Buhari and the judiciary!

President Muhammadu Buhari, some weeks ago, in a town hall meeting with Nigerians in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia confessed that the judiciary remained his main headache in the fight against corruption. He rightly observed that corruption is so pervasive in the country and to fight it effectively requires the strong support of the judiciary. However, he reasoned bizarrely that the judiciary is so corrupt that it is derailing his effort to fight the scourge. Strangely, the only evidence or example he could draw on was his personal experience. Hear him:

“On the fight against corruption vis-à-vis the judiciary, Nigerians will be right to say that is my main headache for now. If you reflect on what I went through for 12 years when I wanted to be the President…In my first attempt in 2003, I ended up at the Supreme Court and for 13 months I was in court. The second attempt in 2007, I was in court close to 20 months and in 2011, my third attempt, I was also in court for nine months…All these cases went up to the Supreme Court until the fourth time in 2015, when God agreed that I will be President of Nigeria.”

As if that was not enough, the national chairman of the APC also took aim at the judiciary over recent judgements particularly, on the election case in Rivers state. “I still find the judgement on the Rivers state governorship election totally astonishing. There is something fundamentally wrong n the judiciary,” Oyegun was quoted as saying. However, Oyegun later revealed his real intentions and desire further when he openly confessed that: “We have lost very important resource-rich states to the PDP. No matter how crude oil prices have fallen, it is still the most important revenue earner for the country.” Similarly, many of his party members – prominent among which is the Lagos publicity secretary, Joe Igbokwe, have been openly abusing the Supreme Court and labelling its justices as ‘corrupt’ and ‘fraudulent’ with some calling on the President to probe the Supreme Court for daring to deliver judgements against the party’s candidates.

True, the judiciary, like all institutions in Nigeria, is not immune to corruption and the erosion of values. There are proven cases of corruption in the judiciary and in most cases, the judiciary has often allowed the rich and highly connect law-breakers to easily escape justice while coming down heavily on the petty malfeasance of the poor.

However, we condemn the self-righteous posture of the President and the wholesale condemnation and abuse of the judiciary by his party chairman and members for delivering judgements that are unfavourable to them. This is a dangerous trend which does not bode well for the country or its quest to become a law-governed society.

The president needs to be reminded that the military – of which he headed between 1984 and 1985 – started to weaken and destroy the judiciary. He can recall how they usually govern via decrees with ouster clauses to render the judiciary ineffective and incapable of challenging their powers. They also starved the judiciary of funds and made its members reliant on, and beholden to them. Thus weakened, it was easy for corruption to creep into the institution. This is only natural as corruption is known to thrive most in weak institutions.

Again, to lay all the blame for the non-conviction of corrupt officials on the judiciary is to be hypocritical at best. The inability of government to successfully see to the conviction of corrupt officials have more to do with the incompetence and lack of grit of the Nigerian state to effectively and diligently prosecute cases against erring officials than a corrupt judiciary. The judiciary is meant to be an arbiter, a referee of sort, and is not expected to take sides in disputes. The universal principle of “he who alleges must prove” applies to the government too. In most cases, shoddy, lazy and incompetent investigation and prosecution combine to scuttle the cases of the government. That cannot be blamed on the judiciary neither can the judiciary lessen the burden of proof on the government.

What the government needs to do is to comprehensively reform the judiciary and increase and strengthen its capacity for investigation and prosecution and not the condemnation and vilification that is fast becoming a past time of the President and his party.

In the final analysis, the judiciary is the final bulwark against a tyrannical government and the last hope of the common man. Nigerians must not and cannot allow the President and his party to cow the judiciary.