When the Department of State Security (DSS) based on discreet information of corrupt practices labeled against some Justices of the Supreme Court, the Service descended on residences of those corrupt judges and made several mind boggling discoveries at the early stage of the first term tenure of the Buhari presidency. There were outcries of human right violation from the hypocrites in our midst feasting in the temple of justice. Corruption was undergoing perfection in Courts.
When a former Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Onnoghen was booted out disgracefully for corrupt enrichment, same hypocrites disturbed our peace, so was the case with Walter’s successor, Justice Ibrahim Tanko who hurriedly vacated the exalted seat before he could be fired to save face. But why are our judges in their right sense always found wanting and corrupt in the first place?
The worst of the judges are those semi-illiterates appointed to preside over various Upper Area, Shari’ah and Customary Courts across Nigeria.
Those judges have redefined what deliverance of credible justice means other than perfecting corrupt practice through fronts, touts or directly to water their appetite and taste for corruption.
Nigeria’s Supreme Court and other courts are now business and extortion centres or at best, gambling houses for those with the funds to play the game according to the beats of the corrupt judges as rules.
If carefully reasoned, in the history of the affairs of mankind, wherever and whenever democracy thrives as the government of the people, by the people and for the people to give people the best available option and the best shot they can have at good governance, a vibrant, virile and visionary judiciary is never at a distance.
In fact, whenever a society has been able to forge a content citizenry out of an otherwise disgruntled mishmash of men and women who would ordinarily favor a survival of the fittest, it is usually because of a proactive judiciary is always around to resolve conflicts and clear away the cobwebs that so often accompany people and their matters.
Firmly etched into human experience of existing in any society is the harrowing fact that whenever the judiciary fails to meet the ends of justice or whenever people have not perceived that justice has been met accordingly, jungle justice takes over and the wounds always take longer time to heal.
Nigeria’s democratic landscape is littered with a history of intervention by the courts. Of pristine moments when the courts stepped in to halt illegality or to check the abuse of power thus bringing surging impunity to a screeching stop. Some of the Nigerian judiciary’s most forceful interventions have come to shape the country’s electoral landscape in times when an ambiguous law or sheer electoral malfeasance threatened the will of the Nigerian people.
The Courts’ interventions have no doubt largely helped to sanitize a system that has not always been without blemish. But more than cleaning the Augean stable, the actions of the judiciary in not stopping electoral thieves in their tracks have destroyed the foundations of Nigeria’s democracy and renewed hope among Nigerians that there may not be something for them in their own country.
Ahead of critical judgment by the then 2023 Presidential Election Petition Tribunal, questions mounted over the sincerity of the tribunal to rectify the rot that was to rise from the judgment. When the question of sincerity was thrown the way of the judiciary, it was often directed at asking whether the independence and impartiality of the judiciary remained inviolate.
A careful study of the judicial summersault and abracadabra associated with Yobe North Senatorial District All Progressives Congress (APC) primary election where a dispute existed over the ticket of the party that meandered its way to the Supreme Court, ‘unfortunately’ for the democracy, the ticket was definitively awarded or allegedly bought over by a hitherto embattled Sen. Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan, the immediate past Senate President who has since been overdue for permanent retirement from public service not only in politics. But shamelessly and gluttonuously, the man is still loitering on the corridor of the senate for greed and only God knows of what relevance is he to his constituency.
Bashir Machina, who contested the party primary had convincingly won the May 2022 election for Yobe North Senatorial contest, but the ‘greedy ingrate’ Ahmed Lawan who has been in the national assembly since 1999 and was not a participant in the APC Yobe North senatorial primary election in May 2022, returned with bruises all over his face from the APC presidential primary in which Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu had mopped the floor with him in spite of the glaring fact that he was touted as the favorite of the powers that be to whip up a titanic tussle over the destination of the ticket.
He had relinquished the senatorial contest when his grand illusions had convinced him that the country’s presidency was his for the asking and for grab on platter of gold as if Nigerians were conquered slaves to have the likes of Ahmed Lawan as a president. He was caught day dreaming, living in a world of illusion and was duly paid in his own coins by the APC Convention Delegates who confined him and his tall ambition to the dustbin of history.
Lawan’s quest to rip the APC Yobe North senatorial ticket off the unyielding claws of Machina laid bare the starling hypocrisy of the leadership of the APC which swiftly ruled that Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan won the ticket in a primary election that was never held to public knowledge with Ahmed Lawan as an aspirant.
