Sunday,
November 11, 2018 11.56AM / By Henry Ojelu of Vanguard
"Be
careful what you accept; a common hell on earth is mistaking your wounds for
your identity." - Anon
Dr. Olisa
Agbakoba, SAN, is a very passionate man. In his quest to fulfil his dream for a
better Nigeria, he has moved from civil rights activism to the murky terrain of
politics. At 65, he is not happy that Nigeria remains underdeveloped. In this
interview with Vanguard, Agbakoba shares his thoughts and frustrations,
hear him: - ‘Nigeria does not exist except on paper. And what we do
every day in court is a charade’
The
Interview:
Q: You are one of the few lawyers the people still see
as a voice of conscience for this country. How has the experience been?
A: The
experience has been very fulfilling. I have been doing this for 40 years. The
later part, that is, the last 10 years, has been downward spiral because the
Nigerian state has disintegrated. Nigeria doesn’t exist except on paper.
All the
institutions have collapsed; so the fulfillment that came in the early years of
law practice is no longer there.
You go to
court, the judge is not there. You go to court, the judge is there but he
doesn’t understand the law. You go to court, the judge is there but he is
distracted. You go there, the judge is there but he has over 60 cases and just
can’t cope. You go there, there is no electricity and so we all find ourselves
in the heat wearing our fake white hair that has been abolished in the UK. So
the little bit I regret is the failure of the legal and judicial institutions.
So many lawyers are frustrated about what is going on.
Q: Of all the issues in this country, which one worries
you most?
A: Very simple
issue… I am so unfortunate to be a product of a country of grossly
incompetent leaders. Leadership is easy. We can resolve our issues if we
have good leaders. It worries me that we have natural, human and financial
talents but no one is interested. Unfortunately the wrong people keep
going in (as leaders).
Q: As a lawyer who has been in the struggle for a better
Nigeria for years, do you see a future for this country?
A: I don’t see
any future for this country. Where is it coming from? I don’t see any future
here.
Q: Even as a parent, you don’t see a future for your
children in this country?
A: I have children but that is a shocker. If you have
been around as long as I have been, you will appreciate what I am saying. When
I came here, Apapa was the golden district of Lagos. It was so clean and well organized.
Look around and you can see that everything is deteriorating. I live in Ikoyi.
The Ikoyi of 1980s when my kids learnt how to ride bicycle on the streets is
longer the Ikoyi of today. Let’s be honest, I am not the kind of person to be
engaged in argument on patriotism.
On the
current form, all the systems have broken down and I am unable to see a future.
Look at my friend Charlie Boy for instance. He was saying the other day that he
couldn’t understand why when he calls for protest, the youths he is speaking
for don’t come out. But they are on social media abusing each other. Where are
the youths? They are not employed, they are in misery. Life is not good for
them. When we organize to assist them, when we look back, we don’t see anybody.
Q: So where does the disconnect lie?
A: The disconnect lies with the fact that the youth
themselves are trapped in poverty. They are trapped in unemployment, so there
is no way they can see. Idealism requires a certain sense of purpose but if the
youths we speak of are busy drinking and smoking, then, of course, they can’t
be useful.
And that is
exactly what the politicians are capitalizing on. As the leader of the Third
Force Movement and the political process, I was initially convinced that change
will be seen in 2019 as a result of the new small parties which are very strong
on the social media. Like the ones headed by Durotoye and Sowore. But they
can’t even talk to themselves.
They tried
and they failed. I hope that people would understand that voting for Buhari
would eclipse Nigeria. You judge a man by the four years he has ruled. Atiku
has not been tried. A lot of things have been said about him, but I would
rather vote for him than for Buhari although my first preference is to go for
this basket of Third Force political parties and, hopefully, we can get the
house in order.
Q: You paint a picture of hopelessness for this country.
Why?
A: I am happy to shock you. God did not say he will fix
Nigeria. We have the freewill to fix our country. We are not allowing our God
the opportunity to help us to fix things. Nigeria is one of the world’s most
religious countries but we are spiritually bankrupt. Which governor does not
invoke God or Allah? They all do it but they are all thieves. Let them first
declare that their security votes will no longer be used. We will be looking at
trillions of Naira. I don’t know where you have been but the reality is that
Nigeria is in such a bad state. In the index of failed states, Nigeria is at a
position described as low grade civil war. Most of the states are unsafe.
The police are helpless, the institutions are in a bad state. Despite all
these, in Abuja, the politicians are enjoying.
Q: Don’t you consider yourself a failure for not being
able to produce young ones that will take over from your generation?
A: I can take
you to the stream but I can’t force you to drink water. I have my boys
scattered all over the place, the Nigerian Bar Association, civil society and
all over. But that is not the point. Where are the followers in spite of the
training? They are not there. They are interested in Yahoo, 419, social media.
The social media now is an evil tool. Take (Oby) Obi Ezekwesili’s Bring Back
Our Girls (BBOG) campaign for example, has she ever recorded 500 people?
Q: Some people have suggested that revolution appears to
be the only solution in this country. Do you support that idea? If you do, what
type should it be?
A: It should be
a bloody revolution. It cannot happen by magic. Don’t you see that there is
enough anger in the system? I have written; I have spoken, I have
been on social media; what else am I supposed to do? March on the road myself.
I can’t do that. If there is a movement and they say ‘help us address the
movement’, I will say yes. But the youths are not interested. They are only
interested in listening to their fake music and jumping around.
We should
deal with the 2019 election by asking Mr Buhari why he wants to come back. We
should ask Atiku Abubakar, ‘You want to be President, what do you have to
offer?’ If all the new parties give us one candidate, that person is likely to
win because the youths have about 20 million votes. They have the votes but
they are not using it.
Q: With the picture of a troubled country you have
created, how do you sleep every night knowing the problems are still there?
A: I just tell
myself I have to manage. It is an issue that have been engaged with in the last
40 years. I think about it every day. At a point I was happy that
what we did had a result. Incidentally under the military, it was easy to confront
them because the line was clear. But now we have politicians who are the worst
thing that has ever happened to this country. To be honest with you, if you go
to Nigerians and say ‘what is your problem?’ They will say the usual thing:
Hunger, no job, etc. But if you tell them, ‘let us remove the word, democracy,
and bring back the military’.
You would be
very surprised that Nigerians will ask for the China model of government. Do
you think China is practicing democracy? I sometimes ask myself this question.
Is democracy really the answer? General Gowon is 84 years old now. If he were
to drive round Lagos, he will ask himself, ‘what is new?’ He was in power 45
years ago. Lagos is essentially what Gowon did. The structure of Lagos
has not altered. We have not seen new massive residential buildings, factories,
employment, energy, etc. Where is the 40 years of post Gowon government?
In the pocket of politicians! How can you have one man called Bola
Tinubu remaining in power since 1999? He is my very good friend, but I
criticize him. This is a city of 25 million people, how can you have one man
running Lagos?
Q: You sound as if you prefer the military government.
Are you calling for a military takeover?
A: It is called
déjà vu. The military will be laughing at us now. All the generals would be
saying now, ‘They (Nigerians) thought that everything will be alright when they
drove us back into the barrack’. The truth is that civilians are more corrupt
that the military. If you know the level of corruption in this country, you
will not eat. The challenge is, how do we respond? Sincerely I don’t have the
answer. I have tried all.
Q: How do you compare law practice and the quality of
lawyers we have now to back then when you started?
A: We are
dealing with legal failure. If a man has heart failure, what happens
next? Death of course! The Nigeria legal system is dead. It does
not exist. What we do every day in court is a charade. We just play out a
charade. We put on our wigs and go to court, nothing is happening in our legal
system. Some people have also blamed lawyers for being part of the problem.
Politicians steal money and lawyers defend them in court. As a lawyer, what
determines the type of case(s) you take?
As a lawyer,
when we were in law school, we were trained about the law. In the university,
you are trained about the theory of law. So in law school, an answer was given
to this question you asked. It is called the Cab Rank Rule. So if you get to the
taxi park, if you go to the first taxi, he is bound to carry you. He cannot say
no, even if he discovers that you are going on a five naira
journey. So in law practice, we have adapted the English procedure
called Cab Rank Rule. You must take all the clients that come to you. You are
bound to play by the rules. The job of a lawyer is not to lie in court on
behalf of his client.
The job of a
lawyer is to present his client’s case. Unfortunately, Nigerian lawyers have
deviated… Years back, I defended a guy on death row, he had been sentenced to
death but it was clear to me that the circumstance causing the death was purely
accidental. His friend had just been promoted in his office and there was
drinking and, while they were arguing, he casually threw a fork and it hit his
friend on a soft part of his brain and he just died. So clearly, he didn’t
intend it. I didn’t see him as a murderer; so I took up the case.
Today
someone will ask, would I defend a politician who has stolen money? The
answer is yes. A lawyer who defends a politician who has stolen money should
not go to court to say this man has not stolen money when it is obvious that he
has. But the man is entitled under the law to a day in court. It is the
lawyer’s duty to present his client’s case. Unfortunately, lawyers have now
gotten a bad name because we are roped into the crime. They say we are the ones
causing delays.
Generally, I
try not to take corruption cases. I don’t think I have done any corruption case
which is not to say that if someone came to me, I will say no. I am bound to as
a lawyer. Let us take (former Governor) Ayodele Fayose for instance. If he had
contacted me, I might defend him. But I am not going to tell the court whether
he is complicit or not. That is not my job. My job is to advise him on how he
should conduct himself in court. If the evidence is so overwhelming, there is
nothing I can do. Unfortunately, lawyers have gotten enmeshed that they are
seen as not offering legal service. They are seen as accomplices.
Q: The traffic situation has practically sent every
company out of Apapa. Why are you still here?
A: The
situation in Apapa is horrible but I am not going to be defeated by running
away. The situation here can’t break my spirit. I have other means. I have a bigger
office in Ikoyi. I come here by boat sometimes. But to say that as a result of
the ineptitude of government, I hereby close down my office, no, I won’t do
that. We are surviving.
Q: How did Apapa get this bad?
A: Bad
government! It is a result of a government that is not thinking. When the
colonial powers were here, they were here because we had natural resources.
Apapa was essentially an export port. Since 1960, we have expanded our import
trade. Even the colonial masters can’t believe the level of traffic coming to
Apapa.
It got so
bad that a task force was set up to decongest Apapa of cement. That was the
time a right thinking would have said ‘no, this cannot happen. We have to do
things differently’. If you study the movement of cargo, you will
find that a lot of them end up in the (South) East. Seven out of 10 containers
end up in the East. The reason Apapa is congested in not because of the bad
road, it is overwhelmed. We need feeder ports. The feeder routes by train to
the port are no longer there, so the only way anything can be evacuated is by
trucks. It is not about repairing the roads, there is large logistic issue. We
need to unbundle Apapa. We need to apply what I call the multimodal facet logistic
approach where the train and tank farm and the port are connected.
If you go to
Dubai, as small as it is, it feeds 4.2 billion people in a bloc called the
Middle-East North African bloc. You won’t find traffic there. Everything is so
well distributed. It tells you the type of leadership we have. Every day we
have a new transport minister. They talk but do nothing. That is the
helplessness we find ourselves in.
Q: The Vice-President visited Apapa recently announced a
long and short plan to tackle the problem there. How do you assess the measures
so far put in place?
A: I was
actually lucky to have been seated close to Jumoke who is his Senior Special
Adviser on Economic Affairs. I told her that this problem can be resolved in a
holistic approach which I just described to you. I said, ‘Let us first start
with the low hanging fruits-the ones you can pluck. Fix the road within six
weeks and create a very strict order of truck movement’.
There are
two problems. The main problem is the policy one. The second one is the logistic
one. Misbehaviour! I feel sorry for those truck drivers. Some of
them stay one month on the road inside their trucks. So if you have the Vice
President flying to Apapa to see things for himself, what he should have done
is to constitute a strong task force that would insist that if you come without
being called, your truck will be seized. If you do that for seven days,
everybody will fall in line.
So,
sometimes, the rules will be enforced; at other times those charged with the
enforcement will relax. There was a particular naval officer that was in charge
at a time. He was a no-nonsense man. While he was there, Apapa moved freely.
Immediate he left, the chaos returned. The third part (derivative) is
sitting on the road all in the name of constructing it. This is something they
should have done in six weeks. The guys doing the construction are working at
their own pace. Nobody is supervising them.
You remember
when Abuja International Airport was closed and everyone had to go through
Kaduna. Because the big men were directly affected, Julius Berger finished and
delivered it in six weeks. Apapa can be done in six weeks. It is just laying of
concrete. The slab are all there but the workers are doing nothing. I blame the
incompetent President Buhari government for what is happening in Apapa.
Q: Talking about President Buhari’s government, how do
you assess his four years in office?
A: This
government is totally bad. I am not in government but I can take them at their
face value. They promised us three things: Strong war on corruption, strong
economy and national security. Which one have they done well? None? With all
the loans they have taken for security, Boko Haram is still waxing strong. They
are still kidnapping and killing.
