The Messy State Of The Nigerian Judiciary

Posted on 08. Apr, 2010 by admin in Opinion

As flawed as suc­ces­sive Niger­ian Con­sti­tu­tions have been, it has always, in the­ory at least, pro­vided for an inde­pen­dent judi­ciary. In prac­tice, how­ever, this has not always been the case — espe­cially in the last two decades. In the 1950s, through the early part of the 1980s, the Niger­ian judi­ciary was, for the most part, a world class insti­tu­tion. Lawyers were well trained, well-behaved and well versed in the art and sci­ence of the law. When you saw a lawyer, espe­cially on the streets of Lagos, Ibadan and Port Har­court, you knew you were before a man or woman of high standing.

And when you heard a lawyer speak, you would think he or she invented both the Eng­lish and the legal lan­guages. And so it was that in the Nige­ria of my youth, many area friends wanted to be lawyers, and ulti­mately judges — espe­cially of the Supreme Court. And why not? Con­sider this list: Adetokunbo Adeg­boyega Ade­mola (1958–1972); Taslim Olawale Elias (1972–1975); Darn­ley Arthur Alexan­der (1975–1979); Atanda Fatai Williams (1979–1983); and George Sodeinde Sowemimo (1983–1985). Chief Jus­tice Ayo Irikefe (1985–1987) and Sal­ihu Modd­ibo Alfa Bel­gore (1995–2006) are later additions.

Some Niger­ian lawyers and judges went on to serve with dis­tinc­tion across sub-Saharan Africa. And more than a few went on to serve at var­i­ous United Nations posts. Jus­tice Taslim Elias, for instance, went on to become the Pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tional Court of Jus­tice (com­monly referred to as the World Court). A few years later, he also became a mem­ber of the Per­ma­nent Court of Arbi­tra­tion at The Hague. Whether as lawyers, judges, edu­ca­tors or as admin­is­tra­tors, Nige­ri­ans went on to become some of the great­est legal minds at home and abroad. In addi­tion, legal com­mu­ni­ties in and out­side of the African con­ti­nent, came to study the Niger­ian legal system.

In the last two-and-a-half decades, how­ever, the Niger­ian Judi­ciary has been plagued by prob­lems and intractable chal­lenges: trou­bles and chal­lenges brought on by post-1975 mil­i­tary regimes and by the leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive branches of gov­ern­ment. Other con­tribu­tive insid­i­ous fac­tors include (a) the declin­ing stan­dard of legal edu­ca­tion; (b) the entrenched social ills that con­tin­ues to eat away at the nation’s moral fibers; © the chang­ing nature of the Niger­ian soci­ety which, in some cases, no longer value the rule of law, ethics and moral­ity; (d) the belief that any­one and any­thing can be bought, sold or com­pro­mised includ­ing the law and those who inter­pret the law; and (e) the single-minded pur­suit of money and mate­r­ial gain to the exclu­sion of noble ideas and ideals.

In any mod­ern soci­ety, the judi­ciary and the fourth estate are the last bas­tion of what is good and decent and godly about human­ity. One may argue that the exec­u­tive branch mat­ters, but not as much as the judi­ciary; and that the leg­is­la­ture mat­ters, but not as much as the fourth estate. This is so because both branches of gov­ern­ment may be occu­pied by half-baked men and women; but if the judi­ciary and the fourth estate are rot­ten, then, the soci­ety has no hope for account­abil­ity and pro­bity. The Niger­ian fourth estate has been mori­bund for about two decades; and the judi­ciary is now com­fort­ably rested along­side. What hope is there for Nigeria?

What this means is that one can hardly tell the judi­ciary apart from the other two braches of gov­ern­ment or from the fourth estate. Today, as most can attest to, the Niger­ian Judi­ciary has become a cham­ber of cor­rup­tion, inef­fi­ciency, and depravities. The entire court sys­tem — from the cus­tom­ary and Shari’ah courts through the state and fed­eral court sys­tem and up to the apex court — the sys­tem has become, for the most part, buyable and sell­able. It is a mess. The Niger­ian judi­ciary is in a messy state!

