X-raying Nigeria’s new regime of justice

Furthermore, is the silent but steady process of prison decongestion. This laudable successes owe much to the new regime of law entrenched by the Minister of Justice, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa. The minister may not be media-savvy, and so may not believe in reeling out statistics as to what he or the ministry is doing at […]

Furthermore, is the silent but steady process of prison decongestion. This laudable successes owe much to the new regime of law entrenched by the Minister of Justice, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa. The minister may not be media-savvy, and so may not believe in reeling out statistics as to what he or the ministry is doing at every point in time. And so the press may not celebrate his efforts and cynics may conveniently ignore it in their rabid hatred of the minister, but for the hundreds of people, perhaps thousands who have, through the instrumentality of this process, breathed the air of freedom, the name Aondoakaa conjures only images of a saviour. He may not come from a geographical area that traditionally produces the nation’s chief law officers, but to these grateful people who are suddenly seeing sunlight and breathing fresh air, justice has no tribal marks. To them, all these anti-Aondoakaa sentiments are largely neither here nor there. He remains a visionary crusader on a mission of justice.

Related to the above is the change in prosecutorial tactics. Just because something has been done before to the point of becoming a tradition does not make it right. If something is wrong or offensive to society’s sense of propriety, then it is wrong.

It has long been established that humans are not always receptive to change, but where change is positive, there is a huge moral demand on society to be more receptive or accommodating. But here lies Aondoakaa’s major problem. For instance, the minister refuses to conduct trials on television or to abridge people’s rights in the quest for justice. Nigerians strangely find this offensive, and condemn Aondoakaa, when only too recently, the laud arguments and trenchant criticisms against the nation’s law officers were that they were turning law-enforcement into show-business. Those who have suddenly made the U-turn have also conveniently forgotten their previous arguments that under our laws, the accused person, no matter how guilty he may look in our eyes, enjoys the constitutional presumption of innocence until he is proven guilty by a court of law.  This has nothing to do with the minister; it is the Nigerian constitution. Or has the constitution been changed under Aondoakaa?

So calling people thieves on national television or engaging in the trial of people in the media as was the case in our recent history may make good headlines and paint one as an action minister, but it does not in any way advance the cause or course of justice. For one, it prejudices the accused before the bench in that it poisons the trial environment. Proving his innocence becomes a herculean task in the end. Even if the courts find him innocent in the end, the impression is thus created that he bought his freedom, having been previously convicted in the media. But if one may ask: of all the people who were tried in the media and convicted in the media even before investigations into their matters commenced, how many were or have been sentenced by a court of law? If we are serious about building a rule-based Nigeria, we should develop a culture of patience with the due process of the law. If someone is truly guilty of an offence, waiting reasonably for the law to take its due course will not make him innocent. Except of course, if the charges against him were trumped up or frivolous, and recourse to a legal trial may expose the mischief of his false accusers and prove that the accused was a victim after all. This ambivalence of faith in the machinery of justice and cynicism in its impotence is unbecoming of a nation of 49 years standing, looking forward to a future of greatness in the global arena.

I stand to be corrected, but patriotism is what one cannot have too much of. This is why across the millennia and across the global landscape, patriotic fervour has led men and women to great lengths, and not excluding war. And so whether it is out of patriotic pride or nobility of nationalism, the Honourable Attorney-General and Minister for Justice refuse to surrender Nigeria’s sovereignty to erstwhile colonial powers. And some people may quarrel with this, but for of us who are radically patriotic and utterly unapologetic for being so, we stand by the minister, and declare loudly: Nigeria is a sovereign nation and our sovereignty cannot under any circumstances be compromised.

Viewed against the backdrop of our recent history where the nation’s chief law officers became the nation’s chief law-breakers, there is need for a definite need for a re-evaluation of the man Aondoakaa and his tenure. Will cheap politics permit this? Will even its high-stakes variety allow it? Will Aondoakaa be allowed to do his job or will we keep distracting him with reminders of his geography? This is the big question.

Adebowale, a commentator on national issues, writes from Lagos