{"id":30047,"date":"2016-11-05T05:53:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-05T05:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/nigeria-judges-suspended-amid-anti-corruption\/"},"modified":"2016-11-05T05:53:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-05T05:53:09","slug":"nigeria-judges-suspended-amid-anti-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/nigeria-judges-suspended-amid-anti-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria judges suspended amid anti-corruption probe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Nigeria&#8217;s Judicial Council has suspended seven senior judges, who are being investigated for corruption.}<\/p>\n<p>The judges are accused of taking bribes in exchange for favourable judgements &#8211; allegations they have denied.<\/p>\n<p>Security agents allegedly confiscated thousands of dollars when they raided the judges&#8217; houses last month.<\/p>\n<p>President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to tackle corruption in the oil-rich nation during his election campaign last year.<\/p>\n<p>The judicial regulatory body of Nigeria, the National Judicial Council (NJC), said the judges should not perform judicial functions while on trial for alleged corruption.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Judicial officials who are being investigated for alleged high-profile criminal offences (must) not perform judicial functions until their cases are concluded,&#8221; said Chief Justice Mahmud Mohammed, who is the head of the council.<\/p>\n<p>A total of 15 judges are under investigation. Seven of them had been arrested last month by the Department of State Service (DSS) but have now been released on bail.<br \/>\nJustice ministry sources say the judges will be charged in the coming days, the AFP news agency reports.<\/p>\n<p>The NJC, which aims to ensure the independence of the judiciary, has also set up a three-member transparency and anti-corruption committee to handle petitions and graft accusations against the judges.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-16196 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_92253030_gettyimages-51054797.jpg\" alt=\"Nigeria&#039;s Department of State Service says the corruption investigation started in April\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Nigeria&#8217;s Judicial Council has suspended seven senior judges, who are being investigated for corruption.} The judges are accused of taking bribes in exchange for favourable judgements &#8211; allegations they have denied. Security agents allegedly confiscated thousands of dollars when they raided the judges&#8217; houses last month. President Muhammadu Buhari vowed to tackle corruption in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-30047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30047"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=30047"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=30047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}