Human Rights Advocate and one of Nigeria’s most prominent constitutional lawyers, Femi Falana, who recently rose to the respected legal rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), has vowed that his new status in the Nigerian legal system will be deployed towards his personal contribution to the collective struggle for the liberation of Nigeria from the hands of the incompetent rulers who taken her hostage.
Responding to a question by journalists as to whether the Nigerian legal system is not at the heart of the rot and overt indiscipline, aiding and abetting criminals instead of exposing them and bringing them to book, he described the judiciary as a manifestation of the failed State that Nigeria is.”
“The judiciary does not operate in a vacuum; it is only responding to the system that has virtually collapsed,” he said.
He described Nigeria as a neo-colonial capitalist economy that places the interest of capitalists above those of the public. “The legal system is a manifestation of the socio-economic system that we operate,” he explained. “We run a neo-colonial capitalist economy, which now is totally based on market fundamentalism. The State is being made to withdraw completely from the affairs of our country”.
He underlined that under a laissez faire economic system, anything goes, and that the public interest must give way to private interest. “In the rat race for money making, ethics, national values, national moralities are all sacrificed for profitability,” he said.
Mr. Falana expressed his displeasure over the fact that Nigeria, despite being the sixth oil-producing nation in OPEC, is listed as the only oil producing Nation that imports oil, alongside the least valued items in any market, such as toothpicks. “This shows you that the country is managed by incompetent, myopic and completely parasitic people, who have no commitment to the development of the country.”
He, however, expressed confidence in the ability of the people to effect the desperately-needed change in the country, recalling last January’s subsidy removal nationwide protests.
Asked by Journalists why UK lawyers avoided Ibori, with only one of them ending up in jail along with the former governor, and why such discipline is absent in Nigeria, where lawyers fall upon one another and connive with judges to free hardened criminals, Falana said things were changing. In that regard, he pointed to the springing up of a group of lawyers who are forming an organization called “The Rule of Law Group’, which will challenge corrupt practices of other legal practitioners that conspire and connive to compromise the sanctity of the Nigerian legal system.
Mr. Falana cited instances where senior lawyers obtain interim or perpetual restraining orders from the courts to stop the anti-graft agencies and the police from investigating indicted persons, stressing that that is not part of Nigerian law, and would be fought by the group.
He said the group would also combat the delay tactics being employed by corrupt lawyers to frustrate prosecuting teams and subsequently cause cases to wear out in court.
Turning to the ongoing trial of the oil subsidy fraud suspects, he expressed the view that it will be successful, unlike other cases in the past that fizzled out, but he called on Nigerians to be vigilant, just a they were in January during the protests.
According to him, “Nigerians must [stay] involved. We must not leave the trial in the hands of the Government alone. Citizens must remain vigilant like they did in January to see this to a logical conclusion.”
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