Benue State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Micheal Gusa |
Benue State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Micheal Gusa
in this interview, discusses the challenges of the office of the
Attorney-General, the Administration of Criminal Justice Law, the Anti
Open-Grazing Law of the sate and other national issues.
Excerpt:
As the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in Benue State, what has you experience been like?
It has always been
quite challenging but I thank God because He has always been there for
me. The Lord has always been my strength and so having a boss who is
very supportive, who is very caring and who is always encouraging his
subordinate as my Governor, Dr. Samuel Ortom, we are doing it
successfully and we are not feeling the distress.
The
Administration of Criminal Justice Act has expedites criminal justice
administration in the country. Many states of the federation have also
adopted it at the state level. What is the situation in Benue State?
We are working on
that too. We have forwarded the bill to Benue State House of Assembly
and given the speed with which the Benue State House of Assembly is
handling most of the bills, I believe and am very sure that very soon,
we will domesticate the Administration of Criminal Justice Law in Benue
State.
Law and economic development have always worked together, how have our laws impacted our economic growth?
Bye and large,
just like you rightly said, law and economic development go together
because if you want to develop, you need to create a relationship
between yourself and the next man, no man is an Island to himself, no
man is self sufficient, you need to relate with others in the process of
development. You need to have a relationship between yourself and the
next person, between one State and another, between one country and
another, so, you need the law to guide these relationships that have
been brought about by the desire to move forward, the desire to grow and
this desire to develop. Law has always been the pivot upon which the
development of every economy revolves.
In the Nigerian
case, this is not an exception and when you bring it back to our place
here in Benue State, we have so many laws that relate to these issues of
the moment. When you bring any policy, you certainly have to develop a
legal frame work that will drive the policy which you have made. And so,
it has been a tremendous tool for our economic development.
There is
public outcry against the Anti Open Grazing Law recently passed by the
Benue State House of Assembly. What is the issue with this Law?
If there is any
outcry against this Law, it is coming from our detractors, from the
people who don't mean well for Benue State. Just like I said before, we
need peace in the state. When Governor Ortom came into office, he met
the crises between the herders and crop farmers in Benue State here and
in his wisdom, he decided to sponsor a Bill to Benue State House of
Assembly and this bill was meant to create a harmonious working
relationship between the crop farmers and the herders.
What does the Bill provides?
The bill says that
if you must herd cows or rear animals in Benue State, you must ranch,
because the greater number of Benue State indigenes are crop farmers and
these two cannot go together. You cannot have a crop farm here and then
you have cattle walking inside or destroying the crops. It does not
make any sense at all. So he sponsored this Bill to the Benue State
House of Assembly which also conducted public hearing to get inputs from
all major stakeholders in the state. During the Public Hearing, you
heard the herders, the crop farmers, the intellectual class, religious
groups, faith based organisations and so on. Everybody was there, so it
was the consensus of the people of Benue State that looked at it, we
cannot restrain anybody from doing any business he or she wants to
engage in, but there should be a restriction for everybody because if
you are a crop farmer, you cannot look at any land and start farming
there, and also, if you have cattle, you must ranch this cattle and if
you don't have a land of your own, you apply for permit from the State
Ministry.
Governor Ortom has
maintained that Benue State Government owes it a duty to protect and
preserve every Nigerians resident in Benue State irrespective of their
states of origin or professional calling and religious affiliation. So
the Law is designed to protect Nigerians, the farmers and herders in the
state, thereby, providing a lasting peace for all.
The main provisions
of this Law are to prevent the destruction of crop farms, community
ponds, settlements and property by open rearing and grazing of livestock
and also prevent clashes between nomadic livestock herders and crop
farmers. It also seeks protect the environment from degradation and
pollution caused by open rearing and over grazing of livestock and
optimise the use of land resources in the face of overstretched land and
increasing population.
The Law further
seeks to prevent, control and manage the spread of diseases as well as
ease the implementation of policies that enhance the production of high
quality and healthy livestock for local and international markets and
create a conducive environment for large scale crop production.
The Livestock
Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources is
vested with the powers to administer, regulate enforce this Law.
Governor
Ortom offered amnesty to criminals in Benue State in what he described
as the carrot and stick approach. What is the effect of that offer to
the security of lives and property in the state?
