By Abuchi Obiora
After reading through the highlights of the seven hundred and ninety eight pages of the judgment delivered on September 6th, 2023 by the five Justices of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), I came to the conclusion that the judgment serves as a Requiem Mass for Nigeria as well as the prelude to NUNC Dimittis for the diverse constituent members of the country called Nigeria. I shall prove what I have just said but first let us look at an analogical background story and understanding of what we are discussing this week.
Esther, my elder sister wanted to be a lawyer. She had nursed this ambition very early in life. As we grew up together, she told me so many good stories about lawyers …. their dark and regal hood, their alluring golden wig, all showcased in the most resplendent manner. Being six years younger than her and then the youngest boy in the family, (my immediate younger sister, Christy, was already born), I was Esther’s pet. She liked telling me stories about everything, including becoming a successful woman lawyer.
On one of such occasions, we were sitting at the foot of our father who joined in the discussion. He counseled Esther vehemently against becoming a lawyer. He said that lawyers were liars who will never go to Heaven. He added that he would not want her most beloved daughter to be buried face down after her death, because lawyers are buried face down to hide those ‘guilty’ faces from God in Heaven. We grew up believing that lawyers were buried face down when they die. For Christian children who were taught virtues that will make us go to Heaven, we, thenceforth, detested the legal profession because it would probably lead us to Hell.
Esther became a nurse, also in obedience to our father’s counsel and demand. Our father wanted Esther to become a nurse so that she can save lives and be an easy candidate for Heaven. The second reason father wanted Esther to become a nurse was that she could take care of him at his old age. Let me quickly add that Esther did not eventually become a lawyer but she achieved her dream, albeit, in a different way, through her daughter, Adaku, who is presently a respected lawyer and well-groomed financial administrator.
This short family story of ours raises a pertinent question: Are lawyers liars? I will also want to be convinced why some lawyers, the intentional liars, need not be buried face down when they die to ‘hide away’ their lying and ‘guilty’ faces from God.
Events in Nigeria’s judiciary suggest that some lawyers are intentional liars who misinterpret and sometimes mutilate evidence placed at their disposal as they intentionally, most probably for pecuniary reasons, refuse to contemplate and apply evidence that are, very often visible to the blind.
By the way, the story of men of the law who pervert justice is as old as time. A certain legal officer who perverted justice in ancient Greece was said to have been skinned alive by the order of the King. The skinned out flesh of the man was said to have been sundried and made to be placed on the legal stool as a reminder for the next Chief Legal Officer not to pervert justice. The shocking irony of this story is that the man’s son was appointed as the Chief Legal Officer. He sat on the skin of his father as he dispensed his duties. This incidence in ancient Greece made generations of men there to take the legal profession as a virtuous calling that it is supposed to be, especially as members of the profession, being next to God in the adjudication of issues of discontent amongst men, should be the most revered and respected men and women in human communities.
Unfolding events in Nigeria’s judiciary also suggest that a Requiem Mass as is done in Christendom has just been held for Nigeria by the team of five Justices of the PEPC in their judgment delivered on September 6th, 2023. Next to follow after the Requiem Mass will most probably be a Nunc Dimittis to signal the end of a controversial relationship that was forced on the constituent parts of Nigeria by Britain’s Lord Lugard through an equally controversial amalgamation of 1914.
The reader may ask: What is a Requiem Mass? What is Nunc Dimittis? Why should the Kaleidoscope Achieves insist this week that the judgment delivered by the five Justices symbolize a Requiem Mass that will most probably be capped up with a Nunc Dimittis? We will find out how these two Latin phrases find application in this week’s discourse as a prophecy for Nigeria by the time we are done with this work but first, let us take their definitions.
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Special Price Edition, a Requiem Mass is “A special Christian ceremony for a person who has recently died, at which people pray for her or his soul”. The word ‘Requiem’ can also be used to describe a piece of music composed to achieve the same purpose as above as in the musical composition of Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart simply known as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was born on 27th January 1756 and died 5th December 1791. The musical composition titled “The Requiem in D Minor, K. 626, was composed in Vienna, Austria in 1791 by Mozart. It remained unfinished at his death in the same year.