Some have argued that the level of injus­tice within the Niger­ian judi­ciary, in some cases, is way more than the level of injus­tice on the Niger­ian streets. Case files are often stolen or lost or sold. Cases get post­poned again and again and again and again. Inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cers, court clerks, and even Judges may tam­per with glar­ing evi­dence or the deserved-justice. And indeed, the accused may get locked up for years that far exceed the num­ber of years they would have spent if convicted.

One could spend hours cat­a­logu­ing what is wrong with the Niger­ian Judi­ciary. Even so, it needs point­ing out that most of what is wrong with the Niger­ian jus­tice sys­tem, in addi­tion of ear­lier indict­ments, came about mostly because of the defi­cien­cies within the Niger­ian legal sys­tem, low pay for lawyers and judges, poor infra­struc­tures, and the resid­ual effects of sev­eral decades of pound­ing and unholy induce­ment from the exec­u­tive and the polit­i­cal class. In all of these, one can­not sep­a­rate the judi­ciary from other sec­tions of the Niger­ian state and soci­ety – a state and soci­ety plagued by all man­ners of excesses, inef­fi­cien­cies and deficiencies.

It is esti­mated that Nige­ria has 227 pris­ons with a pro­jected 60,000 reg­is­tered inmates. The fact is that there are also ille­gal pris­ons in Nige­ria: dun­geons and gal­lows where polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and “ene­mies of gov­ern­ment” are rou­tinely held with­out the knowl­edge of fam­ily mem­bers. Frankly, no one really knows the num­ber of peo­ple who are locked up in Nige­ria. In Feb­ru­ary 2008, Amnesty Inter­na­tional asserted that pris­ons in Nige­ria are a “national scan­dal,” hold­ing thou­sands of inmates who have not been legally con­victed or inmates who have spent years, and even decades, await­ing tri­als — tri­als that may never come.

Gov­ern­ment, at both the state and national level, along with the Judi­ciary, are to be blamed for this messy state. How do you hold sus­pects for decades and decades with­out trial? Why post­pone cases again and again and again to the point where there is no jus­tice for the accused, or a sense of clo­sure for the aggrieved? In addi­tion, there are the issues of unsan­i­tary con­di­tion and the inhu­mane treat­ments around and within the Niger­ian prison sys­tem. Con­victs deserved to be locked up if and when the courts say so; but what­ever con­sti­tu­tional rights they are enti­tled to, must still be respected.

The 2008 Amnesty Inter­na­tional report went on to say that “The judi­ciary fails to ensure that all inmates are tried within rea­son­able time; indeed, most inmates wait years for a trial. When inmates are con­victed, most courts do not inform them of their right to appeal. Nor does the judi­ciary guar­an­tee that all sus­pects are offered legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Few of the courts take the nec­es­sary steps to end the use of evi­dence elicited as a result of tor­ture. In breach of national and inter­na­tional law, the judi­ciary does not guar­an­tee fair trial stan­dards even in the case of minors.” What sys­tem of jus­tice is this if there is an iota of jus­tice at all?

Some­thing else: For the most part, the Niger­ian judi­ciary has not been very help­ful in resolv­ing most of the elec­toral dis­putes in Nige­ria. It is com­mon knowl­edge that some dis­puted take 2–3 years to resolve. For instance, “it took 3 years to decide the Ngige/Obi guber­na­to­r­ial tus­sle and Emordi sen­a­to­r­ial tus­sle. Yet both gov­er­nor­ship and sen­a­to­r­ial tenures are 4 years!” In the same vein, it took more than 2 years to resolve the Buhari-Obasanjo elec­toral dis­putes. Con­sid­er­ing this and many other vex­ing issues, one can only con­clude that the Niger­ian Judi­ciary has lost its way.