Constrained by unfathomable realities occasioned by what it described as black market racket of corruption, judicial cash-and-carry-transactions and horse trading for Justice at a Magistrate Court in Enugu State presided over by His Worship NIC Ngwu, The House of Laws, a law firm in Enugu State and headed by JMCC Ogbuka, has petitioned the state Chief Judge and Chairman of of the Enugu State Judicial Service Commission, Hon. Justice Afojulu Raymond Ozoemena.

Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State swore-in Hon. Justice Ozoemena in January 2022 as the substantive Chief Judge of the state after he served as Acting Chief Judge for three months on two consecutive occasions.

In the petition addressed to the Chief Judge and Chairman of of the Enugu State Judicial Service Commission, dated August 16, 2022 and titled “A Petition Against An Unbearable Scandal of Black Market Racket of Corruption, Judicial Cash and Carry-Transactions and Horse Trading For Justice at a Magistrate Court in Enugu State Presided Over by His Worship NIC Ngwu: A Call for An Urgent Intervention for the Rescue of Both the Court and Justice Administration in that Court from this Regime of Brazen Temple Robbery by a Judicial Officer and His Jobbers in the State”, the petitioner demanded urgent intervention to rescue the judiciary in the state.

Specifically, the petition requested the Chief Judicial Officer of the state to “urgently intervene and come to the rescue of justice and litigants as well as courageous ministers in the temple of justice such as the undersigned who have audaciously taken their stand in defence of the dignity of our courts and the statute of liberty of citizens.”

The law firm in the petition, accompanied with evidence to support their allegations, maintained that since the enthronement of His Worship NIC Ngwu as the Administrative Chief Magistrate in charge of Nsukka magisterial district, the Chief Magistrate has recruited some jobbers “into his employ as his syndicates and who facilitated and midwifed the most obnoxious judicial bazaar in that court where the lowest minimum of justice such as bail was reduced to a cash and carry transaction as in a typical shopping mall or POS centre.”

The full petition reads:

We are constrained to formally present a petition to your office for an urgent administrative action and disciplinary sanction against the notorious racket of a judicial bazaar perpetrated at a Magistrate Court in Enugu State (the popular last hope of the common man) by an Enugu State Chief Magistrate, His Worship NIC Ngwu, the Presiding Chief Magistrate in charge of the Udenu Magisterial District.

This Black Market Business and Judicial scandals by this Magistrate has been on for a long time now and has endured and persisted as a judicial tradition and due process of law in his Court despite many covert protestations by lawyers through silent outcries and complaints against the scandal to the Chief Magistrate which often result into many behind-the-door re-negotiations and horse trading in which the amount of ransom demanded may either get reduced or totally waived on the impenitent ground of sentimental pity or personal consideration.

This is what lawyers and litigants who have cases before this Chief Magistrate often undergo before they can access some crumbs of justice from the stable of his court.
For brevity and at the risk of belabouring you with a litany of the scandalous episodes of this atrocious rackets and cash and carry judicial transactions by His Worship NIC Ngwu in Enugu State, we shall endeavour to limit ourselves to two or three instances of these brazen acts of temple robbery and merchandize on litigants by Chief Magistrate NIC Ngwu against his code of conduct as a judicial officer in Enugu State in contravention of the unambiguous provisions of Rules 1, 2, 4, 10, and 12 (1)(a) of the Revised Code of Conduct for Judicial Officers of 24th February 2016.

Before his transfer to the Udenu Magisterial district, His Worship NIC Ngwu was formerly serving at the Nsukka Magisterial District under His Worship Nosike as the Administrative Magistrate.

Following the rampant corrupt malpractices of His Worship Nosike and his practice of assigning almost all the cases to his court thereby starving the other magistrates serving under him, His Worship NIC Ngwu nicodemusly approached me with a dossier of all the corrupt atrocities and judicial malpractices of His Worship Nosike and prayed me to anchor a petition to the Chief Judge of the State and the Enugu State Judicial Service Commission to expose the monumental judicial corruption of the Administrative Magistrate at that time, pretending to me that he was acting based on a sincere pity on the plights of abject litigants who were victims of the racket and as an honest expression of his interest in the just administration of justice at the Nsukka Magistrate’s Court devoid of any form of corruption.

