it was Odita and I used this material here and there today for counsel, Odita SCF was one who argued that that isn't even necessarily correct that you can't put something on nothing there are times when you actually can put something on nothing and he demonstrates it he says okay, so if for example you steal my money of course if you steal my money you don't get title for the money so you can't confer title on yourself by stealing my money but if you as the thief now go to a market and buy beef you transfer title to the vendor because title in currency passes upon delivery so at the end of the day you actually build something on nothing so even that you can't build something on nothing isn't necessarily correct and I think that these sorts of questions and you see that very frequently almost anything can be made a jurisdictional issue because people expect that a jurisdictional issue the slightest fault in the matter that's the end of the case take the case for instance of Zachary and the Nigerian Army Captain Zachary was the chairman of a task force assigned to investigate the illegal use of NITR lines by Yahoo Boys for 419 activities a court martial eventually found him guilty of receiving a bribe of 40,000 Naira from the suspects and releasing employees of the company of this Yahoo company that had been arrested so this court martial convicted him he challenged his conviction on the basis that the court martial had four members and that one of the four members was his junior the relevant section of the Armed Forces Act required a court martial panel to have three members all of whom should be senior to the accused person to be senior or the same rank as the accused person in this case three of the four officers were his senior or the same rank as Zachary the Supreme Court eventually set aside the conviction saying that once a member of the panel was disqualified notwithstanding that the officers constituting the quorum were qualified the entire proceedings would be a nullity the question that the court in my view ought to have asked is whether it was the intention of the lawmaker to nullify the proceedings of the tribunal when there was a quorum plus one or to ensure that a suspect is given fair trial and that no offender is allowed to escape punishment so at the end of the day in observing this technicality the offender escaped justice compare this to the Supreme Court the Court of Appeal in England handling also a mandatory requirement of law in that case the court took the view and this is the case of Sonneji in Rie Sonneji there was a gentleman called Khamnesh Sonneji David Boulin both of them pleaded guilty and were convicted of conspiracy to convert property and move proceeds abroad knowing the same to represent proceeds of criminal activity so the property that they had been trying to launder was confiscated but the law required that the confiscation orders must be made within six months of conviction unfortunately in this case the confiscation order was not made within six months it was actually made 18 months after conviction the convictions were upheld and the question of course before the court was whether this mandatory requirement that the confiscation order also had been made within six months could still hold especially when it was made within 18 months whether the confiscation order should not just simply be discharged Lord Steen said that it was not useful to ask whether the rule prescribing a six month limit was mandatory or directory whether it was mandatory or directory was not relevant instead the true question to ask was whether parliament intended that a failure to comply with a six month threshold should deprive the court of jurisdiction and invalidate all proceedings and orders that were made thereafter so the question for him was was it the intention of the court to focus on the consequence of non-compliance with the prescribed time limit he held that the intention of parliament was not that non-compliance deprive the court of jurisdiction he pointed out that it was in the public interest not to allow a convicted offender to escape confiscation simply because of the errors of judicial process so the court at the end of the day asked the fundamental question that any ordinary person would ask what's the point of this whole proceedings if a person who has been convicted is allowed to go because the order was not issued in time so at the end of the day these sort of technistic approaches simply have to be discouraged otherwise incrementally people lose faith in the way that a system of justice works but how about institutional and structural issues the institutional issues largely involve the institutional capacity judges court registries court staff and court infrastructure including court buildings aside from hard infrastructure there are significant issues of course with capacity and efficiency of court registries but I'll skip all of those details so I can spend just a wee bit of time on appointment of judges I think that with respect to appointment of judges it's quite frankly stunning that the process of evaluation and interview of judges men and women who are statutorily empowered to literally determine the lives and livelihoods of others is one of the least rigorous processes imaginable there are no clear evaluation processes except of course in a few states legal state for example has at least a system of examining before judges are appointed but generally speaking there are no it's just a 10 year old you are qualified after 10 years you can become a judge in the united kingdom where we derive most of the structures of our judicature applicants to judicial office in superior courts go through several screening processes almost 17 different stages including writing examinations interviews role play exercises they are subjected of course to background investigations covering professional credentials public records judicial pronouncements if they had served in a judicial capacity in the past personal financial affairs evaluation by the bar by the bar association on integrity professional competence judicial temperament etc of course in the US in many of the states supreme court appointments in particular anyway involve rigorous public screening by the senate which sifts through the entire public and sometimes private lives of candidates and many of us have seen this even on television the robustness and transparency of processes in these jurisdictions provide comfort to the candidates of the fairness of the selection process and enable the public to have a front row seat in some of these processes also while we ask and this is all this is crucial around the questions of appointment of justice officers is a very important issue but we must also ask the questions of how judicial officers are remunerated because if we ask