The National Judicial Council will on Tuesday hold an emergency session, it was learnt on Sunday. It was learnt that the NJC originally scheduled the meeting solely to consider the candidate most suitable for appointment as the next Chief Justice of Nigeria from the list forwarded to it by the Federal Judicial Service Commission last week.
But following the raids on the houses of some judicial officers by the men of the Department of State Services over the weekend, it was learnt that the outgoing CJN and the Chairman of both the NJC and FJSC, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, directed that the issue be included on the agenda of the scheduled emergency meeting.
The DSS, at the end of the operations, which lasted at least 12 hours between Friday night and Saturday morning, arrested Justices Sylvester Ngwuta and John Okoro, both of the Supreme Court, as well as Justice Adeniyi Ademola of the Federal High Court in Abuja.
The security operatives also searched the house of another judge of the Federal High Court, Justice Nnamdi Dimgba, but he was not arrested.
A senior officer of the security agency, Mr. Abdullahi Garba, who spoke with journalists in Abuja after the operations on Saturday, said that a large amount including foreign/local currencies had been recovered from three of the judges. He gave the breakdown of these to include: N93,558,000.00, $530,087, £25,970, and €5,680 (a total of over N270m).
In Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, the raid started in the early hours of Saturday when scores of DSS agents besieged the house of a Federal High Court judge at No. 35, Forces Avenue.
The CJN was said to have been embarrassed by the developments, and immediately put a call through to Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo and the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami.
A source said on Sunday that, “The CJN decided that the NJC would take a position on the issue at the emergency meeting of the NJC already scheduled to hold on Tuesday for the consideration of the next CJN.”
