Routines don’t produce heroes; heroes are products of extraordinary feat. Heroes are brilliant, very visionary but more importantly they are bold and very daring. This set of people are men and women who choose to leave the crowd to post positions and achievements that would alter the structure of society for good and for many generations to come. Our country, we must admit, has been in some kind of quagmire since after the March 2019 general elections. The presidential and some governorship elections were keenly contested and their aftermath kept the nation on her toes until last week. The security situation has not been good at all and even as you read this, it is possible that the senseless killings of innocent citizens could be on. It was there uptil last week when over 50 persons were killed for no real reason in Kaduna State. The killings have continued and everyone appears helpless.
As would be expected, killings have kept the country on edge and things are beginning to look like it could boil over. All these are giving us great concern and raising national temperature. But the political cases arising from the last general election have been of more concern to the citizens. Apart from the contentious nature of the political contests, the post-electoral matters in the court suddenly took on different colourations; there was the ethnic infusion and as the cases went on the religious side was added and of course the motive sinister. This is Nigeria and there is that belief that with money or power what is not can be made to be. Obviously, this mindset heightened tensions drawing its base on some cases decided by the Supreme Court, which in apparent frustration were taken back to the Supreme Court under the review clause for possible re-examination. Of the three cases that went to the Supreme Court, two were most contentious and they were those of Bayelsa and Imo States.
In the last 10 days or so the Supreme Court reduced the tension in the land with verdicts that are still very much controversial as the cases that were brought before them. Bayelsa case was the last to be filed but it was the first to be heard and without much labour the Supreme Court panel dismissed the case in the most despicable manner. I said despicable because apart from holding the erroneous position that it is the Supreme Court, the final arbiter that cannot sit in judgement over its own pronouncements, they went overboard to not only berate the litigants and their lawyers for bringing a hopeless matter to court but as well imposing excessive fines of N30 million each on two of the leading attorneys for the petitioner. Two things for me flow from this; the court is inadvertently trying to close its space to those who desire to ventilate their emotions and anger. Some would say emotions are empty so the court is not the right place and the answer would be that you could never distinguish what is emotive or sensible until you hear it.
It is becoming very popular with some people to say, “There must be an end to litigation.” Yes, there must be an end and that end should be when it becomes very clear to an aggrieved party that he is beginning to make a joke of himself. It is true that our institutions of law would teach that once you have gone through certain levels of adjudication people should rest, that could be the rule but nothing stops us from having a national convention which could prescribe a return to court on other grounds of the same matter and allowing the justice system take another critical view of it, approve or throw it away, of course with cost were necessary. Staying on routine does not help a nation especially a growing one like ours. I insist that the attorneys to the Bayelsa case ought not to have been talked down to as school children; they committed no wrong, and the heavy fines on them for me amounts to undue intimidation. It was strong affront on their human rights especially as it relates to their freedom to practice their profession within the law unhindered.
I have said this earlier that lawyers in America took cases bordering on slave relations from the lowest court to the Supreme Court at a time the United States Constitution, the grand law of that country legitimized the owning of slaves. The good news is that the courts in that country listened to those cases and at the Supreme Court the exchanges were often intense and interesting and in the end most of such petitions ended on a positive note. That is how to move a society forward. If it were here our judges will say their hands are tied especially as there is no provision asking them to do something else. Laws are meant for man and not man for law and that is where the role of the justices comes in: they are the soul of society. In their verdicts in the Bayelsa and Imo cases, the justices said they lacked jurisdiction and the basis was that they could not be judges over their own case. For a society that wants to remain stagnant or even retrogress that position is beautiful, but for a society that intends to be dynamic and ready to give her people the best, that position is highly retrogressive.
There is a provision for review by the highest court. It explicitly says such exercises could be on account of a slip, typographical errors, obtaining by fraud or leaving out of vital facts and or new but cogent information that could have changed the cause of justice if they were taken note of. The truth is that the introduction of review system on its own is a presumption by the writers of the law that even though the Supreme Court is the final arbiter, there are occasions very fatal mistakes could be made. The review mechanism therefore offers the biggest opportunity to ensure miscarriage of justice is avoided or reduced to very tolerable limit. That provision needed to be interpreted in the most progressive manner and that was what Justice Chima Cletus Nwaeze opted to do and did it so well. He critically reviewed the evidences and had one or two things to say. He looked at the political, social and economic variables and had something positive to say. This is how it should be. He was bold to say his mind in a country where the most hated person is the one that says the truth. This is heroic. One thing wrong with the leaders is that we make a good law and then place a caveat that destroys the spirit of the noble law.
Our country said for instance, school certificate is the requirement to run for public office and we go on the interpretation act and say if you have attended secondary school even if it is class one or have equivalent of a certificate, you are qualified. Another one says if you hold a position you can’t decamp from the party, that is the rule, but we add if the party is in crisis you can decamp. Supreme Court Justices on a number of occasions these days don’t put their verdicts in written form and they tell us the law allows it. Why must we choose the bad over the good, wouldn’t it be better and helpful to write their judgments before public critics begin their work?