Lawyers and Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade

President Muhammadu Buhari, speaking recently at the opening of the 55th Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), urged Nigerian lawyers not to defend corrupt clients but help expose them.

“Nigeria needs ethical lawyers who always keep the end of justice in mind and will never sacrifice the integrity of the legal system to cover the misdeeds of their clients, no matter how lucrative the brief may be,” the president said.

He spoke passionately about the evil of corruption and the need for lawyers to join the administration’s fight against the scourge. While hailing them for their roles in the defence of human rights in Nigeria, he charged lawyers to also play the same role in the elimination of corruption since, as he argued, corruption too is a gross violation of human rights.

We note and commend the president’s resolve to firmly tackle the vice of corruption and impunity in the system and we understand his desperation to secure the buy-in of critical stakeholders, such as lawyers, in the dispensation of justice. However, we feel the president’s enthusiasm is a bit misplaced, in some sense naïve, and may be against the rule of law itself.

A lawyer’s first responsibility is to his/her client and he/she is bound to represent and defend the interest of the client competently, zealously and within the bounds of the law. Justice also demands that every accused person is entitled to the services of a lawyer. Without this, justice will not have been done or even seen to have been done.

Perhaps what the president really seeks is a relaxation of the burden of proof on the government. This would defeat the ends of justice and would lead, sooner or later, to persecution of innocent citizens. Every accused person is guaranteed the right to vigorously and spiritedly defend him/herself with the aid of a lawyer and the onus lies squarely on the prosecuting authorities to prove that the accused is guilty. That burden cannot be relaxed for any reason whatsoever, if justice must continue to prevail.

We must state that the most effective way to secure conviction of corrupt individuals is through diligent and thorough investigation and prosecution, coupled with the presence of an efficient, reliable and firm court system that is not susceptible to manipulation. Although the president did recognise the need to also fix the judicial system to ensure efficiency and speedy delivery of justice, he was more passionate in appealing to lawyers not to aid corrupt people escape justice.

In climes like the United Kingdom and the United States, governments uphold the rights of every citizen to the services of a professional lawyer and at the same time vigorously prosecute and secure the conviction of those who go against the law. The key, as usual, is the dexterity, hard work, and diligence put into the investigation and prosecution of offenders and the efficient non-corrupt court system in those countries.

However, in Nigeria, shoddy investigation, lazy prosecution and a disorganised and compromised judiciary have combined to make nonsense of the justice system. No wonder then that while someone like James Ibori, the former governor of Delta State, was discharged and acquitted on an almost 160-count charge of corruption and mismanagement of public funds in Nigeria, he pleaded guilty to avoid trial on similar offences in the United Kingdom. But he also had the best of lawyers in the United Kingdom just as he had in Nigeria.

The president must realise that only an efficient and non-corrupt court system coupled with a competent and efficient public prosecution system can guarantee the conviction of corrupt individuals and not needless appeal to lawyers.

So long as the government prefers to put more resources and efforts into media trial and persecution of alleged corrupt persons than on the reform of the justice system and on diligent and painstaking investigation and prosecution of the corrupt, so long will corrupt individuals continue to take advantage of the loopholes in the justice system to frustrate their trial and escape justice. But as the timeless saying goes, it is far better for 100 guilty persons to go free than for a single innocent person to be wrongly convicted.