When Bashir Machina rushed to the Court through his reputable counsel, Ibrahim kanje Bawa SAN to seek redress, the Federal High Court sitting in Damaturu, Yobe State, delivered judgment in his favor. A repeat was the case at the Court of Appeal which held that he was the rightful candidate for the senatorial zone for the February 25, 2023 elections.
Thus, Bashir remained the rightful APC candidate for Yobe North Senatorial District election until the mighty Supreme Court’s judgment which upturned the two earlier judgments and gave a non-participant in the primary election a dash of the ticket in a claimed democracy or do we say democrazy?
The infamous judgment of the Supreme Court has since sent shivers and shockwaves through Nigeria’s courts of public opinion and casting doubts on sincerity of the judgment and credibility of the judiciary.
For many Nigerians especially those who are not conversant with the delicate mechanics of justice including Sen. Rochas Anayo Okorocha, the judgment was perverse, bias and an injury to the credibility of the judicial system and the growth of democracy. It was a clear case of daylight robbery against credible justice.
And therein was a prodigious problem of perception that may not be solved with ease in decades to come as Nigerians anxiously waited for the other judicial bomb from the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal under the chairmanship of Justice Haruna Tsammani, a onetime respected jurist of the Federal Court of Appeal.
Commenting on the then fragile situation at hand threatening credibility of the judicial system and possible derailment of confidence in the democracy and the judiciary if left unchecked, an Abuja based lawyer and political activist, Barrister Umar Farouk said: “The majority judgment delivered by the Supreme Court in respect of the APC candidate for Yobe North Senatorial election, did not find and concluded that Bashir Machina was not with a meritorious case. What the majority found was that the means through which the substantive suit commenced was faulty and built on such a faulty foundation which necessitated the suit to suffer the sanction of a striking out that should be understood by all from the point of law without prejudice to any of the parties involved
“Personal opinions formed on matters before any court of competent jurisdiction does not count in law because it has never been part of law. It is rather the unbiased decision of presiding judge or judges that matters, and should always be accepted and respected at all times”.
Notwithstanding the opinion from the point of law by a minister in the temple of justice to douse tension and strengthen the records to our understanding, but to a layman, the economics of justice must always take precedence over emotions of it, in a country where failing and flailing institutions have conspired to drag over 200million citizens into the mire, what people think about any person or process absolutely matters.
Were the impossibly fine margins not enough for the Supreme Court to learn of substantial justice of chaos and conspiracy that are determined to stampede the judiciary?
With crucial judgment of the presidential election petition tribunal then right around the corner, Nigerians were not wrong to be apprehensive about what role the tribunal could play in handling the election petition with the hope that judgment could not be delivered based on mere escape route called technicality.
Under the Tinubu handed over governance before the verdict of the tribunal which Nigerians had anxiously expected it to pack its bags and baggage as unfit, Nigerians patiently watched how the judiciary was repeatedly bruised and battered by those that had reasons.
The height of it all was when a sitting Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen was chased and booted out from office in suspicious circumstances and arraigned before the Code of Conduct Tribunal.
Yet, for the sake of whatever is left in the country and of the country, the judiciary must rise to the occasion in what is a critical period in the life of the country. The presidential election petition judgment has brought an avalanche of allegations and accusations accompanied with a legion of litigations where the need arose against certain political players without immunity. However, the judiciary must stand firm to stem the tide of impunity and issue a brand of justice that will match the will of the Nigerian people and the international community that is losing trust and confidence in everything Nigerian.
While it may be yet impossible for the judiciary to recover all of its battered reputation most especially on how the Supreme Court awarded the gubernatorial office of Rivers State to Nyeson Wike in 2015, Imo State to Sen. Hope Uzodinma in 2019 and how the Court of Appeal Jos Division awarded Bauchi North Senatorial seat to Adamu Bulkachuwa against the actual winner of the 2019 election, Farouk Mustapha, the Plateau State and National Assemblies victories to APC against the INEC declared actual winners of PDP extraction and several other cases across the country. But, hope is not lost as there may be light at the end of the tunnel for yet another chance of a shot at redemption.
While the character of majority of judges in Nigeria is undoubtedly in question, there is no escaping the fact that many Nigerian judges are hard at work and always doing the right thing within the temple of justice deserving commendation, and they ought to be encouraged to keep on going for the sake of Nigeria’s hard-won democracy, security and the sacrifices necessary to bequeath a prosperous country to the yet unborn.
As for all those who continue to bend the rules to exclude others thereby leaving the judiciary with near impossible tasks, the day will surely come when Nigeria will be too narrow a place for them to exert their iniquitous influences. The day is coming at a lightning speed!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues.
