Exclusive Excerpts2: Law Personality Interview Questions with Prof. Peter Umeadi, The APGA 2023 Presidential Candidate
LAW PERSONALITY INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
Looking back to your career at the Bench would you say that you had a fulfilled professional experience? How and why.
Yes, I had a fulfilled career at the Bench. I was told by a former Chief Registrar in the old Anambra State who later became a Judge of High Court of Anambra State that I was the youngest person to be made a Judge in the Eastern Region at the time. It became evident, as soon after my appointment the scramble for the younger lawyers to get on the Bench started. With all modesty my litigation and solicitors works at the Bar prepared me for my work on the Bench. It did not however save me from the baptism of fire which I went through on my first day of sitting on the Bench at High Court Nnewi. One had to transform to the new mind set about work on the Bench which ought to center on dispensing justice to all manner of men without fear or favour ill will or affection. It was the duty of the Judge to listen to the argument on the matter before him from all the facts and hopefully come to a reasonable decision based on the law. There is a penchant in our Nigerian psyche where everyone expects to win and are hard put to accept defeat. However, the truism is that from the onset some facts have more weight than others and if things were properly considered some matters ought not progress to litigation at all, those matters should have been resolved through the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanism where available. The sad fact sometimes is that notwithstanding the weak facts of a case parties prefer to proceed on to protracted litigation. When they lose they blame everyone else except themselves. The Emeritus Chief Judge of Anambra State, Justice Obiora Nwazota of blessed memory would always remind us Judges that the Bench is not a place where you come to be popular. It is all about doing the right thing at all times. I would say with modesty that I held to those tenets in all my time on the Bench.