“Our attention has been drawn to a number of English decisions on disqualification for bias. Mr Craig, for the first defendant referred to the passage in Halsbury’s Laws of England, 3rd edition, vol. 11, para. 123, which deals with “bias by interest”, and reads- “Where the interest of the person adjudicating is not pecuniary, the order” (for prohibition or certiorari) “will not be granted unless it is shown that his interest is substantial and of such character that it will give rise to a real likelihood of bias, or that his decision was actually biased.” He invited the Court to look at the decision actually reached by Mr Enahoro and draw the conclusion that he had not been biased in fact. There seems to be no reported case in which it has been held that a person adjudicating was actually biased; of the cases cited in support of the statement in Halsbury only R. v. Tempest (1902) 86 L.T. 585 even mentions the possibility. In the rare cases where it could be proved that a decision had actually been affected by the bias of the person making it, that would no doubt be conclusive, but while suspicion is not enough the courts do not appear to have required proof that actual bias operated on the mind of the person making the decision. In Allinson v. General Council of Medical Education and Registration [1894] 1 Q.B. 750, Lord Esher, M.R. went so far as to say, at p. 758, “The question is not whether in fact he was or was not biased. The court cannot inquire into that.” In our view the correct test is that adopted by this court in Obadara v. President, Ibadan West District Grade B Customary Court (1965) N.M.L.R. 39, following R. v. Camborne, JJ. [1955] 1 Q.B. 41, namely that “a real likelihood of bias must be shown” and “must be made to appear not only from the materials in fact ascertained by the person complaining but from such further facts as he might readily have ascertained and easily verified in the course of his inquiries.”
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