By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
Officially, everyone in the public sector in Nigeria is poorly paid.
But there is a clamour by mostly lawyers to increase the salaries of the judges alone.
It all sounds very sensible, until you begin to look at the facts and trends.
First, these days in the country, people lobby and bribe heavily to be appointed judges. Why would anyone bribe for a job where the pay is supposedly abysmal? Isn’t that a fair question?
Second, politicians these days want their preferred people to become judges. So, you think the reason they do so is so that the folks they put there will be badly paid?
But, before you make up your mind, hear this:
The Chief Justice of Nigeria last September made his son whose CV is scandalously scanty a judge.
The following month, he made his nephew a Justice of the Court of Appeal, jumping him ahead of more senior and better qualified candidates from his state.
The young daughter of the penultimate President of the Court of Appeal, her CV also plainly risible, also became a judge 2 years ago.
The current President of the Court of Appeal made her daughter a judge in 2021.
The husband of that daughter of the President of the Court of Appeal himself became a Justice of the Court of Appeal last October.
The Chief Judge of Ogun State got her nephew who was, erm…, – very far from the brightest of the bunch – made a judge of the Federal High Court last September.
Two years earlier, the wife of the President of the National Industrial Court of Nigeria, NICN, was appointed a judge in Abuja. By the way, her brother was a member of the National Judicial Council that approved her appointment (as was her husband).
Two daughters of a recently retired Supreme Court Justice were made judges as parting gifts to their mother who retired in 2022. Their mother was the principal mover of the NJC meeting that got them appointed.
The Chief Justice was ailing at the time.
The wife of a recently deceased Supreme Court Justice also was appointed high court judge in her state in SE Nigeria….
I could go on. But please, can someone help me here: why do all these people hate their children, spouses, consorts so much that they want them to do these jobs that offer them punishment pay?!
Welcome to 2024.