In his desperate effort to persuade me, to anchor the petition, he went to the extent of opening a file at my office (the record of which is still kept till date and can be made available if need be) where he was recorded to have shown a genuine interest to salvage the suffering masses of litigants from an ordeal of brazen judicial exploitation and his concern about the plight of the average Nsukka people who were daily forced to pay ransoms of financial gratifications as a mandatory condition for access to any form of justice by the then Administrative Magistrate His Worship Nosike in his Court.

All the information and facts which I used to substantiate the said petition were wholly supplied by His Worship NIC Ngwu to the manager of my chambers at Nsukka and as soon as that petition was made public, His Worship Nosike was removed as the Administrative Chief Magistrate in charge of the Nsukka Magisterial District and replaced by His Worship NIC Ngwu who was the most senior at the Nsukka magisterial district as at then.

With the enthronement of His Worship NIC Ngwu as the Administrative Chief Magistrate in charge of Nsukka magisterial district, I had thought that the bogey of judicial black market transactions which had engulfed the Magistrate Court Nsukka as at that time will naturally diminish into oblivion or go into instant extinction.

But to my utter dismay, before the cock could crow the third time, His Worship NIC Ngwu had transformed himself into a more monstrous leviathan and corrupt judicial behemoth with some jobbers whom he recruited into his employ as his syndicates and who facilitated and midwifed the most obnoxious judicial bazaar in that court where the lowest minimum of justice such as bail was reduced to a cash and carry transaction as in a typical shopping mall or POS centre.

His jobbers who included some registrars of court, police prosecutors and approved charge and bail racketeers were anointed by His Worship as his approved agents, middlemen, and official syndicates for his Court and through them huge ransoms of money were paid for bail and for other judicial services by desperate litigants in Court.

To create the opportunity for these jobbers to successfully operate and maximise the desired margin of profits required of them by him, His Worship NIC Ngwu developed the practice of making his bail conditions subject to the condition of a surety who must be a civil servant of a high grade or owner of a landed property in Nsukka with a certificate of occupancy.

With this usually unattainable bail conditions, the defendants who were arraigned in his court for any offence were forced to resort to the accredited agents of His Worship NIC Ngwu who are neither civil servants nor have any certificate of occupancy over any landed property within the jurisdiction of the court.

But once they collect sufficient ransom as agreed with him, he (His Worship NIC Ngwu) will in the secret of his house, collect the ransom and release the defendant via a directive to any of his agents or anointed sureties even when they were neither civil servants nor holders of any certificate of occupancy over any land within the jurisdiction of the court as ordered by the Court.

We took time to carefully understudy this highly coded and hideous system of underground merchandize for bail and justice in that court and two real life and verifiable instances of this judicial scandal may suffice to attest to and substantiate this petition.

In Charge No: MN/13C/2021 (Commissioner of Police V. Ibio Kokoette Okon & 2 others) which His Worship NIC Ngwu assigned to himself, the three defendants were charged with conspiracy and stealing of house wires from a house.

Appendix 1 attached is the charge sheet in the matter.

After taking their plea, His Worship NIC Ngwu admitted them to bail but all efforts made by the relations of the defendants to secure the bail of the defendants with sureties who reside within jurisdiction and had landed properties within jurisdiction proved abortive as His Worship insisted that the sureties must have a certificate of occupancy over their land within jurisdiction.

This situation lingered with the defendants remanded in prison custody for almost a month until they were forced to indulge the corrupt practice of using the hired mercenaries of the magistrate who collected the agreed ransom dictated for them to collect by His Worship NIC Ngwu after a successful bargain for their release and as soon as they accounted to him his own share of the booty of ransom, he signed the release warrants for the defendants in the case with his foot soldiers as sureties.

