Ben Ayade, the Cross River State Governor, has revealed why it’s better for judges to be poor while upholding the law, than to be rich and get their names soiled.
He said it was better for judges to remain poor and uphold justice than, “to have all the wealth and have your soul enslaved to your conscience because you have perverted justice.”
Speaking on Thursday while swearing in three High Court judges, at the state executive chamber, Calabar, the state capital, Ayade cautioned them against perverting justice.
The judges who took their oaths of allegiance and office in the presence of the Deputy governor, Prof Ivara Esu, Chief Judge of the state, Hon Justice Michael Edem, members of the state executive council include: Justices Emmanuel Agiampuye Ubua, Obo Awusa Obo and Imelda Bassey Etape.
Ayade charged them to take the appointments as great task and responsibility, noting that a “lean liberty is better than fat slavery.”
He said, “You had rather stay in your poverty as a judge than to have all the wealth and have your soul enslaved to your conscience because you have perverted justice.”
The governor challenged the new judges to a new thinking and philosophy where law will be driven by a true African heritage.
He stressed the need for the judges to see arbitration as the alternative to conflict resolution and the most welcome concept in modern legislative and legal practice, especially where court is structured to deliver judgement instead of peace.
He said, “The judiciary requires men of honour and integrity, who appreciate true value and honour, who understand ethics and morality and the science that man is a spiritual being. In whatever you do, there will be a time where your deeds will be accounted for.”
Ayade maintained that as judges whose responsibility is to decide whether a man’s freedom will be taken or not and if a penalty or fine will be given, there is need to look at the social nexus of every crime as, “we must advance as a nation and advance as humanity to a greater goal, a higher philosophy and a high essence of being.”
According to the governor, “As long as we rely on documentations and turn ourselves to mathematical computers that interpret a code, section or subsection of the law and dish out penalty without understudying the real sociology of a crime, we would fail as a people. There are certain simple human crimes that must be considered outside the boundaries and beacons of law.”
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