Election petition cases: ABUAD don advocates exemption of serving judges

• Says judges should earn salary at par with president, governors
• Afe Babalola wants yearly lecture to continue after his demise

The Provost of the College of Law, Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti (ABUAD), Prof. Tunde Yebisi, yesterday, proposed that serving judges should be exempted from election petition matters.

Yebisi said instead of using serving judges, retired judges or respectable lawyers, preferably Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), should henceforth serve as judges of electoral panels to reduce incidences of coercion, intimidation, bribery and corruption, and keep the few officers available in functional service

He also called for the remuneration of judges, including those of inferior courts of records, to be at par with that of the president, governors, and other state actors.

The provost made this known while delivering a public lecture, titled ‘The Judiciary, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’, at the 13th edition of the yearly Afe Babalola Public Bar Lecture, instituted by the Ado-Ekiti branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), in honour of the legal icon, Afe Babalola.

Yebisi suggested that such remuneration should be a continuous charge on the Consolidated Revenue Fund, and disbursed directly from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The don lamented the shortage of judges in the nation’s courts, saying many more should be employed, while the few ones available should be put into effective use, to tackle delays in the administration of justice.

In his remarks, Founder of ABUAD, Aare Afe Babalola, expressed his desire for the lecture series to be sustained, long after his demise. The legal icon expressed regrets that the economy of the country had been battered so much that lawyers, who were known to be comfortable financially, now live below the subsistence level.

He suggested to the NBA committee in charge of the lecture that a minimum of N50 million should be fixed in a bank to yield interest and pay for the yearly event.

To kick-start the fund, Babalola donated N25 million. He also suggested that at each lecture, a minimum of N500,000 should be set aside as a scholarship to the Best Law Student from ABUAD at the Nigerian Law School.