Judge decries prevailing impunity, task NJC on erring arbiters

A JUDGE of the Court of Appeal, Justice Olubunmi Oyewole has decried the high rate of impunity in the country and advised the National Judicial Council (NJC) to prosecute  judges found to be corrupt  before their eventual retirement.

Oyewole also insisted that lawyers across the country participate in the vice by encouraging impunity in the administration of justice through filing of frivolous applications in courts.

He gave the advise while delivering a lecture tittled: ‘The role of the bar in exterminating the termite of impunity from Nigeria,’ at the Alao Aka-Bashorun annual memorial lecture, as part of activities marking the 2015  law week of the Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA).

According to him, impunity is a pattern of behavior that challenges the very fabric of any organised society, done out of a consciousness that the particular society lacks the institutions or is too weak to prevent or punish deviance. He said it is conduct without (fear of) consequence or repercussion; crime without (fear of) punishment.

A Benue State division of the Court of Appeal judge lamented that electoral offenders goes freely without being punished.

He said: “We have just gone through a nerve wrecking electoral process which questioned the very essence of our being as a nation.

“Today, many of our courts are engaged in the unending rituals of election petition adjudication, leading to a development of needless and unhelpful jurisprudence, all because our electoral process is far from being transparent.

“A little scratch will reveal the presence of impunity.
Year in year out, perpetrators of electoral offences go unpunished. In many instances they are never apprehended and where apprehended they are processed through the justice system and freed once the tendency they worked for, gains political power.”