THIS piece is meant to debunk the deliberate half-truth peddled by the assistant secretary of the Kano branch of the Nigerian Bar Association, Hadiza Nasir Ahmad on her Facebook page on Wednesday.
Unlike Hadiza Nasir Ahmad, I will begin by stating truthfully that I wasn’t in court on the 4th of March 2025, when the case of Hon. Abdullahi Abbas and Ors vs Central Bank of Nigeria was called.
Hadiza was not in court either. She was not announced as one of the counsel in the matter when the case was called, and her name was not in the cause-list that I sought to see and saw on Tuesday after the case had been adjourned. Of course, she came to the court after the case had been adjourned and lawyers were loitering within the court premises.
That was the first lie she was caught telling in her intervention, and it was a lie that has discredited everything she wrote afterwards.
Her piece revolved around three subjects: Court 3 of the Federal High Court in Kano; the presiding judge of the court, Justice Simon Amobeda; SolaceBase online news medium and members of the Kano Bar. I will address them in the same order that she took them in her piece.
SOLACEBASE
Hadiza said SolaceBase was not in court but did a ‘malicious’ report.
That was not an intelligent lie. She could not have known who was in court that day because she was not there. It’s easy to know she was not there because her appearance was not announced alongside others who were in her team.
But, assuming she was even there, since journalists don’t announce their appearance in court, how could she have known which journalist was or was not there? Which of the ten or more reporters that SolaceBase has in Kano does she actually know?
Incidentally, a senior lawyer on the plaintiff side jokingly called her latecomer when he saw her coming into the court premises about 30 minutes after the case had been adjourned.
Meanwhile, the medium published two reports on the incidents that happened in court that day. One was a report on the absence of a senior counsel in the matter and how the case was adjourned; the usual kind of reportage that Nigerian newspapers like to do when nothing significant happened in a court.
The second report was far more interesting from the newsworthiness perspective; it reported the lamentations of the presiding judge, his anger at the Kano Bar and his intention to declare some members of the Kano Bar as enemies of his court.
To every discerning mind, the two reports will suggest that the news medium captured what transpired in court that day. Even Hadiza’s second-hand accounts did not deviate in substance from what SolaceBase reported. Hers were only mainly opinionated. SolaceBase reported while she tried to explain.
COURT 3
Hadiza said the court was “equipped with modern technologies” and referred to it as a “digital court”.
To the credit of the court, the presiding judge, Justice Amobeda, has always said his court does not take records of proceedings in long hand. He said he has a recording device that transcribe human voice, making it easy to conduct cases faster.
However, it was the same court that disallows lawyers from bringing their phones into the courtroom because the judge feared that he may be recorded while speaking. The question is, what really does the judge say that he fears may be recorded. I doubt those would be his rulings, judgements and proceedings, the same proceeding he said his own ‘machines’ were recording.
Digital inclination will suggest that electronic law reports, electronic diaries and electronic research materials would all be found in lawyers’ phones, computers and tablets. Baring lawyers from bringing those to the court is a direct negation to the claim of technological savviness.
MEMBERS OF THE KANO BAR
Hadiza said “some of the members are in the habit of filing frivolous applications … They recently filed a case against him before the State High Court”.
If this claim is true, one would have thought that every judge worthy of his salt knows what to do; dismiss the application and award substantial cost against the counsel. It’s that simple. If the lawyer(s) is violating the code of conduct for legal practitioners, the judge should also know what to do. There is a very effective authority to report such misconducts to and actions are always taken accordingly.
And who says a case could not be filed against a judge? If it is an offence to file a case against a judge, then Justice Amobeda is a chief culprit. In Suit No. FHC/KN/CS/152/2024 where Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje sued the National Judicial Council, Mobilization Allocation Fiscal Commission, Attorney General of Kano State, Justice Faruk Lawal Adamu and Justice Zuwaira Yusuf, he adjudicated over a case filed against two serving Kano State High Court judges, wherein he ordered the National Judicial Council to stop the payment of their “renumeration, allowances and benefits meant for judicial officers from the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the Federation…”
A judge is not expected to turn his courtroom to a market place where small talks are the order of the day. How do you explain a judge who will waste lawyers and litigants’ precious time telling tiresome and monotonous stories that bear no relevance to the matter before him, and doing it every time?
Did the judge say he does not recognize the Kano Bar, and that he had marked 10 lawyers as enemies of his court? News reports say he said so. Lawyers in court affirmed the reports as accurate.
A substantial percentage of the members of the branch are now in fear. Who are the ten enemies of my lord? They could be anyone.
That is one of the disadvantages of unguided utterances in open court, a habit my lord seems unable to stop. More than 700 lawyers will no longer feel safe before Court 3 of the Federal High Court, Kano division, and that is unfortunate.
- Abdulsalam, Esq writes from Kano.