By Emmanuel Ogebe Esq
Justice Tanko Mohammed, the most recently deposed and unconstitutionally imposed Chief Justice of Nigeria has been reported dead – the latest of Buhari’s nightmare team inflicted on the traumatized psyche of Nigeria’s citizenry whose demise brought cheer to them.
If the top five people Buhari afflicted on the nation were to be listed, whose deaths were warmly welcomed, his Machiavellian chief of Staff Abba Kyari, his moronic Chief Justice Tanko and Bubonic Buhari himself would vie for the top three misanthropes who constituted public enemy number one.
Dying at age 71, a year after he would have mandatorily retired constitutionally, Tanko earned the dubious distinction of being one of very few CJNs to retire prematurely. Ironically the CJN he usurped Walter Onnoghen and himself exited before their retirement age.
Tanko also disdainfully distinguished himself as a CJN imposed and deposed by the same autocrat. Few of Buhari’s draconianly installed stooges was disastrous that Buhari himself regretted and ousted him.
Lores in the judicial community allege that some of his family members, which numbered in the dozens, literally looted the Supreme Court even removing vehicles. Prior CJNs’ offspring had engaged in contract supplies of vehicles but Tanko’s primitively physically carted them away from court premises! The wanton criminality lacked usual corrupt finesse. It was actual daylight robbery.
Tanko was the daftest judicial nominee ever to darken the floors of senate confirmation. Last week, Tinubu’s ambassadorial nominee couldn’t name his own state’s three senators. That was not as shocking as Buhari’s ambassadorial nominee Hakeem Balogun who could not sing the national anthem – an anthem integral and intrinsic to his very function as plenipotentiary of Nigeria abroad.
However Tanko was even worse still – he couldn’t define or comprehend what “technicality” was and compared it to “driving” a plane. Planes are not driven they are “piloted” or “flown.” Tanko lacked the comprehension, diction or cognition of an average primary school student.
According to more court community lores, Tanko was the only known grievously senile or mentally incapacitated CJN, surprisingly for his relative youth. He was in secondary school when some of the justices he would later be colleagues with were already judges – thanks to his sharia-based meteoric fasttrack to the top. He was the problem with Nigeria encapsulated – the worst of us ruling over the best of us.
He reportedly forgot issues extensively discussed with him at the drop of a hat. Even after the coup via which Buhari deposed him, security details supposedly used to restrain him as he awoke on occasion preparing to go to the court having forgotten that he was no longer CJN. Maybe the gods of justice avenged its brazen rapist…
Perhaps his most historic legacy was that his action/inaction spurred the first revolution of the Supreme Court Bench of Nigeria. The historic judicial mutiny following the epochal call for investigation of the Supreme Court by Ejembi Eko JSC during his valedictory session led swiftly to his removal after a petition signed by all the justices emerged. He was literally voted off the island by a unanimous verdict of the entire court – more than even a constitutional 7-judge panel!
His greatest contribution to Nigeria was his rank incompetence, ignoble inaction, culpable inattentiveness and callous indifference – without which juristic restraint and secrecy would not have boiled into eruption and a Darwinian self-cleanse.
Coming just a day after a Buhari book launch that aimed to deodorize Nigeria’s worst head of state, who was the greatest enemy of the judiciary and our most traitorous and treasonous ruler, Tecknicality Tanko’s demise is a reminder that our misrulers do not fear God or factor God in their manipulations and machinations. “You may fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all the people all of the time,” per late U.S. President JFK. And I might add, “you can’t fool God a single time!”
Tanko is late but unlamented in the Nigerian legal community. His damnation began here on earth. There was a similarly terrible CJN as a top serving official recently admitted but Tanko was an unmitigated “disaster.” Condolences to the Nigerian citizenry and the legal community for having to endure him.
While Nigeria has had CJNs (Chief Justices of Nigeria), his ultimate distinction was to be our first and only CJB (Chief Justice of Buhari) and still, Buhari discarded him on the garbage heap of history of which he was eminently deserving.
May his like and ilk never again desecrate the hallowed halls of justice and may his tragedy and travesty never be seen again in our land. May God have mercy on us all to not only write ourselves into the right side of history but also into the right side of eternity.
Emmanuel Ogebe, Esq is U.S.-based International Human Rights Lawyer Specializing in Africa Issues & Special Counsel, Justice for Jos Project