PEOPLES GAZETTE
Josiah Majebi is the fifth Chief Judge of Kogi State (in north-central Nigeria) in four years and the fourth to exist almost entirely in the pocket of the state governor. He has been in office as substantive Chief Judge since the beginning of February 2023, having acted in that role since June 26, 2022, when his predecessor, Richard Olorunfemi, retired. Henry Olusiyi served in that office for just under seven months from the end of June 2020 until January 2021. Sunday Otuh, who succeeded him, spent eight months in office before retiring in September 2021.
The last Chief Judge of Kogi State who attempted to hold that office with dignity and independence, Nasir Ajanah, paid with his life, un-mourned and exiled from the state. He was the second Chief Judge of the State to be politically lynched by the government of Kogi State in one decade.
At the beginning of April 2008, the Kogi State House of Assembly, defying an order of the state High Court, adopted a resolution asking the State Governor to remove the long-serving Chief Judge Umaru Eri. On that basis, then-acting governor Clarence Olafemi promptly announced the sack of the Chief Judge on April 2, 2008, and designated another judge, Sam Ota, to act in his place.
In his defence, Umaru Eri claimed that his crime was that he had declined the politicians’ request to act as a go-between in bribing the election petition tribunal on behalf of the then-state governor whose election was in dispute. On May 16, 2008, Alaba Ajileye, a judge of the High Court of Kogi State, reversed the sack and reinstated Umaru Eri.
Eleven years later, on June 18, 2019, Alaba Ajileye presided again in deciding a case that seemed uncannily to reprise issues in his earlier decision. As with the 2008 decision, the claimant in 2019 was another Chief Judge of Kogi State, Nasir Ajanah, with his Chief Registrar, Yahya Adamu. The defendants included the Kogi State House of Assembly, its Speaker, and the State Governor, Yahaya Bello.
At Governor Yahaya Bello’s directive, the Secretary to the Government of Kogi State wrote to Chief Judge Nasir Ajanah on November 14, 2018, asking him to provide “the payroll of judicial staff for the ongoing pay parade of civil servants in the state.” At the time, the Governor was a defendant in the court of the Chief Judge, so the Chief Registrar responded to the letter and explained that the judiciary was a self-accounting and co-equal branch of government supervised by the state’s Judicial Service Commission.
An affronted Governor Yahaya Bello wrote under his own name to Walter Onnoghen, then Chief Justice of Nigeria and Chair of the National Judicial Council (NJC), asking the NJC to find the Chief Judge guilty of misconduct and requiring that he “step aside and (an) Acting Chief Judge allowed to take his place.”
While his petition was still waiting for the attention of the NJC, Yahaya Bello resorted to political self-help. He referred the perceived effrontery of Nasir Ajannah to the State House of Assembly, which promptly constituted an investigation committee. The Chief Judge sued. While his suit was pending, on 2 April 2019, the State House of Assembly adopted a resolution asking Yahaya Bello to remove the Chief Judge and requiring disciplinary action against the Chief Registrar. On 18 June 2019, Alaba Ajileye sitting at the High Court of Kogi State in Kotonkarfe, determined that the Kogi State House of Assembly and the Governor acted unlawfully in seeking to remove the Chief Judge.
The governor’s reaction was bestial. He first went after Alaba Ajileye, a man of courage and learning whose judicial record was unblemished. With a doctorate degree in law, Alaba Ajileye was an expert in the rarefied subject of digital evidence.
