by Cheta Nwanze
The events of the last few weeks have only served to confirm that there all is not well in Nigeria’s judiciary. These issues lead to a very important question, “are judges above the law?”
Better people than me, have pointed out over the course of the day that judges are not above the law, and that in fact, no man ought to be above the law, not a judge, secret policeman, or even a president.
However we must ask, are there any processes for cleaning up the stables within the judiciary? Yes there are, and these processes are set down in the law books.
Has the judiciary adhered to these precepts? Not exactly.
The arm of government designed to be last succour of the common man seems to have consistently failed to not only deliver justice, but in the words of that famed legal prescription, be seen to be delivering justice. Thus, things were bound to change at some point. On the back of what happened this week, someone external to the judicial apparatus had to apply some coercive pressure.
Today, something happened, the kind of which I believed we had left behind for years. Judges and other ranking members of the judiciary came under attack. That it happened this way, is a huge setback for our democratic experiment; a return to the impunity of the military epoch.
At this point though, a word has to be said about the fact that the NJC may have started to get its act together, so why was the DSS unable to wait and watch, or use the NJC to achieve their aims?
If I were in charge, here is what I would have done. I would have gotten the Vice-President, who happens to be a lawyer, to meet with the National Judicial Council and the National Bar Association and ensure that the judges in question are honourably relieved of their duties, then investigated. It is unfortunate, and unhealthy for the Directorate of State Security to be at the forefront of dealing with democratically appointed public officials — they must be excluded.
A final word on the DSS — its growing influence and the apparent willingness of the current administration to skirt due process and deploy its resources to undermine established institutions of state is unprecedented in our democratic experience. The secret service has patented a modus operandi of throwing up allegations of financial impropriety in order to hang something on the neck of its targets, which it clearly seeks to intimidate and strike terror. Let us call their actions for what they are — blind, naked intimidation. From the level of coordination, across state borders and involving multiple targets, the secret service’s crackdown on the judiciary was as coordinated and choreographed as anything it managed to pull off in its military heydays — a situation that should worry observers and citizens of an active, if nascent, 17-year democracy.
That this comes after the President, again, railed against the judiciary as an obstacle in his ‘fight against corruption’ is hardly insignificant. The way it has gone, is awful, and takes us back to President Buhari’s first coming in 1984.
Make no mistake about this, there are clear corrupt elements in the judiciary. A worse form of corruption however is being propagated in a calculated attempt to subvert the legal process of addressing it, essentially forcing the will of the executive over the neck of the judiciary. This is not how the doctrine of separation of powers, so fundamental to the idea of a democracy should be enshrined. Unless, of course, we are a democracy in name alone.
This article was first written HERE
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