Judicial circumlocution in Nigeria

Surprisingly, instead of keeping faith with its strategy of delay, the NJC suddenly made its decision on the subject known last Wednesday. But why the change of heart and why the hurry? After all, many Nigerians are known to have died after waiting for longer than makes sense to have their cases in court concluded. […]

Surprisingly, instead of keeping faith with its strategy of delay, the NJC suddenly made its decision on the subject known last Wednesday. But why the change of heart and why the hurry? After all, many Nigerians are known to have died after waiting for longer than makes sense to have their cases in court concluded. Indeed, the Salami-Katsina Alu case did not last long at all compared to cases like that of Major Al-Mustapha, former Chief Security Officer to the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, whose case which started 13years ago is now set to begin. We are thus free to conclude that in the instant case of the big judges, something must have pushed the NJC out of its dramatic game of circumlocution. Could it be that the NJC suddenly realised the adverse effect of not concluding the matter before its chairman retires at the end of this month?  What would the rest of us have done if the NJC had decided to further delay by setting up two more panels- one made up of pupil magistrates to ensure that the verdict tallied with the perception of new entrants to the bench and the other essentially a jury to give justice a human face? The NJC could have also been free to adopt the strategy perfected over the years by the executive branch of government by setting up a sixth panel to produce a white paper on the entire episode. Notwithstanding its acclaimed poor finances, the NJC could have after all of these proceeded to appoint a consultant to work out modalities like venue and time for making the verdict public.

So much for what looks like a preface to this article.  Now to the substance of the matter which hinges on the intervention of the Chief Justice in the Sokoto Governorship election petition. The NJC accepts   as of fact, that the CJN got himself into the matter but was unable to blame him for doing so because it was convinced that the intervention was well intentioned. But since the law does not provide for any intervention, the NJC’s standpoint is not persuasive because as the law stands as of today the nature of an intention can hardly make any intervention legal. Indeed, our constitution states clearly in Section 240 that “the Court of Appeal shall have jurisdiction to the exclusion of any other court of law in Nigeria to hear and determine appeals from other tribunals”. For the avoidance of doubt, the constitution adds that “the decisions of the Court of Appeal in respect of election petitions shall be final”. Now that Salami’s court was distracted from making a decision on the Sokoto Governorship election case whose decision was final?

The second issue of interest in the case is the finding of the NJC that Justice Salami’s allegation against the CJN was not true meaning that the Appeal Court President lied on oath. The NJC is likely to be the only body that believes this hence it wisely prescribed a light punishment of apology by Justice Salami to the CJN. Well, to tender an apology to an injured party may satisfy such a party but since crime is acknowledged as a wrong to society as a whole, the rest of us deserve to be appeased too.  For me, apology will not do. If at the level of the President of the Court of Appeal, a judge can falsely put down on oath, those weighty allegations against the over-all Head of a nation’s judiciary, rather than ask the man to apologize, he should be referred to a psychiatrist. If however, apology was prescribed to save the image of the judiciary, it is not well thought-out. Judges are human beings and among them there can be bad eggs. It is better to push out bad eggs, and attract some temporary bad image than to build a perpetual bad image by avoiding to wash the dirty linen in public. In addition, we need to take note of the popularity of the use of affidavit as a legal instrument in our society and prevent a complete loss of confidence from overtaking its fragile credibility by not sweeping under the carpet the aspect of perjury which the NJC finds against Justice Salami.

There are a few other issues to be sorted out. Is it true for example that the planned movement of Justice Salami to the Supreme Court was not on the agenda of the meeting where it was raised? If so why? Could it also be true that the leader of the political party that has greatly benefitted from the over-turning of election results actively lobbied for the appointment of Justice Salami as President of the Court of Appeal?

The Appeal Court judges that over-turned election results were the same people and they were quite few.  If as reported in the media the same few judges were used by Justice Salami because he could not trust all his other judges, should the rest of us trust them and should they remain in office?  The other judges who have however been ‘silent’ don’t trust their President either making it hard to rule out the likelihood that they may have been behind the petitions against their President which unsettled the Chief Justice in the first instance. In other words, no matter the answers to some of the questions we have raised here, it appears that the accused and the accuser in the celebrated legal battle have a case to answer. The two top-most judges involved would have saved the day if as in civilized climes; they had resigned from office but not so in Nigeria. Like all our issues, the matter will sort itself out some day-may be year 20:20.