Aisha Yesufu, the Nigerian Bar Association and Justice Tsammani

I never thought that a day would come when I would devote the whole of this page to writing about Aisha Yesufu, the hijab-wearing ignoramus on Nigeria’s small corner of social media whose charlatanism has now reached dangerous levels. But the inaction of Nigeria’s so-called civil society organisations, particularly the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) leaves me […]

I never thought that a day would come when I would devote the whole of this page to writing about Aisha Yesufu, the hijab-wearing ignoramus on Nigeria’s small corner of social media whose charlatanism has now reached dangerous levels. But the inaction of Nigeria’s so-called civil society organisations, particularly the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) leaves me no choice.

Weeks have passed which I had simply tried to ignore, but the issue keeps gnawing at my guts both as a Nigerian citizen and as a public commentator. What exactly am I on about? I am talking about the reaction of Aisha Yesufu, the self-styled “active citizen” of Nigeria, to the ruling of the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) on 6th September, 2023. I am also talking about the integrity of the justice system, and especially of the individual judges and justices, in relation to the law and to other Nigerians. Above all, I am talking about the very serious contradictions of “civil society” in Nigeria, which, if we do not sort out, will imperil Nigeria’s democracy as likely as any bad government.

But first, let me talk about what I am not talking about. I am not talking about the merits or demerits of the judgement of the tribunal which, in any case, is now a matter before the Supreme Court. As a citizen, however, even if an unlearned one as lawyers would have me be, I would say that overall, I thought the verdicts on several of the prayers sought by the petitioners were sound in both logic and common sense. How sound they are in law is the job of the lawyers, and of course, the Supreme Court now.

Now, what was Aisha Yesufu’s reaction to the tribunal judgment? In a short video posted on her X (formerly Twitter) handle, Yesufu made three serious, highly disrespectful, and certainly contemptible charges against Justice Haruna Tsammani, the lead judge in the case, and his colleagues who delivered an hours-long ruling on all aspects of the case that day.

First, Yesufu berated Justice Tsammani and his colleagues for being, in her own words, “incompetent” for not having released a copy of the judgment by the time she posted her video online, which is less than two days after the judgement. She also accused Justice Tsammani of sabotage, that is, of sabotaging the opposition by, again in her own words “eating into” the number of days a petitioner has to file an appeal to the verdict of any election tribunal in which they are a party.

For Yesufu, it would seem watching the post, evidence of competence or incompetence—words she repeated many times throughout the video—is in the judges releasing a copy of the judgement immediately after delivering it. That they had not done so within two days, means, for her, that the tribunal judges were not only incompetent but also deliberately out to sabotage the petitioners.

Third, Yesufu blatantly accused the tribunal judges—she addressed Justice Haruna Tsammani directly by name in the video—of bias against the petitioners in the way they delivered the judgement. The lead justice, she said, was effusive and gushing to deliver the judgment against the opposition candidates, while also being harsh to the counsel of the petitioners.

Aisha Yesufu’s video was posted by 7.13 pm on 8th September 2023 and has since garnered over 900, 000 views. But, by the evening of the same day, a stamped copy of the 798-page judgment, was already being widely shared across newsrooms, WhatsApp Groups, emails, and other social media channels throughout the country. Few Nigerians can remember seeing a copy of the judgment by a presidential tribunal so swiftly.

Yet, Yesufu’s video directly insulting the integrity of the tribunal judges is still there on her X page at the time of this writing. Certainly, that at least one of her claims against the tribunal judges is blatantly false means nothing to Yesufu, let alone to elicit even a mild apology from her. But anyone who is reading this and is still thinking this article is necessarily about the moral compass of Yesufu is missing the point and may need not read further.

But to spell it out, I am speaking entirely about the moral bearings of Nigerian civil society, in this specific case, the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA. I am not a lawyer, and I really don’t know which law school NBA’s president, Mr Yakubu Maikyau (SAN), attended, but it seems to me that Aisha Yesufu’s charges against Justice Tsammani and his colleagues amount to a blatant contempt of court.

I also expect that it is the very job of organisations like the NBA to uphold the integrity of the law and of all those who serve at its altar. It is, I should expect, the job of the NBA to hold people like Yesufu to account that respect for the law is demanded of them, regardless of how much they need to pander to the needs of the global currency of the age, that is, social media followers. Even as president of the United States, Donald Trump was roundly condemned each time he said something that impinged on the integrity of the judiciary or that of a single judge.

I should expect the NBA to know that disrespect to judges is not something a democratic society, founded on the rule of law, can or should tolerate and that it is important for the NBA that any citizens who contemptuously disrespect judges be made to face the consequences of their actions, whether they know or not. It is one thing to disagree with a court’s judgement, but to call the judges who delivered the judgment incompetent, to openly and publicly accuse them of bias and sabotage against one side of the case, even before the ink with which they wrote the judgement is dried, is not only to make nonsense of free speech but also to make complete nonsense of the law itself.

People are free to disagree with the judgment of a court, and freer still to appeal it. But no one has the right to accuse the judges of incompetence, bias, and sabotage on account of a case they heard. I am confident that even as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and as President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Mr Maikyau cannot say the things Yesufu said about the tribunal judges without serious consequences. My point is that no one can either, for that is the law.

And no one is better placed to challenge such nonsense than the bar association itself. Has the NBA released a statement on this? Not to my knowledge. Have they condemned her contemptuous charges against the tribunal? Not to my knowledge. Has the NBA filed any charges against her to demonstrate the limits of free speech and uphold respect for the law? Not to my knowledge. The matter has simply been let slip, as if nothing happened. Or rather, as if the integrity of Nigerian judges is not important or worth protecting by the bar or bench associations in the country. Apparently, they don’t remember it themselves.

But this is where we arrive at the deeper contradictions of “civil society” and of “civil society organisations” in our context. That, however, is a topic for another day.