In this report, Chuks Nwgbara delves into the innermost recesses of Nigeria’s judiciary to unearth the sordid details of vice and behind-the-scene happenings.
During an interaction with Nigerians in Ethiopia when he visited that country earlier in the year, President Muhammadu Buhari complained about corruption in the judiciary as the major headache hobbling his anti-corruption war.
That led to some people wondering whether he had not gone a bit too far in the disparagement of the third arm of government.
His exasperation and the dismay of many Nigerians stem from the frequent cases of the involvement of officials of the judiciary in unflattering conduct and inexplicable pronouncements from their exalted benches.
These behaviours and declarations lead to the miscarriage of justice. An unholy alliance involving bad eggs in the bar and the bench in the procurement of justice to the highest bidder.
This is much like in the pre-Renaissance era in the Medieval Church when persons of means could be granted indulgences that translated into material payment for exoneration from sin.
Judiciary’s can of worms
The instances and extent of real or imagined corruption in the labyrinth of the judicial system are not new.
The long drawn whispers in several quarters over the evident stupendous wealth and opulent lifestyle of some judges was recently blown open when a report on them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) – in which some judges were allegedly indicted for possessing properties and assets far in excess of their legitimate income – went viral.
This was followed by arrests and arraignment of some judges by the Department of State Services (DSS).
Under what it termed a “sting operation”, the DSS stormed the residences of some high ranking judges, searched and recovered astonishing sums of money and sundry potentially incriminating evidence.
These developments are sad and deeply troubling for a number of reasons. Any society is doomed whose judicial officers abandon their dignified position to descend into the mundane arena of crass materialism.
The reservations many people had about the character and reputation of some judges, which had been festering beneath the surface, was exacerbated in 2012 by the crisis of confidence that arose from the public acrimony between former Chief Justice, Aloysius Katsina-Alu, and former Court of Appeal President, Ayo Salami.
While that was the clearest pointer yet that the judiciary, like other segments of the society, had become afflicted by the incubus of corruption, the recent spate of decisions by the Supreme Court and the Appeal Court on election petitions has rekindled concern about the objectivity and impartiality of the judiciary.
One curious example is the raft of orders and counter orders by High Court judges in Abuja and Port Harcourt on the leadership tussle in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) between Alli Modu Sheriff and Ahmed Makarfi.
Another striking case is the inexplicable divergent judgments delivered by the same panel of the Court of Appeal in Owerri on the election petition appeal – suit numbers CA/OW/EPT/SEN/50/2015 and CA/OW/EPT/HR/61/2015.
The judgments gave diametrically opposite interpretations and verdicts over the same facts, circumstances and issues around mutilation of Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) result sheets and the inflation of one party’s votes/deflation of the other party’s votes.
These court verdicts have been the subject of much subdued discussion in informed judicial and governmental circles.
Nigerians in all walks of life have concluded that, as is the case in the larger society, the incidence, scope, and pervasiveness of corruption in the judiciary is an insidious cancer eating away the conscience and integrity of high and low judicial officers.
It turns our justice system into nothing more than a mere legal circus struggling to present a façade of normalcy and semblance of justice.
In the past, there were conjectures, whispers and muted complaints of contradictory judicial pronouncements, which were seen as perhaps the misapplication of the law.
Today, many are convinced that the often otiose legal sophistry most likely emanates from a Faustian bargain of law officers with filthy lucre.
Owerri Appeal Court conundrum
The abracadabra performed in the hallowed chambers of the Court of Appeal, Owerri in the judgment on the appeal filed by Nnamdi Oji against Nkole Ndukwe and others on the 2015 Arochukwu/Ohafia House of Representatives election petition is the height of judicial iniquity.
This bewildering judgment definitely fails to stand the most basic tests of objectivity and has indeed been tainted by the pronouncement of the National Judicial Council (NJC) upon the consideration of the petition of Oji against the panel which heard the case.
Perhaps at no time in the history of Nigeria’s judiciary has the stock of that once revered institution reached such a nadir of disrepute as since the slew of decisions on governorship election petitions, especially since the bewildering pronouncements on the 2015 governorship elections in Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Abia States.
Among these three infamous cases must be added the sad verdict of the Appeal Court, Owerri on the Oji case because the key grounds for dismissing it were as dubious as the jurisprudence was incredulous, to say the least.
In each of those elections, independent local and international election observers reported large scale fraud characterised by shootings, violence, ballot box snatching, and forgery of result sheets.
The legal teams of the challengers provided overwhelming evidences of fraud, and marshalled compelling legal arguments and grounds.
In each case, the tiers of our courts gave widely differing consequential interpretations and orders.
Most of the time, the courts became the ultimate killjoy of Nigerians, which hid behind a rash of legal technicalities to pronounce judgments detrimental to dispensing justice to the people.
For instance, Justice H. Mukhtar, in his concurring judgment on the Oji appeal, bafflingly referred to a non-existent issue of the improper filing of initiating process at the lower tribunal as the ground (or ratio decidedi) for dismissing the appeal!
Wonders and wonders after two conferences and reading the lead judgment by Justice J. Y. Tukur?
Thus, the conflicting stance of the Court of Appeal on the elections in Arochukwu Council for the House of Reps and Senate and its unconvincing efforts to make a distinction between six and half a dozen continues to stir controversy and draws condemnation from right, left, and centre.
