In the history of the affairs of mankind, wherever and whenever democracy has thrived 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 far away.
In fact, whenever a society has been able to forge a content citizenry out of an otherwise disgruntled mismash of men and women who would ordinarily favour a survival of the fittest, it was usually because a proactive judiciary was always around to resolve conflicts and clear away the cobwebs that so often accompany men and their matters.
Firmly etched into human experience of existing in any society is the harrowing fact that whenever the judiciary has failed to meet the ends of justice or whenever people have not percieved that justice has been met, the wounds have always taken 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 stables, the actions of the judiciary in stopping electoral thieves in their tracks have strengthened the foundations of Nigeria’s democracy and renewed hope among Nigerians that there may yet be something for them in their own country.
Ahead of critical elections which are just days away, questions are mounting over the readiness of the judiciary to rectify the rot that will no doubt rise from the elections. When the question of readiness is thrown the way of the judiciary,it is often directed at asking whether the independence and impartiality of the judiciary have remained inviolate.
The dam of questions about the readiness of the judiciary was broken open by two recent decisions that have raised more than a few eyebrows around the country.
In Osun State,the election petition tribunal had sacked Ademola Adeleke the State Governor after it found that he did not win the election of July 16 2022 election. The problem with that one is that majority of the good people of Osun State have no doubt that if the election is conducted ten times over, the candidate of the PDP will emerge victorious. It begs the question of what really the tribunal found.
From Yobe North Senatorial District, a dispute over the ticket of the All Progressives Congress had meandered its way to the Supreme Court where the ticket was definitively awarded to Ahmed Lawan the Senate President.
Bashir Machina won the May 2022 primaries handsomely for Yobe North Senatorial District handsomely. But Ahmed Lawan returned with eggs all over his face from the All Progressives Congress presidential primaries during which Bola Tinubu mopped the floor with him in spite of the fact that he was the clear favorite of the powers that be to whip up a titanic tussle over the destination of the ticket.
He had relinquished the ticket when his grand illusions had convinced him that the country’s presidency was his for the taking.
His quest to rip the ticket off the unyielding claws of Machina laid bare the startling hypocrisy of the leadership of the All Progressives Congress which swiftly ruled that Ahmad Lawan won the ticket in dubious primary elections.
When Machina rushed to court, the Federal High Court sitting in Yobe found in his favor. A repeat was the case at the Court of Appeal which held that he was the rightful candidate of the senatorial zone in the elections.
Thus, Bashir Machina remained the rightful candidate of the All Progressives Congress in the Yobe North Senatorial district until the Supreme Court’s judgment which gave the coveted ticket to Ahmad Lawan.
The judgment has sent shockwaves through Nigeria’s court of public opinion. For many Nigerians especially those who are not initiates of the delicate mechanics of justice, the judgment could only have been bought or brought about by corrupt means. And therein lies a prodigious problem: the problem of perception.
The Nigerian judiciary has become so discredited rather unjustifiably in the eyes of many Nigerians that no matter which way a judgment goes, there would be many who think that more than just judicial industry and ingenuity went into it.
The majority judgment of the court did not find and conclude that Bashir Machina was without a meritorious case. What the majority found was that the means through which the suit was commenced was faulty and having been built on such faulty foundations, the suit had to suffer the sanction of a striking out.
While the economics of justice must always take precedence over the emotions of it, in a country where failing and flailing institutions have conspired to drag over 200 million people into the mire, what people think about any person or process absolutely matters.
It begs the question if there was no other way for the Supreme Court to have prevented the ticket from falling into the classless claws of the Senate President in spite of the shenanigans of the All Progressives Congress.
Were the impossibly fine margins not enough for the Supreme Court to lean in favour of substantial justice instead of heeding the siren calls of technical justice and supplying hay to those who herd the cattle of chaos and conspiracy that are determined to stampede the judiciary?
With crucial elections right around the corner, Nigerians are right to be apprehensive about the what their courts may do. Under the current administration which is gratefully packing its bags, Nigerians have watched the judiciary repeatedly bruised and battered. The height of it all was when a sitting Chief Justice of Nigeria was booted out in suspicious circumstances.
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 elections will bring an avalanche of accusations and a legion of litigations. 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.
While it may be yet impossible for the judiciary to recover all of its battered reputation, it may yet have another shot at redemption.
While the character of some judges in Nigeria is undoubtedly in question, there is no escaping the fact that many Nigerian judges are hard at work always to do the right thing. They must keep going for the sake of Nigeria’s hard-won democracy and the sacrifices necessary to bequeath a prosperous country to the 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 soon come when Nigeria will be too narrow a place for them to exert their iniquitous influences.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
