Sanusi to judges: Clean up your reputation… you’re pushed left and right

Muhammadu Sanusi II, Emir of Kano, has expressed his sympathies to Nigerian judges for having to work in a “dysfunctional society”.

Speaking on Saturday during an event organised by the Movement for Islamic Culture and Awareness (MICA), a non-profit Islamic faith-based organisation, Sanusi said working in such an environment is not an easy task.

Speaking on the theme, ‘Ethics, Morality, and the Law’, Sanusi said the negative remarks being passed about Nigerian judges are perpetuated by just a few of them.

He, however, appealed to the legal experts to work towards bringing the number of bad judges to zero.

“Let me start by saying that for all the judges in this room, please accept my sympathies. Being a judge in a dysfunctional Society is not an easy task,” Sanusi said.

“You are pushed left, right and center; there’s so many expectations from politicians, from the people, and frankly in every profession, just like in a large family of many good children, all you need is just one or two bad children and the entire family’s reputation is destroyed.

“And I think a bunch of what we hear about the judiciary is something that is about a very tiny minority of judges. I  have so many judges in person and I must say that I have not personally met a bad judge.

“But the reality is that my lord, you have a big task because at the end of the day, you all have the fight to clean up the reputation… we have to make sure that we bring down the number of bad judges to zero”

Sanusi also expressed reservations about some court judgements that are not upheld owing to technicalities.

He further said it is of utmost importance that “we begin to fight for the independence of not just the judiciary but of law enforcement agencies”.

“…but I think we all agree that there have been judgements that have been made that just fly in the face of commonness, fly in the face of justice and many of these judgements that we hear about happened because the judges decided that even though this is substantive justice, they are not going to go with it because of some technicality,” he said.

The monarch said he chose to attend the event as an emir and not as a delegate because he has “a new year resolution of not being controversial”.