By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
“The term of office of judges, their independence, security, adequate remuneration, conditions of service, pensions and the age of retirement shall be adequately secured by law.” – Principle 11, United Nations Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, (1985)
Babajide Candide-Johnson became a judge of the High Court of Lagos State at 45. He is the son of the third Chief Judge of Lagos State, and when his tenure ended after 20 years on 27 June 2021, he became the head of the family court in the High Court of Lagos State.
At his retirement, the Chief Judge of Lagos State, Kazeem Alogba, described Babajide Candide-Johnson as “a brilliant, hardworking, meticulous and fearless judge, an intellectual who delivered judgments without fear or favour.”
Those words describe a model judge. However, nine months later, in March 2022, Candide-Johnason was back in court, this time, to sue the government of Lagos State, which he had served without blemish for two decades, for “his pension, severance gratuity, and other entitlements.”
The government initially demurred, disingenuously arguing that responsibility for judicial pensions under the Pension Right of Lagos State Judicial Officers Law of 2015 lay with the state Judicial Service Commission. The state government later saved itself from an embarrassing position, and the parties agreed to an amicable settlement.
In 2022 alone, at least five other former judges of the High Court of Lagos also sued the State government over the same issue.
The year before Justice Candide-Johnson’s retirement, 22 retired judges of the High Court of Abia, the self-described “God’s own State” in south-east Nigeria, had similarly sued the state government before the National Industrial Court of Nigeria, (NICN), claiming to have been shafted by a succession of three governors going back nearly a decade and a half, who claimed mandates from God to ruin the state. It appears that in response to that case, the then state government “reportedly promised to pay 10 million Naira to the retired judges every month, but only did so for one month.”
Three years later, the case was still stuck in the NICN, with little progress. Meanwhile, five of the retired judges had died in penury, while waiting for the case to rescue them. In May 2023, Abia State installed a newly elected governor. Two months later, he and the retired judges reached an agreement to clear the backlog of 16 years of judicial pensions liability.
Across Nigeria, retired judges are increasingly resorting to judicial proceedings to call attention to a crippling and chronic crisis of judicial pensions for judges who retired before June 2023. In Western Ondo State, retired judges sued in April 2016 for similar issues. Their peers in Imo, Ogun, and Oyo have as well.
For long, the constitution provided for how to compute judicial pensions, but not necessarily for how to finance or administer them effectively. Effective from June 2023, a new constitutional amendment transferred responsibility for the administration of judicial pensions to the National Judicial Council (NJC). This has not, however, alleviated or addressed the crisis of judicial pension obligations, which arose before then and may, indeed, have created new problems of their own.
In the central state of Kogi, eight retired judges of the state High Court have recently served notice on the state government of their intention to return to court as litigants to enforce their pension rights. They include a former Chief Judge of the State, John Bayo Olowosegun; a former President of the Customary Court of Appeal, Hon. Justice Yunusa Musa; and a former senior judge, Professor Andrew Alaba-Ajileye.
The NJC has to accept some responsibility for the historical liabilities. It has been an indifferent and perfunctory advocate for retired judges. On his way out of office as then chairman of the NJC and Chief Justice of Nigeria, after much hand-wringing, Olukayode Ariwoola, finally tabled the issue before the Council at its 100th meeting in January 2023.
In a statement at the end of the meeting, the Council described as “worrisome, the situation whereby many Judicial Officers of the States are being owed their retirement benefits, including severance pay/gratuity and pensions” and warned that this undermined the rule of law without clearly saying how so.
Even worse, the Council failed to disclose which states were involved, for how long or by how much. Instead, it directed State Chief Judges from across the country to report on compliance with the resolution without indicating what it had previously done to compute the quantum of liabilities involved.
On the whole, the NJC lost an opportunity to show that it cared about the subject matter; that it had bothered to do its homework, or that this was an issue on which it desired to enlist any support or reinforcement for the affected retired judges. Since then, the Council does not appear to have seriously monitored or re-engaged with this issue.
The consequences of the chronic accumulation of pension arrears in the public service are quite corrosive of both the morale of existing personnel and the effectiveness of service delivery. Serving officers need to consider such a situation to appreciate the urgent need to take their own destinies into their own hands, while they have the opportunity to do so.
The judiciary presents a special case because the average age of intake into the Bench of the superior courts of record is higher than in any other branch of pensionable service in Nigeria. The consequences of deliberate neglect to fulfill pension obligations can therefore be quite dire. In States like Taraba in the north-east, for instance, many judges who retired before 2023 have died waiting endlessly for their pensions and terminal benefits.
The uncertainties about judicial benefits have also created other problems of their own, with crooks cashing in on the vulnerabilities of retired judges. In March 2024, the NJC went public with the complaint that “fraudsters had been bombarding retired judges with phone calls demanding various sums of money to help them fast-track the payment of their retirement benefits.” The Council explained that it “would never demand money from any judicial officer to fast-track the payment of (his/her) retirement benefits.” The jury is, at best, still out on this lingering issue.
This crisis of judicial pensions and terminal benefits fosters a system of perverse incentives conducive to bartering judicial outcomes for material benefit.
Some may view as uncharitable, a strand of public opinion that suggests that there is a Law of Karma at work and that the destitution of retired judges in this way is the natural consequence of a deepening crisis of judicial integrity and politicisation of the judiciary. Others have gone as far as to indiscriminately accuse judges of feeding up-front in the service of the political lion with the menu of their pensions.
Even if the conduct of some judges in service could conceivably deserve the attentions of a hypothetical Karma, many judges do their best not to fall into that category. Such points of view should, however, demonstrate to all involved the urgency of addressing this issue with finality.
For the judiciary, it is existential at both personal and institutional levels. For the citizens and court users, it is the only way to guarantee the possibility of minimal credibility to the work of the courts. For the country, it should ensure that the promise of an independent judiciary does not disintegrate into a constitutional hoax. The distinction between judges who retired before June 2023 and those retiring thereafter is artificial and unnecessary. The NJC can work constructively with the government at the federal and state levels to address all cases on their merit.
A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu
