According to Chief Justice Wowo, Justice Nkea took a D30,000 bribe in exchange for a favorable ruling in the case involving one Mr. Mbake. Prior to making this accusation, Wowo had tried to have the presiding judge recuse himself from the case because he considers him to be biased, apparently for what he know of the character of the sitting judge. In leveling the bribery charge, Wowo challenged Nkea to issue a court order for him to produce the evidence. Nkea declined.
Another accusation leveled against Nkea by Wowo is that the presiding judge is acting illegally because he's illegally occupying the office of Justice of the Special Criminal Court. The logic employed here by Wowo is that since he occupied the Office of the Chief Justice illegally before he was dismissed several month ago and it was during his tenure that he extended Justice Nkea's contract, therefore "it follows that all the actions, decisions and judgments that Justice Nkea has taken since the renewal of his contract by a supposed illegal Chief Justice are null and void', he opined. As far as Wowo is concerned, Nkea should also be stripped of his judgeship and all his decisions, including his latest judgement against Amadou Sanneh, the Treasurer of the leading opposition United Democratic Party, taken as Special Criminal Court judge be considered null and void.
This blog has written a great deal about these two characters employed by the Gambian dictator whose main interest is not in dispensing justice but settling political scores. You can find "The return of Justice Wowo" here: http://sidisanneh.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-return-of-wowo.html., "The silver lining in the Joseph Wowo bribery scandal" here: http://sidisanneh.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-silver-lining-in-joseph-wowo.html, "the world is watching the Gambian judiciary" here : http://sidisanneh.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-world-is-watching-gambian-judiciary.html , "Justice Emmanuel Nkea is the eye of the storm" can be forund here and finally "Justice Emmauel Nkea will also be held responsible" in the case of Amadou Sanneh can be found here: http://sidisanneh.blogspot.com/2013/11/justice-emmanuel-nkea-will-also-be-held.html.
Unfortunately, the judiciary has been misused and abused by the Jammeh regime and has proven to be an effective tool to suppress and subjugate a population. Emmanuel Nkea is from Cameroon and Joseph Wowo a Nigeria, and both were an integral part of an inept, corrupt and highly repressive regime until one fell afoul of the law and out of favor of the dictatorship, and the other on the brink of being thrown to the wolves just like his former friend and colleague Justice Wowo. The legal qualifications of both have been questioned by legal experts.
We have vowed to pursue these mercenary judges with a view to exposing their complicity to a criminal enterprise that is the Jammeh regime by using the courts to further subjugate and repress Gambians in the name of the law. Since the Gambia Bar Association (GBA) has been total subsumed by a corrupt and bankrupt justice system which they help create by refusing to stand up for justice, it is up to the rest of us to draw attention to the deplorable and downright embarrassing state of affairs that exists in the Gambian judiciary.
Until the GBA join hands with the opposition to say to Jammeh enough is enough, we will continue our campaign against the mercenary judges and the rotten judiciary, and to further solicit the support of the international legal community, development agencies and bi-lateral partners in our effort to stop the nonsense that's going on in Banjul.