Again in Charge No: MN/71C/2020 (Commissioner of Police V. Idowu Sogelora Dada), the defendant was charged for Advanced Fee Fraud by the Nigeria Police for a cybercrime of defrauding the complainant of millions of naira claiming that he was in Ivory Coast while he was operating from a hideout in Ondo State. The complainant and his father who is a retired civil servant from UNN suffered immensely to pay the police a whooping mobilisation sum for them to be able to track and arrest this fraudster all the way from Ondo State and transport him down to Nsukka for investigation and prosecution which eventually led to his arraignment in court before His Worship NIC Ngwu.

Again in his ruling on a bail application for the defendant, His Worship NIC Ngwu granted bail to the defendant to two sureties who must have a landed property in Nsukka.

However, after some days of the defendants remand in prison, he got the contact of the syndicates of His Worship NIC Ngwu and he immediately arranged for a meeting with them for a negotiation of the amount of ransom to be paid for his release on bail by anybody other than the specified sureties as contained in the ruling of the court for his bail.

Upon the conclusion of that horse-trading bargain and payment of the agreed ransom thereafter, the defendant (a notorious Ondo State fraudster) was released on bail by His Worship NIC Ngwu to sureties who neither knew him nor his place of residence and since then, the defendant had eloped from the state and jumped the bail granted to him thereby forestalling and stand-stilling his prosecution in court up till date as he can no longer be seen contrary to the bond for his bail executed by the anointed sureties of His Worship NIC Ngwu.

Consequently, the poor complainant and his hapless father have since then been hopelessly stranded and were later forced to resort to a concession for a settlement refund of the principal sum brokered by the anointed sureties as representatives of the runaway defendant and His Worship NIC Ngwu instead of getting the defendant to face his trial in court as required by law. Up till today, this horse-trading negotiation has not yielded the complete payment of the principal sum which the defendants defrauded from the complainant.

The files in these two cases were kept at the Chief Magistrate Court Registry Nsukka and contained their respective charge sheets and the certified copies of the rulings as well as all the particulars of the sureties who took the defendants on bail but as soon as His Worship got the news of his transfer out of the Nsukka Magisterial District to the Udenu District, guess what he did?

He hurriedly and nicodemusly sneaked into the Magistrate Court Registry Nsukka with his jobbers where they started tracing all those files where such fraudulent transactions were carried out leading to the release of defendants contrary to the terms of the ruling by the court and carefully raided, cannibalized and emptied all the affected files of all those records or details of what happened in court, the terms of the bail granted to the defendants and the particulars of the sureties and other necessary documents associated with the bail proceedings and other subsequent proceedings in the files leaving behind an entirely empty file for the new Magistrates posted to take over.

This development was immediately observed by some of the new Magistrates posted to Nsukka the first time such matters were called up for mention in their respective courts but not knowing the fraud behind the mysterious, inexplicable and sudden disappearance of all the records in those files, the prosecution brought new charge sheets for the matter to start afresh in those courts.

This highly covert judicial scandal of black market transactions by His Worship NIC Ngwu has continued at the Udenu Magisterial district where he is currently serving.

Maybe an example out of a multitude of similar judicial atrocities by His Worship NIC Ngwu at the Udenu Magistrates Court may also suffice.

Before his posting to the Udenu Magisterial district, His Learned Brother, His Worship S. G. Adukwu, who was the then Administrative Magistrate in charge of the Udenu Magisterial District had in Suit No: MOB/1/2020 (Chief Raphael Nnajiofor & Ors v. Basil Odo) delivered a ruling on a preliminary objection challenging the jurisdiction of the Court to hear and determine the suit and held that the Magistrate Court Udenu Magisterial District lacked the jurisdiction to hear and determine the suit in view of another pending suit filed by the same plaintiffs against the same defendants over the same subject matter for the determination of the same issue which the plaintiffs filed at the High Court Udenu Division and which is currently on appeal pending at the Enugu Division of the Court of Appeal as an already entered appeal in Appeal No: CA/E/264/2019.

