Paul Usoro, president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), has said that judges in the country are afraid to perform their duties as expected due to fear and intimidation from the executive arm of government.
Mr. Usoro said this while delivering an address at the association’s national executive committee (NEC) meeting, which held at the NBA secretariat in Abuja, on Thursday.
He lamented the “intimidation of judges by members of the executive arm and security operatives”, saying that judges now “operate under an oppressive and pervasive climate of fear and insecurity.”
Usoro said, “Our Jjudges are threatened, intimidated and blackmailed mostly by the executive arms of government and their agencies both at the federal and state levels,” he said.
“Our judges cannot deliver justice under a climate of fear and intimidation. Justice thrives where and when there is an independent judiciary. There can be no such independence when there is no security of tenure for our Judges. There can be no independence of the judiciary when our judges are intimidated, threatened and blackmailed by state agencies and their officials.
“There can be no independence of the judiciary when our judges are actively coerced by state officials to think and reason only in the manner that those officials and, presumably, government want them to think.”
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