the best from our judicial officers we must equally ensure that the conditions under which they operate are not only befitting but are good enough to attract the best legal minds to attract all of the best minds in our profession judicial remuneration and welfare are absolutely critical why should a judge earn so much less than a federal legislator a federal legislator probably earns 10 times what a judge earns as it simply doesn't make sense we must strengthen the process of reviewing performance incentivizing excellence and penalizing misconduct the judge is as we know in our system of justice central to how our system of justice works and this is a very important issue because everything that we complain about or a lot of the things that we complain about especially about delays and all of that have to do with the interaction of judges and counsel it is the court not counsel that must determine the pace of cases very frequently counsel try to determine the pace of cases it is the court that exercises disciplinary court preventing or punishing unethical behavior in doing so the cause disciplinary powers especially the powers of contempt must be simplified today the technicality of contempt proceedings have robbed judges of their most potent disciplinary tool for those who have tried contempt proceedings it is an incredibly difficult process and of course even the judge in being able to exercise his powers of contempt they are always subject to all manner of inquiry and it is an incredibly difficult process to compliment the judge in sanctioning unethical practices is the Nigerian bar association and its own disciplinary jurisdiction but this also needs to be reject complaints going before the MBA have now seem to have cut the bug of long delays in trials so you find that even when complaints are made when the judiciary refers cases of unethical behavior to the MBA or when other people refer to the MBA it just takes forever before those cases are decided but that compliment the judge in court or the justice is in court as well as the MBA working together is the only way by which you can effectively ensure that courtroom processes are respected judicial outcomes come out in the right way and at the end of the day people feel that justice has been done the case management function of the judge is also something that must be taught and re-taught certainty or predictability of judicial outcomes is one of the major strengths of the common law that we are able to say with a fair amount of accuracy this is the way a decision will go given the facts, given the state of the law but at the heart of that phenomenon is the doctrine of stare decisis a doctrine that when a court has decided a matter judicial precedent that precedent will be followed by subsequent courts however when you look at some of the unresolved decisions of our courts this would usually of course threaten predictability and it just makes the job of offering legal opinions extremely difficult so if you want to offer legal opinions to your clients and they are conflicting decisions of the courts and you are unable to resolve and those decisions have not been resolved then it just becomes essentially guesswork so it's important that the courts recognize the way that they influence not just the decisions of the courts but the way they influence the entire legal practice even scholarship in Nigerian law enforcement of judicial decisions is also a foundational issue a system of justice is only as good as the effectiveness of his enforcement organs so this is not an issue that we can afford to ignore and this is an issue that rests squarely with the executive judicial decisions and you find that in many cases that has failed in so many different cases ensuring that a decision is made it can be enforced, enforced by the police enforced by law enforcement and that disobedience to court orders is completely avoided so these are issues that we must pay attention to finally is the issue of technology digitization of court processes records and services this is the inevitable new frontier of justice delivery and it will dramatically enhance justice and affect trial timeliness so already as you know there is technology available to be deployed at all stages of civil and criminal proceedings commencement of criminal proceedings of civil proceedings service of processes, hearings everything can be completely digitized today court registries today in various jurisdictions are digitized so that court processes can be filed stored and retrieved electronically with ease parties can file all processes and evidence online and participate in proceedings virtually already I think that there has been a commendable response to the realities of functioning especially during the pandemic the Supreme Court endorsed virtual court proceedings and I think that technology has already permanently transformed the way that we do business and today at least we have clear authority from the Supreme Court itself that virtual proceedings are legal there have been a little murmuring here and there about whether these are public but I think the reality is that at least the Supreme Court as high up as Supreme Court has endorsed the notion that virtual proceedings are constitutional and I think that digitized courtroom processes are destined to change the way that our institutions work and that includes our courts let me say that there is much hope for the positive reform of our system of administration of justice more result orientated work is going on a few weeks ago I attended and I'm sure a few of us here attended a reform effort jointly undertaken by the National Judicial Council the MBA and civil society as well as the federal government I think we can expect some real changes in the near future it was some time in the afternoon of that fateful day that my colleague died on my bedside was a white envelope that he had sent to me two days earlier I was in it he was talking about the follow-up to this contempt case that I had mentioned earlier what we needed to do to ensure that the orders of the court were carried out it was also confusing I remember his funeral as we're standing at the head of the grave with his hands folded like that across his chest and the tears just flowing freely and a few of us who remained to mourn in shock around his grave and everyone just cried and cried years after we all remember him as though we spoke to him yesterday there are some who death somehow just doesn't manage to diminish we must all thank the partners and associates that are looking at everybody for this 20th year memorial of our friend, your partner and professional colleague and we all join Biodoon and the boys in celebrating their great dad today and we'll always celebrate him may his memories and legacies always be blessed thank you