The retired judge who is chief judge of Imo State?, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

The judicial profession of Francis Chukwuma Abosi was speculated to final solely seven years. Within the occasion, he did 12 and will effectively have reached 20 years if occasions had not intervened. In his twelfth yr as a choose in April 2020, whereas serving because the Appearing President of the Customary Courtroom of Enchantment of Imo State in South-East Nigeria, the Nationwide Judicial Council (NJC) mercifully ended all of it.

When he attended the Nigerian Regulation Faculty, as all Nigerian legal professionals should, Francis Abosi deposed that he was born in November 1950. On his appointment as a choose in 2008, subsequently, Francis Abosi was 58. On the time, the retirement age of all judges was 65. This meant he would have been on account of retire in 2015.

In 2008 additionally, a choose may solely retire on their terminal wage as pension if they’d served for at the very least 15 years. Within the case of Francis Abosi, he effectively knew that primarily based on his date of beginning, he was eight years in need of what he wanted to be eligible to retire on his terminal wage as his judicial pension.

The reply to this drawback was quite simple – Francis Abosi edited his beginning yr from 1950 to 1958. This act added eight years to the seven that he would have served, bringing his notional judicial tenure to fifteen years, at which level he would have been entitled to his terminal wage as his judicial pension.

What Francis Abosi couldn’t do, nevertheless, was alter the filings he had achieved previous to turning into a choose, particularly these he made upon matriculation as an undergraduate and likewise on admission to the Nigerian Regulation Faculty. Upon being appointed to behave because the President of the Customary Courtroom of Enchantment, they caught up with him. In April 2020, the NJC discovered him responsible of  “the falsification of his date of beginning from 1950 to 1958. Findings confirmed that he was speculated to have retired in November 2015 when he clocked the obligatory retirement age of Sixty-five (65) years.”

Francis Abosi’s feat of genealogical administration had far reaching penalties. He turned President of the Customary Courtroom of Enchantment of Imo State almost three years after he ought to have retired. Which means he took another person’s job unlawfully. It may have been worse. Had the NJC not stopped him, Francis Abosi would have been in place in 2023 when the age of retirement modified from 65 to 70, which means that he would have been on the job till 2028 when biologically he would have been 78. That may have given him 15 years of judicial service past his due retirement age.

Francis Abosi was not alone within the enterprise of injudicious emendation. One in all his friends within the 2008 cohort of appointments to the judiciary in Imo State was Theresa Eberechukwu Chikeka. A graduate of the College of Maiduguri, Theresa Chikeka turned a lawyer in 1982 and did her Nationwide Youth Service Corps on the Borno State Ministry of Justice, who employed her thereafter as State Counsel. There she labored for the primary ten years of her skilled profession earlier than transferring her service to Imo State in 1993.

Up so far, Theresa Chikeka’s information point out that she was born on 27 October, 1956. With this date of beginning, she would have attained retirement at 65 in 2021, two years in need of the 15 years of service which might have entitled her to retire on her terminal judicial wage. Borrowing a leaf from Francis Abosi’s e-book of elastic family tree, it appears, Theresa Chikeka additionally tailored her age someday in 2006, altering her beginning yr from 1956 to 1958 and making her eligible to retire in October 2023 as an alternative of 2021.

Certainly, based on information within the possession of the Imo State Judicial Service Fee, which has regarded into the difficulty, the affidavit deposed to Theresa Chikeka’s mom in assist of her new beginning yr claimed that she was born in 1958, with out offering the day or month on which she was extruded from the womb.

On 28 June 2022, the Imo State Home of Meeting (IMSHA) confirmed Theresa Chikeka as chief choose. This was greater than eight months after she ought to have retired as a choose. In different phrases, the Home of Meeting confirmed as chief choose an individual who was – as a matter of regulation – not a choose on the date that they did so.

In 2023, when the age of retirement of judges of the excessive court docket was elevated to 70 from 65, Theresa Chikeka obtained one other 5 years of judicial life as chief choose when, actually, she ought to have been in retirement two years earlier in 2021.

These info usually are not significantly in dispute.

On 14 June 2024, one Comrade Ndubuisi Onyemaechi, on behalf of a gaggle referred to as the Civil Society Engagement Platform (CSEP), filed a petition with the Imo State Home of Meeting in Owerri alleging that the Chief Decide had unlawfully edited her age. This allegation goes to the center of Rule 1(3) of the Judicial Code of Conduct in Nigeria which stipulates that “a judicial officer ought to respect and adjust to the legal guidelines of the land and will conduct himself always in a way that promotes public confidence within the integrity and impartiality of the Judiciary.”

The IMSHA referred this to its judiciary committee, which started investigations the next month. They invited Theresa Chikeka to attend however she declined. In a letter to the Home dated 12 July 2024, she claimed that “the provisions of the rules of my workplace…. don’t allow me to seem earlier than any Investigation Panel (sic) apart from a panel arrange by the Nationwide Judicial Council.”

On 17 July, the Judiciary Committee reported to the IMSHA in plenum which voted by means of a decision calling for the removing of the Theresa Chikeka as chief choose for falsifying her age. Moments after this vote, on the identical day, the chief choose served the Home with an ex-parte order of the Federal Excessive Courtroom in Owerri restraining the Home from taking the vote that it had already concluded.

Issues have since then relocated to the NJC, which now has cognisance of the allegations towards Theresa Chikeka. Having beforehand advised the IMSHA that she can not reply to any panel besides one constituted by the NJC, Theresa Chikeka now tells the NJC that she can not reply to their panel due to an interim order of the Federal Excessive Courtroom, which has lapsed. On this artifice, she presently claims to operate in an workplace for which she was ineligible to start with.

Within the final week, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, voiced issues concerning the credibility of the judicial department that she leads, showing quite incredulously to recommend that it’s a operate of what number of judgments and rulings judges produce.

The CJN should realise that nobody will take her significantly if she continues to show unwilling and unable to behave swiftly to do away with the one who now desecrates the workplace first occupied in 1976 by Akunne Chukwudifu Oputa.

The least anybody can ask of those that maintain management positions within the judiciary is that they’re slot in regulation to function judges. Theresa Chikeka just isn’t. She ceased to be a choose in October 2021. Permitting her to hold on as Chief Decide of Imo State immediately is egregiously illegal. The NJC owes Francis Abosi an apology and a recall if Madam CJN continues to show unwilling and unable to do away with Theresa Chikeka.

Let her go!

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, a lawyer, teaches on the Fletcher Faculty of Regulation and Diplomacy and may be reached by means of chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu.