Ibadan based legal practitioner advocates for judicial autonomy

An Ibadan-based legal practitioner, Sikiru Adewale has advocated for judicial autonomy for the judiciary in the judicial process.

Adewale said this on Monday in an interview in Ibadan.

He said that if the judges are left alone by the government to do their job as required by the law, crime would reduce drastically in the country.

“Except we are deceiving ourselves it is difficult for a judge to go against the decision of the federal or State government because they were appointed by them.

“What the judges rather do is just to look for a way to get the case out in order to see that nothing is done to offend the power that be and the society feEls the pain more,''Adewale said.

He however said that only few judges do not allow the interference from either the government or any other quarter in discharging their duty.

Adewale said that the court has it as a duty to curb the increasing rate of crime by following the rule of law.

“When an accused is brought before the court and the charge is read and the accused enter trial and at the end of the day he or she is find guilty, he should be jailed.

“And if the punishment is that of a fine, the court should impose that sanction,'' he said.

He said that the culture of self discipline and orientation must be imbibed by everybody in order to curb the increasing rate of crime in Nigeria.

Adewale said that crime all over the world was not a recent phenomenon, adding that corruption was one of the problems facing Nigeria as a country.

The lawyer said the culture of orientation must be reversed, starting from home, public places with everybody seeing it as a responsibility to maintain discipline.

“When you go to public places or your working place, you should see it as a responsibility to orientate people on what the negative crime has done to the country,'' Adewale said.

He said that when people are incarcerated, they still come back to the society as notorious.

Adewale said that until people are aware of the negative impact of crime in the society, the rate of crime would still be on the increase.

“ The National Orientation Agency and other agencies are doing their best but a lot still need to be done by going back to maintain discipline from home.

“We should not place too much emphasis on poverty, as the main cause of increase in crime rate.

“Nevertheless, government should do more to improve on the well-being of the generality of the people,'' he said.