Yemi-Osinbajo

Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, has revealed how, during his tenure as Attorney General under former Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos, corruption was eliminated in the state Judiciary.

This is contained in a post on the FB wall of Senator Babfemi Ojudu, Special Adviser on Political Matters in the Presidency.

According to Osinbajo: “When I was a lecturer in UNILAG, I visited a retired Judge who stayed in a rented BQ apartment of two rooms. The first room which served as sitting room had no where you can sit on. It was filled with books. The second is bedroom for him and his wife. The children have grown and they don’t stay with them. Here is a honest Judge, sincere old man but who had nothing to fall back on. It saddened me.

“Therefore, when I was appointed Attorney General of Lagos, we did a survey among Judicial stakeholders, we asked people to rate the judicial system into categories notoriously corrupt, highly corrupt, fairly corrupt, not corrupt….
“In the result, the respondents said 89% was notoriously corrupt.

“We then decide to do three things. Review the wages of Judicial Officers, Improve their welfare and establish a credible recruitment process. We then increased Judges salaries from N67k to……which will ensure they pay their children school fees, paid for expenses comfortably. What we pay became the standard all over the country and even in the Appellate court’s….We built house for them which they own forever. It is theirs during service and their property after service. It is theirs forever.

“For any corrupt allegation against any judge, we didn’t use State Judiciary Commission to review in order to avoid interference, we sent to NJC straightaway and followed it up until we get results. Through this, we were able to sack many judges and magistrates….

“After some times, we reconducted same survey we did before and the result shows that 0% of Lagos Judges are corrupt.

“We will build a sound structure here too. That’s the best way to fight corruption.