Between Dattijo And Karimi: A Public Indictment By Achilleus-Chud Uchegbu
Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad, Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, now retired, and Senator Sunday Karimi, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Services recently delivered what passes as a high-level indictment of the governmental system operated by the All Progressives Congress (APC). And, indeed, they indicted the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive under the control and management of APC, for promoting a leadership and administrative system that promotes inefficiency and corruption. Let me begin with Dattijo.
From Dattijo, we learn that the judiciary in Nigeria is in dire need of surgery. It needs such surgery that is critical to its survival because it is already in the departure lounge and waiting for undertakers to send in their bids. After listening to Dattijo’s speech, and reading the entire text, it dawned on me that the man was simply putting up with a rotten system just to ensure that he retires honourably. He, however, did so telling the world that the judiciary in Nigeria is rotten. He should know. He tells us that the veil with which the lady of justice was blindfolded was sold and bought long ago. This means that justice in the Nigerian judiciary has its eyes open. It also means that justice, as delivered by the Nigerian judiciary, especially from the bench which he sat last, looks clearly at the faces of its beneficiaries to determine what sort of justice to dispense and like an ATM; it can push out clean naira bills, and sometimes, dirty and smelly ones.
What best describes Dattijo’s position on the Nigerian judiciary is the picture of the lady of justice which stands supported by a dry wood. That picture, which had gone viral on social media, summarises the state of the judiciary in Nigeria. It says something like the lady of justice, tired of standing blindfolded while malfeasance ruled her temple, was now seeking to remove the blindfold and lie somewhere where her rape will be completely total. It must have taken the goodness in a Nigerian to offer her a dried wood to lean on with the hope that she may be rescued… “Before it is too late”, apologies Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.
The sad commentary that I have heard from my days as a judiciary reporter, is that the judiciary is the last hope of the common man. But as Alhaji Atiku Abubakar put it, it has become the “lost hope of the common man”.
Another is that Nigerians (politicians) must be careful not to destroy the judiciary as its destruction would mean strategic destruction of the essential fabric of Nigeria’s nationhood. But what Dattijo said, and openly too, is that the judiciary has been destroyed by its priests, worshippers, and adherents. It thus goes to say that Nigeria’s systematic destruction began from the judiciary which colours its pronouncements with the lens of Nigeria’s national fault lines –ethnicity and religion.
In Dattijo’s words, nothing is as dangerous and as destructive as a judiciary that prevaricates on its pronouncements. This prevarication gives out the judiciary as sold. I suspect this is why it is regularly said that a good lawyer is not just one who knows and understands the laws and rules of court and how to apply them eloquently and convincingly in winning his case, but one who knows the road to the judge’s house, albeit, nicodemusly. This is why political actors boast openly that there is no how they would lose election-related cases. That is the level of rot in the Nigerian judicial system where the common man resorts to self-help because he does not financially know a lawyer who also, financially, knows the judge.
It is therefore not surprising that those who constantly warn Nigerian youths against denigrating, abusing, and accusing, priests in the judicial chambers of malfeasance, and selling political judgments to the highest bidders, have kept sealed lips over Dattijo’s expository challenge. They, especially those among them who regularly seek to hug the media limelight, are not even discussing it, like they would, had he used the opportunity of his valedictory to cover the rot in the judiciary by lavishing praises on it. They see no wrong in his indictment of the system that promotes children, spouses, and mistresses of judicial officers to the bench –after all, it is a Nigerian thing. Take a look at the Military, Police, and Para-military services to see where the judiciary borrowed the leaf.
Do I expect Dattijo’s speech to upset the judiciary and cause a major shake-up? Not at all! Like so many speeches and exposes before it, it will be overlooked while some will dismiss it as the ranting of a retiring man, or, as it is normal, accuse him of supporting the opposition. However, the fact remains that the issues he raised in his speech, will continually hound the conscience of the leadership of the judiciary even when they retire. For instance, what explanation, or excuse, does the leadership have to make about the fact, as exposed by Dattijo, that the Southeast has no representation in the Supreme Court’s bench? Is the deliberate ignorance of the region a statement in demonstration of the belief that the region no longer counts in the affairs of Nigeria? Is it an action in continuation of the ostracism of the region from the political Nigeria? Or, is it an action to push people of the region out of Nigeria? Anyway, what do I know?
Meanwhile, by arguing that Nigerian roads are bad, and as such, the Senate was right to buy high-end SUVs for senators, Sen. Karimi tells Nigerians, who do not have the privilege of being in the Senate, that they are condemned to suffer the consequences of the failure of the APC government to fix Nigeria’s roads. Karimi is an APC stalwart. His comment indicts the APC government for wasting the years between 2015 and 2023 pontificating and grandstanding, on road infrastructure development, for which it mindlessly borrowed money, and wasted it achieving nothing under the able and powerful watch of Babatunde Fashola (SAN), a senior player in a cathedral that has been shredded by one of it priests, Dattijo, for corruption, nepotism, and prevarication on truth and facts.
Between what Dattijo and Sen. Karimi had said, there is little left to hope for in Nigeria. It simply says that hope in renewed hope will hopelessly end in more disappointment and gnashing of teeth.
