A judicial system is corrupt if truth is denied the right to be a witness
A judiciary that often refrains from embracing the naked truth ends up defecating in the hallowed chamber of justice and should be prepared to pack the night soil in due season.
By the way, below is the origin, according to folklore I read online, of the cliché “naked truth”. Truth was always dressed in snow-white apparel. So appealing was Truth that countless people would readily embrace it wherever it was found.
One hot afternoon, on the way to a date in town, Truth stopped by a pool to have a dip in the water before continuing. Unknown to Truth, Lie was on its trail and stumbled on Truth’s apparel left by the poolside. Lie wanted to join Truth in the pool but had an uncanny change of mind; Lie dropped its filthy rags and put on the clothes belonging to Truth.
When Truth emerged from the pool it found that Lie had worn its white clothes and gone to town in them, looking squeaky clean and angelic. Many who saw Lie in Truth’s clothing hugged it to no end, believing it was indeed Truth.
Well, Truth had to get going and soon arrived in town in the birthday suit. Everyone was put off and they shunned Truth. The naked truth is still shunned to this day, even in Nigeria. In many cases, white lies have taken the place of naked truth. Professionalism is on vacation in many areas of our national life and the judiciary is not an exception. As courts and judges pander to interests other than those that serve the end of justice, they think such unprofessional acts are without consequences on the system. Not until at a time like now that the chicken has come home to roost and the falcon can no longer hear the falconer will they begin to appreciate the danger of the abdication of responsibility.
We are indeed facing ugly times. An era of strange happenings…of unknown this, unknown that. The era when and where leverage is given to the unknown people to operate. Marauders used to come from the underworld. Not anymore! They are just unknown people holding sway and enjoying the protection of the system as they ravage society.
The people they tag as “unknown” attack critical places, well guarded military installations, police and secret police facilities. They attack offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission. They attack prisons and free inmates, they open the police armoury and cart away state-actor weapons. They kill the high and the low and walk away unhindered, unpunished.
The hoodlums’ impact can be felt in every corner, especially in the South-East. They are never arrested and or paraded and made to tell the story and be known. Instead, everything about them remains in the realm of mystery. Those whose duty is to smoke them out and bring them to book look away, pretending that they don’t know them. Instead of getting at these monsters, minor criminals are paraded and made to publicly say what they want for image laundering.
We live in bizarre times when unknown people operate and hold the nation to ransom. If you are living or having anything to do with South-East Nigeria, you would realize that the fear of the unknown gunmen is the beginning of your wisdom.
Unknown gunmen have been running riot in the region since early this year. Recently, somebody was stoned and his assailants who could not be identified were called unknown stone men. That is how infectious these brands of crime have taken a toll on society.
On October 29, 2021, unknown but identifiable security operatives clutching a warrant purportedly issued by an Abuja Magistrate’s Court, invaded the home of Justice Mary Ukaego Odili, the number two person in the hierarchy of justices of the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
The search warrant was issued in respect of No. 9 Imo Street but the search men went to No. 7 Imo Street where Justice Odili lives. Can you imagine that even the informant does not know the correct address of their identified suspect?
The warrant was requested from the court by the Ministry of Justice where an asset recovery team comprising officials of the Ministry of Justice, DSS, Police, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, is domiciled. Strangely, the Minister of Justice Abubakar Malami whose ministry allegedly requested the warrant has distanced himself from it, the same as EFCC and DSS. Even the magistrate who issued the warrant to the faceless operatives has revoked it accusing the Ministry of Justice of misleading the court. So what it means is that those who invaded the home of Justice Odili are unknown. Who knows whether the search would have led to her kidnapping.
In the past when strange things happened that shouldn’t and the government was unable to explain, the people quickly used their teeth to count their tongues and keep mum and the same applies in this instance. In 2020, some hired, yet-to-be-identified thugs invaded the home of this same Justice Odili, threatening to deal with her for a ruling of the Supreme Court. It did not matter to them that the ruling in question was handled by a team of seven but they found only Justice Odili’s offensive. Since February 2020, nobody was brought before the law. The federal government’s nonchalance must have given the impetus to a repeat last Friday.
What a shame a country cannot protect its citizens! And security is the primary function of any government…the protection of the lives and property of citizens. The loss of our esteem as a nation is even made worse that justices cannot be defended, more so a distinguished lady justice. Even in times of war, women are spared the harassment and intimidation that are meted out to men by fighting troops. In our case gender respect is non-existent.
The October 29 invasion of Justice Odili’s home in Abuja bears a striking resemblance to those actions that are disowned because they failed, not because the cause of action is no longer relevant.
When ugly things happen and the government feels embarrassed by it, one expects it to act fast to send a strong message to people who nurture such thoughts. Nothing manures a crime like treating it as if it’s not offensive and loathsome.
A deep thought into any untoward and unfitting things that the government is indifferent about is that either it is aware of the history of the action or that it’s the government that executed it.
The fact that hirelings harassed a Supreme Court justice in 2020 and repeated it in 2021 and all that is coming from the government is a denial of involvement says a lot about how governance has gone in our clime.
Our judiciary has indeed gone low in its role as a critical arm of government and as the sacred heart of democracy but that still does not defend the bizarre harassment of Justice Odili.
If the nation’s judiciary has become an embarrassment to itself due to some bizarre rulings like the Imo State gubernatorial case where number four became number one, it still does not explain the lawless harassment of justices. After all, there are still few outstanding jurists in our system who have continued to maintain the sanctity of the hallowed institution. Here Justice C. C. NWEZE minority judgement on Imo state gubernatorial case.
Why should we even be too surprised at strange happenings in our judiciary, are they not part and parcel of our general rut in the system? In a paper, “The Social Monster: Communism and Anarchism,” a German-American politician, Johann Joseph Most, writes, “When state and government have gone, laws must go. People who speak of ‘laws’ in a communistic society think perhaps only of those general rules of sensible and noble conduct which every good man finds easy to observe. But in that case, they use the wrong word. Law is a body of rules connected with an apparatus to compel obedience. Behind the law stands the court, the sheriff, the police, the hangman, and such other professionals in a country’s judicial system. And who wants them? None, we guess.”
Given what has been happening in this country in the name of governance, who should be surprised at strange happenings anywhere. Until 2016, we were all thinking of the judiciary as made up of sacred cows and revered people, they were seen next to the clergy and even more because of their instruments of sanction which are not available to the clergy. But before us today they are treated like common criminals, harassed and arrested and dragged to court in the name of fighting corruption. Has the corruption in the judiciary ever abated?
Were we not taught even from school days about the doctrine of separation of powers and checks and balances to prevent the excesses of the various arms of government? Were we not made to see the judiciary as the most sacred of the three arms because it interprets everybody’s roles? But in the same judiciary in 2019, the Executive arm unilaterally threw away the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, in the name of fighting corruption while the hidden political undertone loomed large. After that what did the country do, what did even the judiciary do, condemnation and there it ended just as is the case with the Odili invasion. If Justice Odili was kidnapped or killed, it would still have been this same lame and timid reaction.
Oftentimes, I imagine what the situation would have been if Chief Gani Fawehinmi was still alive watching the judiciary suffer these indignities. But that’s where we are, decaying gradually as a nation, sliding to a state of disorder due to the absence of strong institutions.
There is little encouragement ahead. The nation’s judiciary should get ready for more of this humiliation ahead of 2023 because, though it barks, it long lost the bite with compromising positions on very critical issues that should have strengthened our political institutions. The price the judiciary is paying now is what obtains when you forsake your responsibility because you are not directly involved or fail to bare your fangs when necessary. The matter is made worse by the conspiracy of silence from the Nigerian Bar Association and even the media that has watched the Justice Odili matter as the Justice Minister who has been openly accused by the court as deceiving it to grant his request for a warrant and the Presidency, as usual, has looked away, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
May God help us.
