I didn’t want to be a judge – Uwais

Daily Trust: If you have the opportunity to turn back time, would you still be a lawyer or a judge?
Justice Mohammed Uwais: I’m not sure. I like lawyers’ work. When I was first made a judge, I had an ambition to become a judge one day while I was still at the Ministry of Justice. I enjoyed going to court to argue cases. In my own estimation, maybe by the time I was 45 years old, I would become a judge. And in those days judges used to retire at the age of 60. So, I could have been a judge from the age of 45 to 60, meaning I would serve for 15 years then retire.
That was my ambition but I became a High Court judge at the age of 36. So I lost 9 years. I didn’t come to say I want to be a judge. I was invited to become a judge. I resisted it, but they said, ‘Oh, there is a backlog of cases in the North-East. We want you to help.’ When the backlog is cleared, you may go back to Ministry. I started as an acting judge, not full-time. I resisted taking the job but my seniors prevailed on me and after the first six months, instead of returning me back, they took my name to Lagos for substantive appointment.

DT: It is said you practiced some journalism…
Uwais: I was a journalist, too. I joined the Ministry of Information of Northern Nigeria in 1959 as Publicity Assistant. Our job was to issue press releases of government activities and to cover tours of the then minister. If the minister was to go out on tours, you are responsible for giving publicity to all that happened during the tour. I wasn’t a lawyer then. I left secondary school in 1957. In 1958, I worked with the Nigerian Tobacco Company (NTC) in Zaria. Then I left to work in the Ministry of Information.
My interest right from school was to study law. I was looking for scholarship to do that because to study law then, you would have to go to England. In fact, my father died when I was six. I was brought up by my mother and she couldn’t afford sending me to England, so I had to look for government scholarship. While I was with the Ministry of Information, I applied and that was how I succeeded in getting the scholarship to study at the Institute of Administration in Zaria. I resigned after I became a lawyer and I had to be transferred to the Ministry of Justice. 

DT: There is this controversy whether lawyers should investigate the legitimacy of potential clients’ source of income before accepting briefs. What is your take on that?
Uwais: The system is that if you have a case and you want a particular lawyer to appear in court for you, you go to the lawyer and tell him that this is the case. Either you are a plaintiff or you have been sued and the lawyer would go to the court to defend you. The lawyer usually looks at the nature of the case; what is involved, money claimed, how long it would take and then he charges you.
The lawyer doesn’t look at whether you are rich or poor; it is the amount of work he is going to do that determines how much he would ask you to pay. It is not the business of the lawyer to find out the legitimacy of his client’s source of income. It’s not his business how and where you are going to get the money. If I want to buy your paper for instance, would you ask how I got my money before you sell?

DT: When Nasarawa State was newly created, the President of the Customary Court of Appeal wanted to be Chief Judge but you insisted that the most senior judge from the High Court should be the state’s Chief Judge. What was your reason?
Uwais: The two courts are different. You have the High Court and the Customary Court of Appeal. When it comes to volume of work in terms of jurisdiction, the jurisdiction of the High Court is heavier than that of the Customary Court of Appeal. The Customary Court of Appeal is concerned with marriage, chieftaincy, things that are akin to customs. Whereas the High Court has jurisdiction that covers almost everything except that which is allocated to the Customary Court Appeal and the Sharia Court of Appeal.
 Then the Chief Judge is the Chairman of the Judicial Service Commission of the state. Of course the President of the Customary Court is a member and the Grand Khadi is also a member of the state Judicial Service Commission. The two courts are separate but it is very clear that the leadership is with the High Court.
 The reason why persons in the Customary Court of Appeal want to be Chief Judge is because when they leave the High Court to head Customary Court of Appeal, they see themselves as equal to the Chief Judge. But if they should go back to the High Court, they won’t be at the level of the Chief Judge, they would be lower. If you want to determine the seniority of two judges, it does not arise. You determine the seniority in the hierarchy of courts and the High Court is clearly higher.
So, in the Nasarawa case, it is on that basis I took the view that the Chief Judge was to come from amongst judges of the High Court; not for the President of the Customary Court to just cross over and become the Chief Judge. That was the policy and that is still my view.

