Residents commend crackdown on jugdes by DSS

Some residents of Maiduguri on Monday commended the Federal Government’s crackdown on judges alleged to have engaged in corruption.


A cross section of those who spoke, said the action was a right step in the right direction.

Mr Ali Shuwa, a veteran journalist said the government must sustain the crackdown to sanitize the judiciary.

“Yes, I am in full support of the action. I think it is a step towards sanitising the judiciary; government must sustain such crackdowns until the entire process is sanitised”, Shuwa said.

He absolved government of any blame in carrying out the crackdown. “This kind of thing is not peculiar to Nigeria alone.

“Even in the United States, raids were conducted on corrupt judges, so what are we saying”, Shuwa said. He added that the crackdown was also a pointer to the fact that the Buhari administration was serious in its anti corruption crusade.

“We are very happy about the development, I think government is serious about fighting corruption now”, he said. Shuwa also advised that people should ignore threats of boycott of courts by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), saying it was empty.

Similarly, Malam Bakura Ba’ana, an opinion leader, said Nigerian judges had been taking advantage of the independence of the judiciary.

“Buhari’s government has shown that it is focused on fighting corruption in all sectors of our economy. “The crackdown on the judges is a welcome development”, Ba’ana stressed. He urged Nigerians to rally round the administration to ensure that the future of the country was safeguarded.

But Malam Ibrahim Jumma, a civil servant, expressed reservation over the government’s action.

“Well, the federal government has been saying that it is fighting corruption. “But all along, what we have been seeing is different kinds of illegalities in the guise of fighting corruption.

“They claimed to have found money in the houses of some judges, but is it the right way to go about it?”, Jumma asked. He supported NBA’s planned boycott of courts to put pressure on government to change its style of doing things.

“Since we are not in a military regime, we should learn to do things properly.

“Government must follow the normal channel if it is serious in winning the war against corruption’’, he said.