Nunc Dimittis, our second Latin language phrase used here comes from the opening words of the vulgate translation of the Bible Book of Luke 2:29. It has the simple English Language meaning of “Now you let depart”. It is the prayer of Simeon recorded in that Bible Book and the first word of the canticle used since the 4th century A.D in Christian services of evening, closing worship such as compline, vespers and other evensongs. In summary, “Nunc Dimittis” means everything that is said or intended to be said about separation, departure, foreclosure and infact, end of the road.
Though they delivered a voluminous document as the judgment, the five PEPC Justices did not deliver justice to Nigerians who desperately yearned for it. That strange document whose author/authors is/are still under probe, is the most ridiculous piece of judgment that I have ever seen or read. It has the capacity to tear the country into shreds by the time the mocked issues of law raised in that judgment are referenced as precedential judgments.
With due respect to the body of Benchers in the Nigerian judiciary, I must ask: Did the learned and presumably experienced Justices of the High Court who delivered the judgment on 6th September, 2023 actually write the judgment they delivered? I ask this question because amongst the many goofs in the judgment which can be deciphered by people with almost zero knowledge of the law, is the justification of lack of intention in the conduct of a respondent, in this case, Kashim Shettima, in respect of his double nomination. One may also ask; Has ignorance of the law which can also be explained out as an unintentional conduct become an excuse for social disobedience?
By all intents and purposes, this judicial argument is the most absurd piece of justification of illegality by anybody who was said to have attended the University to study law and later to pass through the rigorous professional process of a Law School because this stupid misinterpretation of elementary law casts aspersions on the supposed wisdom of the learned Justices of the PEPC.
On the issues of legal technicalities upon which the discountenance of ten out of the thirteen prosecution witnesses of Peter Obi and the Labour Party was anchored to the detriment of the prosecution legal team, I had earlier in previous discusses in The Kaleidoscope Archives, commented on the wrong application of the sledgehammer tool of legal technicalities by an adjudicating jury when it is caught up hands down by multiple layers of evidence provided by prosecution lawyers whose overwhelming argument in favour of their case may stand tangibly irrefutable by the defense team.
Another area of total disapproval by Nigerians in the just delivered judgment of the PEPC is the controversy trailing the already Supreme Court trashed issue of 25% of the total votes cast in the FCT as one of the prerequisites for INEC to announce a President-Elect.
Among the works where I discussed the issues of legal technicalities in the Kaleidoscope Archives are:
- The Successful Trend of Community Policing Across Nigeria, Part One (8 February 2021).
- The Successful Trend of Community Policing Across Nigeria, Part Two (4 March 2021).
- Abdulrasheed Maina and Travesty of Natural Justice in Nigeria (28 November 2021).
- Human Socialization and the Nihilist Path of Sabotage: The Igbo Case Study.
- To Whom It May Concern: Nigerian Judiciary to the Rescue.
This work, titled “PEPC Judgment 2023; A Requiem Mass for Nigeria and the Prelude to Nunc Dimittis” will be the sixth time I would be addressing the issue of legal technicalities in the Nigerian judicial system and I think that I will be silent henceforth, not to comment anymore on it, whichever way Nigeria decides to go.
In that work titled “To Whom It May Concern; Nigerian Judiciary to the Rescue”, while observing what makes Lord Denning (Alfred Thompson ‘Tom’ Denning, Baron Denning, OM, PC, DL, Master of the Rolls in Great Britain between 1962-1982 – born 23th January 1899 and died 5th March 1999), the legendary legal luminary that he had become in human history is that, apart from adhering to established precedents where they existed and creating others were none existed, he was most renowned for adjudicating matters without the seldom used and controversial tool of legal technicalities where the evidence provided satisfy the demands of the Evidence Act in its entirety.
I had said in that work that “In Nigeria, some judges divinely presented with opportunities to inscribe their footprints on the sands of time messed up the opportunities. They sacrificed what would have been their contributions to legal jurisprudence in Nigeria on the altar of legal technicalities…
I continued, “When substantive, unambiguous and clearly defined issues of law (which actually are breaches in human social relationships) are jettisoned on the altar of legal technicalities, then there is bound to be confusion and anarchy in the society … there will also be minimum respect for the rule of law”. Going further, I took up an analogy by saying that “For example, if you allow a thief who you are sure stole your fowl to go free because you did not catch him eating the fowl, in no time, some people will walk into other people’s houses, openly steal their wives in their presence and go free from prosecution because they had hidden those women in the places only them can access”.