DT: In the past, Chief Judges were appointed directly to the Supreme Court…
Uwais: I stopped the practice when I was Chief Justice. Chief Judges were appointed to the Supreme Court in the past because there was no Court of Appeal. All judges of the Supreme Court at that time were Chief Judges of states. But when the Court of Appeal was created we had Chief Judges going to the Court of Appeal as Justices of the Court of Appeal. Now, how can you ignore any Chief Judge that is in the Court of Appeal and prefer somebody in the High Court?
That is the post the judge at the Appeal Court abandoned to come to the Court of Appeal, then you take someone from that level and elevate him above a former Chief Judge who is a member of the Court of Appeal? It doesn’t make sense. I think it goes against the grain. And again, even the law creating the Court of Appeal says the justice of the Court of Appeal should have precedence over the Chief Judge of a state. You can see that judgments by the President of the Court of Appeal come before justices of the Supreme Court and they can overrule him. Same way the judgments by the Chief Judge of a State High Court would come to the Court of Appeal and the justices of the Appeal Court can overrule him. But I understand that has been changed now. I say this with authority because I received a letter asking for my view on some candidates who want to be appointed to the Supreme Court.
Chief Judges can now come to the Supreme Court. Senior Advocates of Nigeria can now come to the Supreme Court. But I still maintain my view.

DT: Previously, Chief Judges of states were also addressed as Chief Justices. At what point did the terminology change?
Uwais: General Obasanjo, as a military Head of State in 1976, changed that. It was then decided that when you say Chief Justice it was confusing and that there should be just one Chief Justice of Nigeria, and others should be called Chief Judges.

DT: What is your opinion on some of the conflicting judgments that emanated from the Court of Appeal in the wake of the election petition appeals from the 2015 general elections?
Uwais: The conflicting judgments came about because the Court of Appeal created more divisions. When the court was created in 1976, there were only five divisions: Lagos, Kaduna, Enugu, Ibadan and Benin. The system then was that when you deliver judgment, you make photocopies and send to those divisions so that the judges there would know what position you have taken on a given issue. It was much easier but then the Court of Appeal decided to increase the number of the divisions. I think today they are up to 15 divisions or more.
You can imagine the workload of a judge, and then he has to read the judgments from 15 or 16 other divisions. Even then with five divisions, it wasn’t quite working. The divisions were not even able to produce all the judgments they had delivered to circulate. And if it is to make it available at the headquarters, it was not easy.

DT: What, then, is the solution?
Uwais: If you are talking of solution to conflicting judgments, then one of the solutions is to go back to what it used to be. Reduce the number of divisions.

DT: What about the suggestion that the Appeal Court website should be made more active?
Uwais: What time does a judge have to read judgments online? Even if it is the hard copy of a judgment that you have, you must have time to read it and digest it to know what the reason or argument is. Maybe it is better if it is on the computer. You can save it and read it when you are free. I don’t envy the judges. It is not an easy job. You sit in court, you write judgments then you have to read judgments delivered all over. It is not easy. Because of the likelihood of pressure, that aspect might be ignored.
In the Supreme Court, we have a system of sitting in panels. What I used to do is to divide the year into three terms: from September, up to December was one term. Then we have another term from December to Easter time. The third term used to be from Easter to July when we go on vacation.
I used to constitute the panel. Panel A would remain together during the first term and there would be Panel B and Panel C. When we get to the second term, I would switch the membership. The reason was that if you delivered judgment in the first term, when it comes to the second term and a similar case comes up, and you think your reasoning will be different, then somebody would have known what happened previously and he would warn the others.
If they were going to give a conflicting judgment, they would have had a way around it. And if they give the conflicting judgment, what used to happen is that the court would be asked in another case to depart from its previous decisions, and when that happens it means there are two cases that may involve conflicting decisions. So, whoever is presiding in Panel A would alert the Chief Justice, and then the Chief Justice can call a meeting of all the justices to discuss that issue before the second conflict comes.
Now, the panel that is sitting need not agree with the whole house, but the house would have indicated what is the view of the majority on that issue; whether they agree if the previous decision is right or wrong, and that would guide the panel that is sitting. But all the justices would have had the idea that on this issue there is likelihood of conflicting judgments. So, it is easy for the Supreme Court because we are all together, but at the Court of Appeal where the justices are scattered, it’s not easy.