Supreme Court and governorship election petitions
All these developments point to the fact that obviously no level of the judicial branch is beyond reproach.
Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a foremost election monitoring organisation in the country, was unsparing in its denunciation of the Supreme Court.
TMG, in a statement signed by its Chairman, Ibrahim Zikirullahi, flayed the court for giving “judgments and not justice”, and expressed shock that the “Supreme Court has decided to act as if it exists on another planet.”
TMG added: “We make bold to say that while the legal premise behind these judgments is best known to the apex court, the open reward for electoral impunity does not resonate with the Nigerian people.
“In the face of unrepentant attempts to subvert the will of the people in a good number of the cases, the court has curiously turned a blind eye, and given a blank cheque to election riggers.
“What these judgments have effectively done is to ridicule Nigeria in the eyes of the international community, while diminishing our country’s stature in the comity of lovers of democracy around the world.”
These concerns prompted a host of legal luminaries, including Itse Sagay, chairman of Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption (PACC), and other prominent Nigerians to express discomfiture with these judgments.
“I don’t know how to put it, but it’s very strange,” said Sagay, a professor of law.
He wondered how the “magic occurred that every governorship election was valid and in line with the Electoral Act.
“There should be distinctions. How can all the governorship cases go the same way? How is that possible?”
On February 4, 2016, the day after the Supreme Court delivered judgments on the Akwa Ibom and Abia State cases, a legal practitioner in Lagos, Jiti Ogunye, queried the judgments which dismissed all the cases against the election of some governors, including those that had been overturned by two lower courts.
He expressed “shock and disbelief” over the verdicts, expressing fear that the Supreme Court might have “unwittingly cast itself in an anti-technology, anti-innovation and anti-science mould … which is sad for our democracy.”
Ogunye said if the trend of the judgment of the Supreme Court had been set earlier it would have been impossible for Governors Olusegun Mimiko (Ondo), Rauf Aregbesola (Osun), and former Governors Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti) and Adams Oshiomhole (Edo) to assume office.
They all became governors by the orders of the Court of Appeal before the Supreme Court assumed final jurisdiction over governorship cases.
Ogunye added that “Nigerians and the international community were living witnesses to the conduct of the polls in the states where these election petitions emanated and the conclusions were that the elections were terribly mismanaged and marred by violence and malpractices” leading to substantial non-compliance with the minimum standards for fair and free elections.
Genesis of the rot
Why would our courts do this?
While “the answer is blowing in the wind,” as the chorus of a popular hymn goes, it must be noted that as in the larger society, the incidence, scope, and pervasiveness of corruption in the judiciary is a cankerworm insidiously eating away the conscience and integrity of the judiciary.
It is turning our justice system into a little more than a mere circus ritual of going through the motions without any veneer of uprightness and respectability.
Indeed, aside from the recent sting operation by the DSS, we need not look further for evidence of the rot in justice administration than in the admission of former senior judges.
Former Chief Justice, Dahiru Musdapher, wrote a letter on January 27, 2012 to former President Goodluck Jonathan, admitting that the judiciary was “already integrity-deficient” and “bereft of public confidence” based on the perception of corruption and impunity.
He sought an urgent effort towards the “redemption of the image and credibility of the judiciary.”
Former Chief Justice, Muhammadu Uwais, in a public lecture in Uyo a few years ago canvassed rejigging the structure and processes of the judiciary as an institution that, like Caesar’s wife, should be above suspicion “… in order to maintain the integrity of the judiciary and to assuage public feeling and restore confidence in both the bar and bench.”
Taken together, with the various cases of investigation and punishment of many judicial officers in the past, it gives Nigerians additional proof of the putrid mess in the judiciary.
That is why the accusations of inappropriate contact and relationship between some judges and litigants and their known backers and benefactors are of great concern. They resonate with very bad notes in many quarters across the land.
Rivers governorship dispute
That is why the charges of Dakuku Peterside, Rivers State APC governorship candidate election in 2015 now director general of the Nigeria Maritime and Safety Administration (NIMASA), must not be dismissed with a wave of the hand.
Perterside alleged that:
- Governor Nyesom Wike “might have” had advance knowledge of the Supreme Court’s judgment before it was pronounced on January 27, 2016.
- Made statements ahead of that date that the verdict was a foregone conclusion.
- His supporters were already celebrating as early as 9am on the day originally given for “Adoption of Written Addresses” which, to the surprise of his (Peterside’s) team, turned out, unprecedentedly, to be the date for the delivery of the judgment around 6.20pm.
- “Credible information confirmed” that Wike confessed to some persons that he (Wike) met with some justices of the Supreme Court on the panel on the case variously in Mbaise, Owerri, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia.
- Wike, at a thanksgiving service in Port Harcourt, admitted on national television that when it came to the judges, former Rivers State Governor, Peter Odili, and his wife, Mary Odili (a justice of the Supreme Court), were his advisers and that when they called him, sometimes by midnight, and told him to “go to so, so place … I took all their advice, and here we are today.”
Wike had long distanced himself from what Peterside claimed he said in the church and Odili is taking the matter up with Peterside in court.
- Continues in next edition