Senate confirms Musdapher as CJN

THE Senate, on Wednesday, confirmed the appointment of  Justice Dahiru Musdapher as the substantive Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). Musdapher  was recommended by the National Judicial Council (NJC) to replace Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, who retired as Chief Justice of Nigeria on August 28.


Also confirmed was Mr Darius Dickson Ishaku as the minister representing Taraba State.
During the question and answer session, Musdapher  said the “National Judicial Council (NJC) must be repositioned and the laws governing it be reviewed to ensure better judiciary.”
The CJN, who was grilled for more than  one hour, indicted  state governors in the alleged ineffectiveness of the judiciary, urging the lawmakers to intervene  and  rescue the judiciary from  the  wrong perception of  Nigerians.
On the independence of the judiciary, he answered that  “By and large, the judiciary is independent in this country. Probably here and there, you may find some odd things going on, but, by and large, we  would try to do the best that we can. But the problem has to do with our state governments in relation to section 121 (3) of the constitution dealing with the statutory that is given to the state; it is often not transmitted to the heart of the courts in the states.
“Sometimes there are problems in the state of getting their due share of what has been granted them by the state governments. We are talking with government to, please, comply with the constitutional provision and give the judiciary its dues.”
He  admitted that the public is not satisfied with what was going on within the judiciary, noting that the problem could not be divorced from the society in which judges lived.
According to him, “the important thing people talk about  is the electoral matters. People always want to win any case before the panel, because of obvious political reasons but, by and large, the problem is not all that bad. It is the perception of people, who lost elections, but one has to lose and another wins. Unfortunately, in this country, anyone who loses feels there is an influence somewhere but if anyone has any evidence of anything that was done wrongly by any judge, the judicial council will take action on that.”
He, however, refused to say anything on the suspension of Justice  Ayo Salami, saying it was not appropriate for him to offer any explanation or answer anything on a matter that was before the court of law.

Source:  Nigerian Tribune