For the records, we attach as Appendix 2 a copy of the said ruling in the suit in which His Worship S. G. Adukwu in a well-considered ruling handed down the courts decision on the issue of the competence of the suit as raised by the defendant in that suit and the jurisdiction of the court to hear and determine same and after a studious consideration of the application and the counter affidavit of the plaintiffs in opposition thereto, the Learned Chief Magistrate S. G. Adukwu delivered a considered ruling and held that the Magistrate Court Udenu has no jurisdiction to hear and determine the suit and accordingly dismissed the suit for want of jurisdiction.

But as soon as His Worship NIC Ngwu was posted to that Court, the plaintiffs who knew his corrupt judicial antecedents and his cash and carry style of adjudication over cases boldly summersaulted back to that court again in the belief that all they need to make the court which had earlier dismissed the suit and held that it had no jurisdiction to entertain the suit to suddenly change its position on the matter automatically without even an appeal against the earlier decision was to simply engage and bargain with His Worship NIC Ngwu via a secret horse-trading transaction for the suit to be refiled back again in that court and for His Worship NIC Ngwu to overrule the decision of His Learned Brother, His Worship S. G. Adukwu in the suit over the courts lack of jurisdiction in the suit and assume jurisdiction over the matter and immediately determine it in their favour.

Both the plaintiffs in that Suit and His Worship NIC Ngwu in flagrant display of crass judicial impunity and brazen scandalous impudence to the due process of the rule of law in our courts were not bothered at all about the legal, professional and ethical implications of re-entertaining the refiling of a suit earlier dismissed by the same court on ground of lack of jurisdiction back to that same court again for the court to hear and determine the suit without any appeal against the order of dismissal of the suit. All that the plaintiffs cared for was to simply approach His Worship NIC Ngwu for a successful judicial transaction in the matter and as soon as they negotiated and agreed upon the terms of that horse trade, His Worship NIC Ngwu not only allowed himself to be railroaded into entertaining the already dismissed suit but also, mustered the judicial impunity and effrontery to rule on a preliminary objection challenging the jurisdiction of the Court to entertain the suit in the first place, in which he held that his learned brother was wrong to have held that the court has no jurisdiction in the matter and accordingly not only sat on appeal over the decision of his fellow Chief Magistrate of the same grade but also even overruled him and assumed jurisdiction to go on with the matter with an unfounded braggadocio of a judicial impunity that he cannot be handled by anybody including the Chief Judge of the State.

Appendix 3 attached is a copy of the aforesaid later ruling of His Worship NIC Ngwu in the suit.

This latter suit filed by the same plaintiffs against the same defendant over the same subject matter for the determination of the same issue and grant of the same reliefs in the same court was refiled by the plaintiffs as Suit No: MOB/2/2021 which is now currently pending before His Worship NIC Ngwu having overruled the preliminary objection filed by the defendant in that suit against the competence of the suit and the jurisdiction of the court to re-entertain the suit again after its dismissal without any appeal.

The cornucopia of such black market merchandise of justice and catalogue of judicial scandals by His Worship NIC Ngwu at the Udenu Magistrates Court is difficult to be exhaustively outlined here without overlabouring you Sir, but it is of necessity to bemoan with a heavy heart of lamentation to your notice that His Worship NIC Ngwu has fully transformed himself into a full-fledged Orie Orba market trader and business centre operator whose own due process of law is cash and carry for the highest bidder, and the rate and price at which he puts justice out for sale in the official judicial bazaar of his court is far beyond the reach of many common men who see that court as their only place of refuge (the last hope of the common man).

This bazaar has gone beyond the reach of many litigants many of whom are afraid to scream out any outcry against the status quo but we, who have vowed to defend the sanctity of the temple of justice in Nigeria not only for us as professional ministers in the temple of justice but also for the posterity of future practitioners in this temple as well as the multitude of hapless citizens who throng to the court everyday as their last hope of refuge, we cannot continue to keep quiet and pretend that all is well like the proverbial ostrich.

