Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN has urged Judges in the country to maintain the sanctity and credibility of the Court and not to make justice a commodity for sale to the highest bidder.
Malami gave the warning in his address at the 2021 legal year ceremony of the Court Of Appeal held in Abuja on Monday.
Malami further charged judicial officers to ensure that the sacred integrity reposed on them remain unshaken at all times in order to foster and promote public confidence in all rulings that emanate from the Court.
“Your resolved, as a temple of justice in ensuring that justice is not trivialized to a common bargain and is in effect accessible to all, is highly commendable,” he said.
“I hereby also extend a call of solidarity, reverence and respect for the Courts and Court processes, to all our Learned Distinguished Colleagues here present to ensure that justice is not trivialised to a commodity bargained for and taken by the highest bidder, at the detriment of the indigent who for want of equal bargaining power, wallow in the shadows of judicial neglect,” the AGF said.
He said uniformity, consistency and universality of judgement and rulings in the face of judicial precedent is an exceptional value of a judicial system that must at all times strive to uphold as a way of upholding the sanctity of the judiciary in re-enacting the confidence of the common man in our judicial system.