Ahmad:ThereisNothingWrongwithPleaBargain
Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly and former Chairman, House Committee on Justice, Dr. Ali Ahmad, spoke to Ademola Adeyemo on the benefits of his popular bill on the Administration of Criminal Justice and the leadership crisis in the National A
There have been many complaints about our criminal justice system, but not much has been done. That appears to be changing given your efforts in ensuring that the Administration of Criminal Justice Bill was passed into law. What motivated you to sponsor the bill? It is my constituency; after finishing as a politician I will come back to the practice of law. Apart from that, one will want in the next 20 to 30 years to look back and say: in my four years of legislative activity, what changes was I able to bring about? For years - before I came here I had worked in the criminal justice system, so I just sat down and said look, I have to make my contributions to improve the system.
If this bill had followed the normal process we won’t be where we are today; this bill is a 2013 bill, it got into the National Assembly at the end of January, by the end of April, it had passed second reading to public hearing. We have 2011 bills that have not even gone far; that tells you where we are - and this is not a one page or two, three page bill, this is a bill of 400 pages, 200 sections 42 subjects and it is not a PIB that the industry will be pushing, that has N500 million placed on it. So, we worked very closely with the office of the Attorney-General. The bill you know has been on for years, since 2005. There were some moves and then it died, but this time we said that we don’t want it to die, and it is not even getting it to the second reading and all those readings, I want this bill assented to and that is why we moved at the speed of light. We passed it, we passed it to the Senate and then we passed it to Mr. President. If that is the only thing I achieve
during my sojourn in the House I think I
will be happy..
What are the advantages inherent in the bill? Nobody should be under any illusion that once this bill is passed and signed it changes all the problems that we are having in the criminal justice system. Fundamentally, the problems that it prides itself in solving, a lot of it will rest on the drive by the Executive, especially by the Attorney General - if the AG is not interested in this bill, then forget it, even if it is assented to, it won’t work! The bill having been passed has some logistics problem, some financial, some technology, a lot of things that will make it function. Okay, we propose that the period between one adjournment and the other should be 14 days and that maximum adjournment you can have in a criminal matter is five, so how do we achieve that? All the courts must be equipped with modern technology, we should have enough courts, enough judges, so somebody should work with the statistics - how many cases do we have, how many judges, so all these must be worked out and the AG must be ready to push for it.
But first things first, we need to have the law. Then it is your duty, NBA’s duty, everybody’s duty to say that we have this law and the AG must push it. We know the problem with Nigeria is implementation, but what is everybody doing about it? My dream is to see that after the passage of this law, let the NBA, the judges, the CJN, the legislators, let everybody say look, even if the AG - I don’t mean Bello Adoke, he is very good - whoever the AG is, let us all go as a committee and meet the AG and say this is very important, this is how things are done. Everybody talks about corruption but corruption is still there, it is not about talking. We are all corrupt, including me. I can divide Nigerians into two, it’s either you are corrupt or you condone corruption, there is no number three. If we don’t, we will come back together and say look, this is a national emergency, interested people should come together and raise proper alarm and then it will be resolved. The same thing on this bill; once it is passed, all the people that are interested in the criminal justice administration and reform system - people have been saying it for years, a lot of symposia have taken place - once this thing is signed let everybody stand up and say this law must be implemented.
The official report of the 7th House of Representatives indicated that you sponsored the highest bill in the House, how did you achieve this feat? The foundation for this groundbreaking exercise was laid in May 2013 when I brought to the notice of the House the continued existence of anachronistic laws in our statute books. Then, I particularly drew attention of my colleagues to the fact that the Supreme Court of Nigeria (Afrotec V. MIA) still held that the Sale of Goods Act of England 1893 was still applicable in Nigeria as late as year 2000.
This is so, despite the fact that the 1893 Act has been repealed and re-enacted several times by the British Parliament. Having sought for the repeal and remodeling of the colonial-era Sale of Goods Act, I was urged by the Rt. Honourable Speaker, Hon. Aminu Tambuwal, to work tirelessly and see that all such embarrassing statutes are expunged from our law books. The 10 bills are a product of this exercise. Apart from the National Hospital Bill, the