Professor Itse Sagay, Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption has lambasted Nigerian lawyers who received proceeds of corruption as legal fees.

The Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) has therefore called on the Nigerian Police and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to investigate corrupt lawyers for appropriate sanctions. He said this during the 2017 annual Law Week of the Edo State branch of the Nigerian Bar Association in Benin recently.

“The worst culprits in this sad and sorry state of affairs are lawyers, mainly senior advocates, who shamelessly approach judges and introduce them to this demeaning and shameful culture. These senior advocates deserve the harshest punishment of all. The EFCC and the police must monitor and investigate the activities of lawyers who receive a share of the proceeds of crime as their fees.”

“They should be treated as accomplices after the fact because they share in the proceeds of the crime of politically exposed persons and once paid from that strained loot, it becomes their lives’ struggle to protect and shield the primary criminals from the consequences of their crime.”

“No one ever expected judges to throw caution, rectitude, honour, justice and the credibility of the judiciary to the winds by selling judgments. This is the destructive culture brought about by election petitions which has spread like an epidemic through our formerly hallowed judicial system.”

“The disciplinary procedures of the NJC were not set up for such a crime. That is why, tragically, we are now experiencing judges being tried in courts like common criminals. That is why the anti-corruption and security agencies have taken it upon themselves to continue from where the NJC’s authority ends.”

“In order to restore the authority, power and dignity of the judiciary, we must go through this extraordinarily painful process of punishing those who have brought shame to that sacred institution.”