Reps meet Tuesday on probe of CJN, Salami

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Justice handling the probe of the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, and the President of the Appeal Court, Justice Ayo Salami, has said that it will decide on Tuesday (tomorrow) whether to summon both the CJN and PAC or not.

The Committee said it might also summon the National Judicial Council over the latest crisis of confidence in the Judiciary.

The House of Representatives on Thursday resolved to probe the CJN and Salami, who were engaged in a tussle over promotion and charges of influence peddling.

It endorsed a probe of Salami’s allegation that the CJN interfered with his job by attempting on a number of occasions to get the appellant court to deliver judgments capable of obstructing the course of justice.

The Committee on Justice will meet on Tuesday (tomorrow) to decide on the modalities for the probe.

Chairman of the committee, Mr. Henry Dickson, said in Abuja on Sunday that, “The House has given us an assignment and we need to work out the details.

“We are meeting to consider our approach to the issue.

“We cannot afford not to do anything about it, looking at the calibre of persons involved.” It is an assignment being carried out with the aim of protecting the Judiciary as an institution and not to add to the pervading loss of confidence in the system.”

On the NJC, he said that the investigators would be interested in knowing what the body had done about the many cases of exparte motions granted by judges in contravention of their judicial oaths.

He noted that though the House had no powers to penalise such judges or reverse their decisions, it could get the NJC to act because it was answerable to the legislature.

Dickson explained further, “We want to know what NJC has done in respect of judges who granted political exparte motions in contravention of their judicial oath.

“There is no need in most cases for the preservative orders these judges give in the absence of other parties affected.

“Again, we will do so not in a way as to sit on appeal over the judges because we are not a court.

“We have no powers to even question them.

“However, we have powers to ‘oversight’ the NJC, which has powers to discipline judges.

“When the NJC sits, it does so administratively, not as a court, and we have powers to oversight the council.”

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Posted by admin on Feb 21 2011. Filed under Judiciary, Legislature, National Politics, Raw Politics, Senate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry