I am not too sure my colleagues have lost their voices in this regard. Are the legal advisers of the political parties involved comfortable with the notorious acts? Where are the other giants in the profession? Where is the International Federation of Women Lawyers? The members of the public may view the failure to condemn these dangerous acts and utterances as a tacit endorsement. The Nigerian Bar Association, in a statement released on Monday, February 24, 2020, did right by condemning the attack on the judiciary. As the NBA also rightly noted, the mob action was a notice to all judicial officers to check the direction in which the wind of the privileged blows before making their judgments or orders. Let me state that, by speaking up andspeaking out, we can help preserve the integrity and independence of the judiciary. Anarchy is the only substitute to a judiciary without integrity. When we remove orderliness that the judiciary vests on society, we put ourselves on a fast track to the Hobbesian state of nature. As Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, rightly observed, “[w]hen the Judiciary is finally taken out and a reign of terror is institutionalized, then nobody will have anywhere to run to.” The bigger danger lies in the fact that we, as a nation, can no longer guarantee the safety of lives and properties of our judicial officers. Those that invaded the house of a Supreme Court Justice unhindered have served notice on all of us that they, or others like them, can do more terrible and unimaginable things where the judiciary dishes out any judgment or order that causes them discomfort. The entire judiciary is under siege and the personal safety of judges will now be central to making court judgments and orders. This is sad. Here, I disagreewith the NBA that the law enforcement agencies are part ofthe executive and that the latter should have taken action. As far as I am concerned, they are institutions set up by law and whose role is regulated by the enabling law. They need no prompting from anywhere. It is our encouragement of tying them to the executive’s apron that has landed us where we are today. For us to build strong 
institutions in our nation as opposed to strong individuals, we need to hold the institutions accountable against their enabling laws. I am not too sure that going through the Police Act there is a portion that says prevention, investigation and enforcement of laws must be with the permission, prompting and/or instruction of the executive. The recent events in the investigation of US President DonaldTrump bears eloquent testimony to the status of institutions in civilized climes. The laws are not that different from the Nigerian laws setting up the institutions. Beyond lawyers being ministers in the temple of justice in which the protection of the judges fall on our laps, even if it be for selfish reason of our survival, we need to condemn this untoward trend collectively and individually. In case we are failing and or ignoring to appreciate the magnitude of the challenge before us as Nigerian lawyers, let me inform you that the implication ranges from the fact that we, as lawyers, can equally be blown off in the courtroom one day. It also signifies the future possibility of lawyers being attacked outside the courtroom or in their houses by the losing party. Besides, we must appreciate that the loss of confidence of the public in the justice system signifies the end of the law profession that is already threatened. Are we going to wait until this starts happening for us to act? A more disturbing aspect of this untoward episode is that, despite the fact that there are video recordings of the persons that invaded Hon. Justice Odili’s residence, as at the time of writing this piece, not a single individual has been arrested for the invasion. Our security agencies, particularly the Nigeria Police Force, have questionsto answer in this regard. When these thugs’ initial invasion of the house of a Justice on February 14, 2020, attracted no consequence from the security agencies, they returned with a larger force on February 18, 2020. This only speaks to the encouragement, which these thugs received from the failure of the security agencies to act.
The other event as indicated above is the effect of discussing matters that are sub judice. It is common knowledge that, in both the Imo and Bayelsa cases, both PDP and APC have respectively applied to the Supreme Court for a review of the decisions in the two states. The frivolity or otherwise of these applications for review is not what I would want to delve into in this piece, only the Supreme Court can decide that. The effect of these applications, however, is that the matters remain sub judice, and, therefore, counsel and parties ought to refrain from commenting publicly on the matters. Hence, Rule 33 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners, 2007, prohibits lawyers or law firms associated with a matter, while litigationis anticipated or pending, from making or participating in making any extra-judicial statements that are calculated to prejudice or interfere with or is reasonably capable of prejudicing or interfering with fair trial of the matter or the judgment. In the instant matter, not only are people freely discussing and expressing opinions on these matters, the processes filed for the “review” of the Supreme Court’s judgments have also been subjected to extra-judicial analysis. The effect of the foregoing is that these public comments are capable of interfering with and prejudicing the fair and just determination of the matters. One may even believe that these public comments as well as availability of the processes in the media are tailored to unduly influence or intimidate the learned Justices of the Supreme Court.
My primary constituency, the legal profession, is at the heart of this kerfuffle. We are the enablers. Non-lawyers did not represent themselves in court; they engaged the services of legal practitioners. By Rule 30 of the Rules of ProfessionalConduct for Legal Practitioners, every lawyer is, first of all, an officer of the court. The courtroom is our place of business, and whether your practice i litigation-intensive or not, where the integrity of the judiciary is pulverized, our service will become otiose and unattractive. We, lawyers, need a strong and independent judiciary in order to attract the right business. If we watch while judges are bullied to submission or we, as lawyers, directly ortacitly through our premature review of pending cases, unduly mount pressure on the judges, then we may be confusing the conflagration consuming our house for mere pyrotechnics. By the time we realise what it is, it may be too late to save the house.
