Chidi Odinkalu, a former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), has stated that among the 12 new judges of the FCT High Court, at least seven were family members of serving or living judicial figures and three were family members of persons directly involved in the appointment process.
He said among these, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, who presided over the appointment, had his daughter-in-law made a judge; the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court made his daughter a judge; and the President of the Court of Appeal got her daughter appointed a high court judge for the second time in three years.
”In 2021, Governor Simon Lalong of Plateau State had made the same daughter a judge of the Plateau State High Court,” he added in an article posted on barristerng.com
Responding to the appointments, Access to Justice, a group that monitors judicial independence and accountability in Nigeria stated that “three candidates were ineligible to be considered for such appointments in the first place at the time the vacancies were announced.”
Odinkalu said the statement was about the daughter of the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court; the daughter of the President of the Court of Appeal; and the daughter-in-law of the outgoing Chief Justice of Nigeria.
According to the group, the three appointments were a composite transaction between the CJN, the President of the Court of Appeal and the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court best described “in local parlance as: ‘you scratch my back, I scratch your back.’”
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”To say that these three appointments clearly violate the judicial code of conduct as well as the regulations governing judicial appointments is to be kind to the lack of scruples at the helm of the current judicial appointments process in the country.
”It makes a joke of the judicial appointment process that someone in Nigeria can be appointed a High Court judge while holding a subsisting appointment as a High Court Judge,” Odinkalu added.
