Our Reporter, Abuja
Former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, has strongly disputed reports claiming that 34 lawyers failed integrity tests during the recruitment process for new judges of the Federal High Court, describing the claim as “factually inaccurate” and unfair to the affected candidates.
Reacting to news report that “thirty-four lawyers have been dropped from the process of being appointed judges to the Federal High Court of Nigeria after failing an integrity test introduced under new guidelines approved by the National Judicial Council (NJC)” on Monday via an X post, Odinkalu said while there were integrity-related petitions against a small number of applicants, the figures being reported were grossly exaggerated.
“Indeed, there were integrity petitions against one or two candidates which turned out to be founded,” he stated. “But that did not affect any number remotely approaching double digits.”
According to Odinkalu, the primary reason many candidates were excluded at the level of the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) was not integrity concerns, but lack of political or judicial backing.
“The main ground on which most candidates were excluded… was that they did not have insider leverage, godfather or godmother,” he said, adding that integrity was not the issue in the majority of cases.
He further alleged that the integrity of the recruitment process itself was compromised, arguing that those who truly failed an “integrity test” were not the candidates but officials involved in the selection process.
“The people who failed the integrity test were not the candidates for the most part. They were the people on the other side of the table,” Odinkalu wrote, accusing them of having “banalised and corrupted judicial recruitment.”
Odinkalu also criticised what he described as attempts to further damage the reputations of unsuccessful candidates through what he called “criminal propaganda,” saying the narrative amounted to a re-victimisation of qualified applicants.
He urged the media to independently verify the claims being reported, noting that many of the affected candidates had strong credentials and, by objective standards, were more competitive than some of those eventually recommended.
“Some of them—on all parameters—actually beat out many of those eventually recommended,” he said, alleging that those selected were backed by political or judicial insiders.
