FORMER Provost Marshal of the Nigerian Army and military lawyer, Brig. Gen.Idada Ikpomnwen has admonished judicial workers and members of the Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) to have a rethink on their plans to ground the judiciary to protest the arrest of judges by the Department of State Service, “so that it will not look like the Bar is pursuing shadows instead of substance.Ikponmwen however called on the Federal Government to address the issue of job assignments for security agencies to avoid duplication of jobs which according to him may lead to rivalry. According to him, “it must be noted that most of the security agencies have the power of arrest, but we expect that they will be making arrest in areas that are in their scale of job. It does appear to me that there is still a lot of fluidity with regards to who has what responsibility within the law enforcement family”.
The renowned military lawyer who was reacting to the arrest of two Supreme Court justices and five other judges, said “even though I agree with the Bar Association that we must operate in line with the dictates of the rule of law, I feel that the war they are embarking upon is not really desirable in the present circumstance. The war they are embarking upon now is on the extreme side and to me, it is like leaving the substance and going for the form. I said this because I do not see any explanation for a judge of any court having N53million in his bedroom. And I also say this because the Bar has been so silent about the misconduct of some judges in the past. So why this cry now, when you find judges having so much money in their homes?
“I think for whatever anomalies that have been noticed, investigations must go on in the interest of having a sanitized and transparent judiciary.
There should be no mistake about it that we have a lot of good judges but the few bad ones should be dealt with like criminals. Government has to start drawing a line between the role of one agency and the other. The Bar must sub-pedal on the decision. Let us not ground the work of the judiciary to a halt, so that it will not look as if the Bar is pursuing shadow instead of substance”.
Gen.Ikpomnwen further stressed the need for the Federal Government to “address strictly the issue of the job assignment of police, DSS and other law enforcement agencies in this country”. He said “as far as I am concerned there is no way the DSS would not investigate people. But what we expect is that they will engage in security related investigations and not crime related investigations. The issue of state security is not exactly the same like investigating crimes.
In the process of investigating security related offences, if the DSS stumbles into crime, like forgery, stealing, it is expected that they will turn it over to the appropriate agencies like the police, ICPC and others. It is also important that this clear cut demarcation must be known to the public so that the society will know those who are supposed to handle what, as a way of promoting the rule of law”.
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