The Lord Jesus in the Holy Scriptures (Matthew 21:12-13) has left us with a perfect example of what ministers in a temple should do when they discover that the temple has been overrun, overtaken or hijacked by merchants and turned into a market for merchandize and ruthless bazaar sale of justice.

He simply procured horse whips and whipped the merchants out of the temple as a first step towards cleansing the temple or the augean stable.

To have such a temple robber as a judge in a court of law will not only to betray and destroy the integrity of the Court but also to erode the minimum confidence that citizens ought to repose not only on the jurisdiction of the Court to handle their matters but also on the impartiality of the umpire that man the courts to adjudicate on the matter according to Law.

Once this confidence evaporates, the court becomes nothing but a mere snare to the common man and no longer his last hope of justice because “justice” in the words of Lord Hewart in Rex v. Sussex Justices (1924) 1 KB 256 “must not only be done but ought to be seen to have been done by every right-thinking person.”

In an effort to avoid the arduous task of putting up this petition against His Worship NIC Ngwu, I had earlier, before now, applied to him in writing to recuse himself from all the cases I have in his court in the interest of justice based on all these facts which he is aware that I know and having regards to his frequent unguarded outbursts of mischievous vituperations against me as a person both in the open court as can be attested to by some lawyers and even outside the court as attested to by one Mr. Jonas Ukwueze who boldly mustered up courage one day and went to his house to see if he can resolve the existing stalement between me and him and to also collect from him a record of a ruling he delivered in the above-mentioned Suit No: MOB/2/2021 which he had refused to release to me more than five months after an acknowledged application for the record of the ruling was made to him, but in his unfounded impudence, he declined the application and insisted that he must continue to adjudge all those matters involving me as counsel for any of the parties.

One does not need a word of prophecy to know that Jesus cannot find confidence not to talk of justice in a court manned by King Herod based on the existing stalemate between them. Appendix 4 is a copy of the said application.

The time is now long overdue to tame the judicial rascalities and corrupt excesses of His Worship NIC Ngwu before he runs an irreparable amok against the sentinel of justice and the dignity of our Courts.

We are therefore by this petition making an urgent clarion call on your hallowed office to urgently arise to protect the sacrosanctity of our Courts and the inviolability of justice which the Court is established to administer. Traders should be allowed to go on with their merchandize only in a market, shopping malls, or business centres and not in a temple of justice.

This is the only magistrate that I have ever seen in all my years as a minister in the temple of justice in Nigeria who openly and brazenly answers phone calls from his customers while sitting in court or during proceedings in the open court and undertake lengthy discussions and transactions on phone to the interruption and utter desecration of the court while the bar and litigants haplessly watch and continue to wait for him to finish the transaction and continue with the proceedings of court.

Both lawyers and litigants will be there and will hear him loud and clear negotiating transactions on phone with his callers who may be at his shop at Orie Orba market or any other location.

There should be a limit to this caricature of justice and mockery of the court as a temple of justice, and it is hoped that you will take advantage of this courageous presentation and petition to your office to address this monstrous abomination and outlawry in our Courts and save both the courts and the administration of justice in the State from the precipice of an irretrievable hostage and abduction by corrupt judicial officers.

May this underserved reproach against justice and its temple in the State not be heard again under your watch and we fervently crave your indulgence to urgently intervene and come to the rescue of justice and litigants as well as courageous ministers in the temple of justice such as the undersigned who have audaciously taken their stand in defence of the dignity of our courts and the statute of liberty of citizens.

This is for your information and necessary action and I rest my case.

Findings by The Street Reporters Newspaper revealed that the petition is yet to be evidently attended to in any known substantial manner about two months after.

Efforts to get the Chief Judge or Chief Magistrate Ngwu were yet to yield any results at the time of this report.

StreetReporters.ng

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