I want to state
that the governor came into office with the desire to move the sate
forward and at the time he came in, he discovered that the youths in
Benue State were heavily armed by politicians who wanted to use them to
achieve their own goals, so when he discovered that these youths were
armed vis-Ã -vis his desire to attract development and investment , he
noted that the needed peace, security, so he initiated the amnesty
programme and as you rightly pointed out, it was the stick and carrot
approach, the amnesty programme was to enable the youths repent, drop
their arms and get state pardon, and a lot of youths came forward to
surrender their arms and these arms were collected by the state and
destroyed. For those of them who refuse to surrender their arms and
embrace this opportunity, they are the ones now that the stick is being
used against because you cannot live in Benue State as an outlaw, the
Governor keeps saying that he cannot surrender the state to criminals
having known very well that we have a lot of potential in the state. The
programme has the support of everybody in Benue State.
Without the
efforts the governor made, you wouldn't be here in Benue State. You can
always seek your permit from the Ministry of Agriculture, which is
saddled with the responsibility of enforcing this law. You can apply for
a permit and you will be issued a permit, you will now restrain your
cattle or whatever livestock you have, you restrain it and continue to
do your business as nobody is sending anybody out of Benue State, that
is the misconception that so many people have, they say that we have
made a law to send many people out of Benue State, that is not true. We
are saying that we need everybody in the state to move forward, that is
the issue but in as much as we need everybody, everybody will need to
live in peace and there should be a norm that to protect life and
property in the state. If you want to own your livestock, go ahead, own
your livestock but these are the guiding rules, if you want to be a crop
farmer, go ahead and do your crop farming activities, by the way, Benue
State is the food basket of the nation and if we continue to fight and
kill ourselves this way, we cannot continue to maintain that status. So,
it was these ideas that made the governor to sponsor a bill to the
State House of Assembly, which conducted a public hearing and then
gathered the opinion of all the people of Benue State before they made
the law and I assure you that whatever you see in that law is the
collective opinion and views of all the people of Benue State.
What has been your achievements in office as the Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in Benue State
One of the first
things the governor did on assumption of office was to reactivate the
Advisory Council on the Prerogative of Mercy because he discovered that a
lot of Benue indigenes who were convicted, some sentenced to death,
some sentenced to life imprisonment and we had so many of them
languishing in various prison yards across the country. So, he
reactivated the Council and they visited several prisons in Nigeria, we
came back with a lot of recommendations which he agreed with us. We
recommended to him and I want to say that most of the criminals who were
condemned to death were converted in prisons, some became preachers,
some became pastors and so on and he freed them . Most of their families
have been coming to thank the governor for what he did for them.
Apart from that we
have been working tirelessly with prison officials to see how we
decongest the prisons. During the last Democracy Day, the governor freed
about 43 inmates of Makurdi, Gboko and Oturkpo prisons based on
recommendations from prison authorities. Sometime, you have prisoners
who were freed but not released because they could not pay their option
of fines and in these cases, the governor paid for them because we have
the conviction that they have turned away from their bad ways and have
become good given the fact that the prison is not just to punish, but to
reform the prisoners.
What about expeditious dispensation of Justice in the State?
In the Ministry of
Justice, I have constituted a Task Force to decongest the cases that we
met on ground. We have been filing Director of Public Prosecution, DPP's
advice expeditiously. We don't allow the files to stay in the Ministry
because as soon as the files are brought by the Police, the DPP will
prepare the legal advice and we issue them and arraign the suspects at
the State High Courts promptly.
We cannot do all
these things without the support and approval of the governor , who
himself has this passion for the citizens of the state without
exception. When you inform him that this is what your citizens are going
through, he will always listen to you.
He has purchased
vehicles for Judges in the state and he is trying his best to improve
their working conditions so that they will do their best for the state.
He has facilitated the appointment of more Judges for the State
Judiciary since we came into office. We have a smooth working
relationship with the State Judiciary and we are always there for them.
Because of the recession, we cannot attend to all the problems at the
same time, but we are doing our best and that is what the governor is
doing so far.
He is the first
governor to renovate facilities at the headquarters of the State
Ministry of Justice in the state capital which has been there since
1976. It is a major achievements and most my predecessors in office have
been sending congratulatory messages to me because of this. He is also
renovating the High Court building in Oturkpo. We are happy at all
these, nevertheless, there is always room for further improvement and
developments and I am sure that when the economy of the state improves,
the governor will do more.
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