The appalling aspect of this is lawyers that are ministers in the temple of justice that must uphold the sanctity of the institution, are mostly discussing the cases under review on the social media. While it may not directly be forbidden for lawyers not to engage in the cases to comment on them, I am of the strong opinion that it is unethical for lawyers to so be engaging. The truth of the matter is that our privileged position of being lawyers is capable of sending wrong signals or creating wrong impressions to members of the public and doing damage to the eventual judgment delivered. The amazing thing at times is that such comments are devoid of the knowledge of the facts and circumstances informing the decision, thereby misleading the public at large. This is not in the best interest of lawyers and the society at large. We must, as lawyers, refrain from it as I am not too perturbed if the comments are from non-lawyers, but where the actors arelawyers it becomes worrisome.
The third tangential aspect is the observance of the rule of law. The concept of rule of law is simple enough for all to understand. As the legendary English jurist, Albert Venn Dicey, described it in his book, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, rule of law entails absolute supremacy or predominance of regular law as opposed to the influence of arbitrary power; it excludes the existence of arbitrariness, of prerogative, or even of wide discretionary authority on the part of government.
To Dicey, rule of law further entails equality before the law or the equal subjection of all classes to the ordinary law of the land administered by the ordinary courts. A corollary of this is that no one is above the law. Without a doubt, rule of law is just textbook postulations without a judicial arm that can dispense justice, irrespective of whose ox is gored, a judiciary that is removed from external influences.
Where a society cannot boast of an independent judiciary, and that society claims to observe the tenets of rule of law, that society is, for all intents and purposes, a farce. It is, therefore, due to the central role of the judiciary in the enthronement of the rule of law that the doctrine of separation of powers has assumed a pivotal role in representative democracies. Although separation of powers, in the truest sense, does not equate compartmentalisation of powers among the arms of government, it demands that each arm operates within its constitutionally-defined precinct without encroachment on the precincts of the other arms of government. In thisregard, the Constitution has built democratic institutions in a manner that prevents the executive arm of government from usurping the constitutional powers of the judicial arm of government, just as the judiciary cannot encroach on the legislative terrain.
That is why, in building institutions within democratic settings, functions and powers of the institutions created are clearly defined in a manner that commands each institution to stay in its lane, with due regard to legally allowed interplay among the institutions so created. Therefore, the judiciary, which is a creation of the Constitution (see Section 6 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as altered), is constitutionally shielded from undue interference from the other arms of government or any other external force.
It is important to note that courts are only courts because of their ability to make orders. A component of this ability is that courts do not act in vain, therefore, in making orders, courts have a legitimate expectation that their orders will be complied with. Without this assurance, judgments and orders of court are, as the German Chancellor, T. Von Bethmann Hollweg, described the 1839 Treaty of London, nothing but scraps of paper. Not only does willful non-compliance reduce judgments and orders to scraps of paper, but, more importantly, robs the judiciary of its potency and justice a mere slogan without substance. We might as well scrap the judiciary if we do not want to respect court orders. May that day never come!
It is in this context that decisions of courts must always be accorded the deserved respect. A situation where such decisions are treated with disdain does not only threaten our democracy but simply returns us to the primitive age. In this regard, attorneys-general at all levels of governance need to be alive to their responsibilities under the Constitution and the rules of professional conduct. It is professional misconduct, in my view, for an attorney-general to disregard or encourage and ignore the enforcement of the decision of courts and should be so treated. The attorneys-general are officers of the court and have a responsibility to ensurethat the integrity of the courts are preserved.
Where the attorney-general picks and chooses which orders to obey and which to disregard, the NBA ought to refer the attorney-general’s conduct to the Legal Practitioner’s Disciplinary Committee. I believe that, where this is done, the persons appointed as attorneys-general will conduct themselves in the appropriate manner, and where the kitchen gets too hot they will leave the cabinet rather than have their professional name soiled. Executives that cannot find a malleable lawyer to occupy that office will, therefore, have second thoughts in such disregard.
One point we, Nigerians, must understand is that maintaining the sanctity of the judiciary and according respect to our courts is sacrosanct, if we truly want the outside world to respect us as a nation. The integrity of the judiciary is at the centre of our international relations. Studies have consistently established that a combination of adherence to rule of law and having a strong and independent judicial system is central to attracting foreign investment. Please, see Lee, Biglaiser and Staats, Legal System Pathways to Foreign Direct Investment in the Developing World (Foreign Policy Analysis, 2014) 10, 393–411 for further reading on this. Who would want to put his money in anenvironment where court orders are worth less than scraps of paper? Why would any sane investor deem it fit to invest in a country where the chairman of the ruling party’s vitriol on the Supreme Court was immediately followed by an invasion of the residence of a Supreme Court justice? Would it be deemed wise to engage in honest business dealings in a clime where the government and its people conduct an extra-judicial review of court orders in order to determine which is worthy of being obeyed? Why, I must ask, would anyone, except crooks in need of a land where anything goes, commercially venture into a terrain where judges are constantly subjected to manufactured opprobrium anytime a section of the society deems a judgment unfavourable to it?
We, Nigerians, are the architects of our own misfortune. We sabotage ourselves at every turn. As we have seen, the failure to respect the judiciary will birth definite anarchy. If we must interrogate and zero this attitude down to the recent events formingthe basis of the instant writing, we must then recognise that, collectively, we are in trouble.
In sum, we lawyers must locate ourselves wherever we are and wake up from our slumber. We cannot just sit back and watch the destruction of the judiciary. We cannot allow politicians and their goons to turn our judges to endangered species. Under no circumstance must we let our Judges feel unsafe to do justice. We must assume a central role in securing and protecting the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. This I consider my final words on this issue, while reserving the right of reply in the event of any rejoinder.