The national
security architecture is obsolete, laughable and a disgrace. I concede that
Boko Haram is sort of quiet now, but it is still there. It has gone down in a
more dangerous way. I rather fight with an enemy I can see than a guerrilla I
cannot see. Boko Haram has entered into the system. I am not going to give them
pass mark on security. Corruption is zero. I thought an anti-corruption
programme would mean that they would conduct it in a clear way. After you build
a strategy, there is supposed to be an institution that can deliver it. But you
can see that the Attorney-General and the EFCC are not in good terms.
Q: The President recently issued a travel ban on persons
being investigated for corruption. Was that right?
A: I think the ban was unnecessary. Most of the people
on that list are already in court. Some don’t even have passports. So why ban
them when their passports are already with the court. What government needs to
do is to strengthen the institutions responsible for ensuring their conviction.
Q: Some state judiciaries recently announced a new civil
procedure rule. You were at the venue of the review for that of Lagos State.
What is your assessment of the new rule?
A: I applaud
the Lagos State Judiciary for being proactive. I have actually been
instrumental to some of the reforms in the state judiciary. The state has done
largely well in terms of reforms and innovations. Having said that, let me say
that no Nigerian Chief Judge has any understanding of how to run a modern
court. Not a single one. Court administration has gone so far.
Administration of justice is different from administration of court.
The
substantial cause of delay is on the way the courts are run. It is archaic.
Everything is still paper form. If the courts are open 24/7, it changes
everything. So in my room after I have filed my claim form for my client, I
file it online. I just pay. I can’t file a claim now at 4 pm because the courts
would have closed. Court does not close. When the court is open, there
will be more work done. Again the courts need to be supported with artificial
intelligence. Judges now need to understand that they are case managers. They
have the power to control the court. But they are still timid and then pass the
blame on lawyers. When a lawyer sees that a judge is firm, he will sit up. Am I
a judge? Can I give myself adjournment? If a lawyer insists on an adjournment
and the judge also insists that if he wants adjournment, he must pay N100, 000,
the lawyer will sit up.
The attitude
again is not in who is leading but in our judicial culture. In arbitration,
there are no rules. But there is nobody who is going to arbitration to ask for
adjournment. That is because we all have arbitration sense that it must be
flexible. What particularly the Lagos State Judiciary is doing is good but I
will like the judge’s mindset to change. Why must a judge spend six hours
reading a judgement when he can just mail it to parties? There is no rule or
law anywhere that says that judge must read their judgments.
Q: You portray an image of someone who is always
articulate. Can you recall any embarrassing moment in your career? There has
never been a time when I had an embarrassing moment.
A: I told
myself very early in life that law requires hard work and the only way you can
impress your client is to be well prepared. I have never for once been caught
off guard.
Q: What would like to be remembered for?
A: That I have
done my bit. (end)
Source
Credit:
Atiku
has not been tried but voting for Buhari again would eclipse Nigeria – Olisa
Agbakoba
About
Olisa Agbakoba
Dr Olisa
Agbakoba is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (equivalent of Queen’s Counsel) and a
life bencher of the Body of Benchers.
He is one of
Nigeria’s leading experts in Maritime Law and has litigated several complex
maritime cases. He has championed legal reforms in maritime law including the
Cabotage Act, the National Oceanic Policy and other strategic legislations. He
played a major role in the reform of both State and Federal High Court Rules
for speedy dispensation of justice. He is the founding President of the
Nigerian Chamber of Shipping, a member of the National Assembly Business
Environment Roundtable (NASSBER) and Vice Chairman Presidential Committee on
the review of the maritime sector.
Dr. Agbakoba
is also a leading arbitrator, an initiator and pioneer of Law Firm Annexed
Arbitration/ Mediation Centre in Lagos (Nigeria), the Olisa
Agbakoba Legal (OAL) Arbitration & Mediation Centre. He designed the
ADR mechanism and rules for Asset Management and Recovery of Nigeria (AMCON).
He has been involved as counsel and arbitrator in various national and cross
border multi-million dollars disputes.
He is a
Development law expert and has advocated the application of Law in development
planning and economic growth. He has consulted and provided advisory services
to the federal and state governments, as well as government ministries,
departments and multilateral agencies on legal reforms and legislative
advocacy. He has served in various appointive governmental positions and a
member of the Nigerian Economic Summit.
Dr. Agbakoba
is a leading Human Rights activist, a democracy and Rule of Law scholar. He became
the President of the Nigerian Bar Association (2006-2008) and in 1987; founded
the Civil Liberties Organization (CLO) of which he was the president from 1987
to 1995.
He has
authored numerous books such as the National Oceanic Policy, Development Law
Policy, Federal High Court Practice Manual, Maritime Newsletter Volume I &
II among many others.
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