I concluded that “The above analogy is my lay man’s understanding of what ‘legal technicalities means … it is an irony of law that the application of ‘legal technicalities’ in addressing matters in Nigerian Courts take the first consideration before the ancient, legendary and almighty Rule of Evidence which only requires irrefutable proof from he who alleges like the man whose stolen wife is actually missing from his house”.
In another of those discourses published in the Kaleidoscope Archives (where I discussed the often abused legal instrument of technicalities) which is titled “Human Socialization and the Nihilist Path of Sabotage: The Igbo Case Study”, I had written that “Constitutional lawyers should be able to check the excesses of the application of this tool (legal technicalities) which is supposed to be seldom used to assist justice delivery on matters whose supply of evidence are doubtful, not meeting the requirements of the Evidence Act in its entirely…”.
“In order not to cause doubts as to the capacity of the Nigerian legal system to dispense equitable judgment on matters brought to it, the application of the rare but still necessary tool of legal technicalities in the determination of cases in Nigerian law courts must not be seen to be dubiously applied by clever Judges to obstruct or defeat the purpose for which assistance of the law courts was, ab initio, sought by the parties”.
I concluded by saying that “To do so is to encourage self-help and extra judicial measures by people who may believe that their prayers and pleas in the court of law may not be properly heard, addressed and redressed”.
My last question in this discourse would be: Must the Nigerian Constitutions and all the precedential judgments upon which the Rule of Law in Nigeria is hinged change because of the ambition of one man to become the President of the Federal Republic? If this is so, how sovereign is Nigeria? In my understanding, the team of five Justices of the PEPC doubled down on the treasonable felony of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the INEC, which they severally and jointly committed against the Nigerian state on February 25th, 2023.
In simple words, that team of PEPC Justices gave the constitutional backing to the electoral coup d’etat staged against the Nigerian State on 25th February, 2023. For this reason, I see that unnecessary, unwarranted and wasteful marathon judgment (or is it a stage act) by the five distinguished Justices of the PEPC as the ultimate Requiem Mass for a country that will soon sing the Nunc Dimittis of her disintegration.
After painstakingly monitoring and understanding the gist in the twelve hour-plus delivery session of the PEPC judgment team, I came to the conclusion that the learned gentlemen and lady, much as they may have thought otherwise, only succeeded in being the principal actors who officiated in the Requiem Mass for Nigeria. I say this, though with a caveat that the damage done by that weird judgment may still be upturned by the Supreme Court whose final arbitration authority on the matter is expected to bring back sanity to the Nigerian justice administration system. When the Supreme Court does this, it will prove that legal technicalities must not be applied in such a way that it erodes confidence in the judiciary.
The twelve hour-plus unprecedented long period of judgment of the PEPC where respected and respectable lawyers were caught on camera dozing off in the manner students in a lecture room may doze off when the lecturer teaches balderdash serves no purpose to Nigeria and Nigerians. Obviously, the lawyers slept because the delivery was both rubbish and boring. They seemed not to be interested in listening to an unending epitaph, a foreclosure ceremony, nay the Requiem Mass of a country once called Nigeria. That judgment session could also be likened to a prolonged Church Service where the attendees, in utter disgust of the redundant message of the Preacher, doze off, only waiting for him to “share the grace” (close the service).
The PEPC judgment of 6th September 2023 confirmed that the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria may not after all be a sacrosanct document since different Justices can decide to see things their own ways outside the strict discipline of the law and multiple channels of precedents usually cited and adhered to by responsible Justices across the world who oversee and maintain good social order in their societies.
For those clownish Justices of the PEPC, it was double speak to reject an expert report provided by AMAZON, an international cyber gatekeeping organization because of the reason that the person who presented it was a member of the Labour Party and in the same court, admitted in evidence another report provided by a member of the Nigerian parliament who became a parliamentarian by the auspices of the APC. Again, suffice to say that the disregard of the report by a team of European Union Election Observers because the report was not ‘well tendered’ in the court, is outrageous.
Now that the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has been torn into shreds by some of those who are supposed to uphold it for the rest of us, we must all be let lose, may be, I suppose, along the natural divide of regions as we now, being free men not bound by a Supreme document called Constitution, some sixty three tortuous years after independence, should begin to sing Nunc Dimittis, the message and song of Simeon, thus, “Lord now, let thy servant depart in peace according to thy word… for my eyes have seen thy salvation which thou has prepared before the face of the people …To be a light to brighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel. Amen”.
ABUCHI OBIORA
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