Editor’s note:
Almost one year ago Muhammadu Buhari was elected as the president of Nigeria. Many Nigerians continue to debate on whether or not the government of the new leader of the nation can succeed.
Etcetera, the singer who is famous for airing controversial opinion articles on various topics, shares his views on why Buhari’s administration can’t succeed with Nigerian judges.
Muhammadu Buhari during his inauguration and swearing in ceremony on May 29, 2015
Judicial corruption is invisible to the masses
One would be a fool to believe that there is in Nigeria a final authority to turn to in case one is seriously wronged. One would be a bigger fool to believe that critics of the Nigerian judiciary are merely sore losers or angry convicts, and perhaps judicial misconduct would be exposed by appeal courts or the mass media and corrected. Why guess our way without the facts? Such predispositions held by many otherwise educated adults like you allow pervasive institutional corruption of the judicial branch to remain hidden.
Judicial corruption is invisible to the masses because lawyers are trained and motivated to lie, deny and cannot safely speak of it, because mass media corporations agree with judicial prejudice and live in fear of judicial whims, because non-lawyers cannot obtain the facts without prohibitive cost and effort, and because the myth of judicial salvation has broad appeal and is propagated by the mass media. Judicial corruption is discovered by its victims and not even they can confidently speak of it in Nigeria without repercussions.
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Nigerian lawyers do not speak against judges, on whom they depend for income stability and success. And of course, they aspire to be judges. They do not criticise the law practice and precedent, which they are selected and trained to accept regardless of validity, and which they could not otherwise use successfully. The persistent citizen can only see judgements written by the selected winner to sound plausible.
The judiciary has only become worse
The other facts and argument are costly to obtain, and mountains of cases must be studied in each area to see how rules are misapplied and facts fabricated, and how false “principles of law” are abstracted from bad precedents. After several years of trying to reform the judicial system, the judiciary has only become worse. Any honourable court would have jumped at the opportunity to defend the masses from obvious wrongdoing. But there are no honourable courts in Nigeria.
Living in the prison barracks in Kirikiri town and hearing my father and other prison warders discuss cases of prisoners, I understood how the Nigerian judiciary is utterly corrupt from bottom to top, so completely that I would rather seek alternative means of settlement than experience the staggering level of corruption of our judges.
The wealthy and powerful have little need for individual rights
Do not be deceived by the myth that the judiciary is the last hope of the ordinary man. Firsthand stories of people who had been in court will teach you not only the irrelevant laws and court procedures, but also about the corruption of the judicial branch than any written book.
It is very easy for a Nigerian judge to choose the wealthiest or most powerful party in a legal case, and the outcome which serves himself, and to allow or dismiss the case, corrupt the facts for his preferred side to win.
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As seen today in Nigeria, the wealthy and powerful have little need for individual rights; it is too much of a costly inconvenience in business: they can buy influence and respect, and their interests are granted as needed by sympathetic judges. Judges loudly declare their defences of constitutional rights for the rich and powerful, but scorn the same rights when asserted by the poor, the few, or those without a voice.
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