In case you’re in doubt, the judiciary is still the last hope of the common man. The situation has not changed. And the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, is not in any mood to have it otherwise.
However, I’d like to begin this week’s article with a word of advice for all the common men within the Nigerian jurisdiction: Next time anyone drags you to a court, don’t hire a lawyer. Instead, use about half of the money you would ordinarily have paid to your SAN-lawyer and bribe the judge. You can then go home and rest assured that you’ve won the case.
Milord would find whatever ground (within or outside of the statutes) to discharge and acquit you. It does not matter whether you committed murder, armed robbery or election fraud. Even if your adversary hires all the Senior Advocates Nigeria has to offer, your judge friend would sit on the bench, listen to all the arguments (or, at least, pretend to listen) and, irrespective of whatever evidence before him, rule in your favour. Who needs a lawyer, when you can buy the judge? I rise!!
Yes, the judiciary (both Bench and Bar) has caught the money-sharing bug – and is now dangerously staggering about, in drunken stupor.
Of course, I’ve always known that there is a thin line between the Bar and the Bench. In fact, the two are actually related viz: Whenever you go to your local bar, you sit on a bench to drink. And when you have drunken yourself to stupor, you then fall off the bench. But even when you fall off the bench, you’re still within the bar. It is only when your drunkenness becomes so bad that you constitute a nuisance in the bar that you’re then kicked out of the bar. But since the lawyers like to speak ‘big English’ (high-sounding nonsense), they don’t say they kicked you out. They would say they have de-robed you or debarred you – whatever that means.
Thankfully, the outgoing CJN chose the event of the new legal year and the swearing-in of new Senior Advocates of Nigeria on Monday to strike at this cankerworm that has brought the judiciary to its knees, even as everyone else seems too scared to call a spade by its name.
But the CJN would not be intimidated. He revealed that the National Judicial Council (NJC) had commenced the probe of certain judges connected to the recent show of shame over the controversial convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Of course, the PDP episode is better forgotten. But the pronouncements, injunctions and counter-injunctions by courts of concurrent jurisdiction, over the same matter of convention of the former ruling party is the stuff epochal infamy is made of.
Although nobody has accused any judge of sharp practices, tongues have been wagging as to what could have been responsible for the seeming judicial bedlam. Fears are also being raised as to how this trend could sound the death knell for Nigeria’s democracy.
But, while we are on the issue of the PDP, the courts and elections, a myth about the politics of Chief Tony Anenih and Sen. Francis Arthur Nzeribe readily comes to my mind. According to the fable, both Nzeribe and Anenih (who, by the way, remains the revered Leader, irrespective of what Governor Oshiomhole thinks) have a similar maxim whenever they (or their cronies) are going into an election. It’s summed thus: “Do whatever it takes to ensure that you ‘win’ the ballot. If you have to rig, rig. Don’t allow yourself to be outrigged. If your opponents unleash thugs, match them thug-for-thug, gun-for-gun. Win by whatever means possible, and let your opponent be the one going to court, seeking to reverse your ‘victory’. That way, you’d be attending the court sessions from a position of strength – the mandate firmly in your hand.”
The reasoning behind this tactic is that it would not be unlikely that the plaintiff would not have gathered all the evidence needed to upturn your glaring electoral fraud. Besides, there is also every chance that the man who outspent you, outfought you and outrigged you (during the election), could also out-reach you when the need to ‘see’ the judges and members of the tribunal arises.
It was a particularly effective tactic in those PDP years, when the party that undertook the ‘capturing’ of votes was also in charge of paying the salary of the judges. Again, I rise!!
Judges, no doubt, have the power of life and death, especially over those of us lesser mortals, who have the (mis)fortune of subscribing to the rule of law. And like the little gods that they are, they have used their powers to the fullest – sometimes, to the level of abuse. This explains why both the CJN and the NJC have been forced to bare their fangs. Let’s just hope they are also able to bite at the same time.
However, Mohammed and the NJC would do well to extend their searchlight to the election petition tribunals, from where all manner of worrisome verdicts have continued to emanate.
Like it happened in the case of the tribunal on the Abia North Senatorial election re-run, we have seen instances where a tribunal chairman literally took over the case of one of the parties to the petition, willfully throwing out evidence after evidence adduced against his favoured litigant, deciding which witness to listen to and which not to listen to, discrediting ‘opposing’ witnesses (including a star witness and a forensic expert). We have seen instances where a tribunal granted appellants prayers they did not ask for and, in other instances, arrive at different conclusions with the same set of evidence.
A situation whereby a judge makes up his mind not to accept any evidence or witness assembled by one party, as exemplified in the recent Abia North Senatorial election case, leaves much to be desired.
A situation whereby a tribunal dismisses very grave issues on some flimsy technicality appears to me like a monumental miscarriage of justice. Or, at best, that judgement was given in place of justice. A situation whereby a particular provision, originally accepted by the tribunal as sacrosanct, is suddenly set aside in the ruling of the same tribunal, in order to nullify the solid argument of the unfavoured party, is, no doubt, the height of judicial inconsistency and raises a red flag on the verdict; suddenly, anomaly has become the new normal. But, I guess, that’s why I’m not a lawyer, let alone, a judge. Surely, in my next life, I’ll be a tribunal judge. I rise!
Ironically, it is not only those of us ‘unlearned’ colleagues of the legal professionals that are feeling the heat. Many lawyers have also been handed the short end of the stick. Legal Practice is now an endangered profession in Nigeria, endangered by none other than the judiciary itself. Many lawyers are grumbling, unable to publicly voice their disgust, for fear of being charged with professional misconduct (and dragged before the same judges). Their grouse is that a handful of judges and senior lawyers, in pursuit of filthy lucre, are dragging the judiciary into disrepute – and, with it, the entire Law profession.
I am told there are about eight to ten High Court judges in such major cities as Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt, who have put a price tag on justice. They’re said to have particular interest in political, Maritime and Oil & Gas cases. They work with a small clique of very senior lawyers who serve as their go-between, liaising between them and those whose cases are before their lordships.
Hmm! All this money they’re sharing in the judi-sharing…There is God o!
But then, money is not always the only influence on the judges. Sometimes too, the establishment mounts its own pressure. This is why, even as Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu hangs unto his belief in the Judiciary, I seriously doubt that his only adversaries in the Abia North debacle are Mao Ohuabunwa and his gang of Abia politicians.

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