Follow Us on Google
When the full history of the present democratic dispensation is written, the halls of Nigerian politics and power will be littered with the remains of politicians who sought power for personal gains, not power for what power ought to be used for – the greater interest of the people. History will also be harsh on judicial officers who subverted the course of justice and made it a marketplace for the highest bidder. Democracy no longer boils down to legitimacy. Elections no longer offer valid choices. People’s votes seem not to matter any more. If this democracy fails(the red flags are flashing already), these two categories of people – politicians and judges – will be held liable. Currently, “judge-shopping”, and contradictory judgments by courts of concurrent jurisdiction have been the norm.
It’s for this reason that the President of the Nigerian Bar Association(NBA) Mazi Afam Osigwe, looking visibly pained at an event in Enugu recently, lamented the systemic corruption and deep-seated rot in Nigeria’s judiciary. Words didn’t fail him in describing the level of rot in the system he has spent decades as a lawyer. He described the rot as a “moral crisis and a democratic emergency”. The NBA President expressed his deep concern at the 17th Ralph Opara Memorial Lecture. He warned that the judicial corruption has crossed a “red line” that threatens the survival of Nigeria’s democracy unless judicial integrity and far-reaching reforms are implemented, urgently.
With voice almost quavering and the audience taken in by his message, Osigwe regretted that the cliché of the judiciary as the “last hope of the common man” is almost far gone now as that institution of justice in Nigeria has descended to an abysmal level as a marketplace where justice is “purchased by the highest bidder”. According to 2024 data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime(UNODC) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigerian judges and lawyers were among top recipients and facilitators of bribery in 2023. The UNODC/NBS survey put the amount purportedly paid in cash bribes to judicial officers in 2023 at a staggering N721billion.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria, the NBA President added, is also alleged to be complicit in the dirty deal. Osigwe described the report as a “source of serious disappointment to greater number of Nigerians”. This, he stressed, has become very manifest since the return of democracy, attributing the rot to a combination of political interference, nepotism, lack of transparency in judicial appointments and a culture of lobbying for political positions. He also slammed the current sickening practice of state governors and top ministers doling out houses and cars to judges as “demeaning to judicial independence”.
The alarm raised by the NBA President is not the first time those who are familiar with the inner workings of the judiciary are raising such concern. In October 2023, during a valedictory session to mark his retirement from the Supreme Court after 47 years in active judicial service, Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad shocked almost everyone at that rarefied occasion when he said: “My Lords, distinguished invitees, ladies and gentlemen, it’s obvious that the judiciary I am exiting from is far from the one I voluntarily joined and desired to serve and be identified with. The institution has become something else”. Yes, the judiciary has become something else. It’s no longer an institution to be proud of. Decency and integrity have taken a flight.
Perhaps that’s the most hard-hitting indictment of the present state of Nigeria’s judiciary. It’s not for nothing. Such situation, Justice Muhammad stated, painfully. He also mentioned the lopsided nature of membership of Panels that hear the presidential election Appeals . He specifically cited the composition of the Supreme Court Panel that heard the presidential election Appeals filed by Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar in 2023, saying the membership of that panel did not ensure “justice and transparency”. Again for this reason and other sundry allegations of misconduct swirling around some judges, the regulatory body of the judiciary – the National Judicial Council(NJC)- empanelled four different committees in 2024 to probe various allegations of misconduct brought against 27 Judges in the country.
The decision was the outcome of the 106th NJC meeting held in Abuja. While the NJC dismissed some petitions against some Judges, including the allegation leveled against the immediate past Chief Justice of Nigeria(CJN), Olukayode Ariwoola and the President Court of Appeal Justice Monica Dongbam-Mensem, it found as “meritorious” the accusation of misconduct brought against 27 Judges, cutting across various courts in the country. Such misconduct in the judicial system is at variance with section 17(2) (e) of the 1999 Constitution(as amended).
The section provides for the independence, impartiality and integrity of judges in handling cases before them. From top to bottom, the rot is like what we have not heard in a very long time in our judiciary. That such allegation of misconduct has creeped into the Supreme Court, is most alarming. Two years ago, Justice Charles Omole, a Nigerian scholar, author and Judge in the London Circuit of the British Judiciary, had this to say about the rot in the Nigerian judiciary. “Issues surrounding corruption in the judiciary in Nigeria has been a matter of concern for a long time, and I will like to shed some light on what is going on”. Justice Omole said some of his friends in the top echelon of Nigeria’s judiciary (names withheld) told him that the judiciary in Nigeria, from Magistrate courts to the High Courts, Appellate Court, and the Supreme Court, have literally sold their conscience.
He listed the category of undue influence on judges and how some of the judges who bow to these pressures corruptly decide cases to favour litigants. “There is massive corruption through administrative misconduct by court clerks, registrars, all over Nigeria”, Justice Omole said, adding, “these are mainly financially-induced, with the aim to hide court files, backdate cases, destroy files and evidence,etc”. At the Supreme Court, Justice Muhammad(retd) said that the Chief Registrar’s salary is N1.2 m per month, while Justices earn N750,000 per month. That’s another level of corruption that seems difficult to explain.
From his own investigation, Justice Omole said he discovered four categories of inducement and influence that have brought to bear on Judges. He itemised them as: “Money, blackmail, Spiritual attack, fraternity and Cult membership”. He said the case of “spiritual attack may sound strange”, but insists that some judges in Nigeria’s judiciary told him that, that is exactly what some of them go through, in addition to cult membership. As Omole claimed, “I can confidently say that over 60% of the service judges I have met belong to one cult or another in Nigeria”. Justice Omole said many judges used the “cult membership to progress their legal careers, others joined to seek protection from spiritual attacks common to Judges.
If these startling disclosures represent the present structure of Nigeria’s judiciary, the question is: does our democracy have any real chance to survive? Matters may get worse as we approach next year’s elections, exactly a year from now. As a former renowned Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Niki Tobi(retd) once said, “a judge by the nature of his position and professional calling, is expected to be straight forward, diligent, consistent and open in whatever he does in court and other places of human endeavour that he finds himself”. He reminded judges to bear in mind that they are the cynosure of entire adjudication in court, and as Caesar’s wife, they are expected to live above board and above suspicion. That advice is falling on deaf ears.
Sadly, the way Nigeria’s judiciary is structured in the last three years since the assent of power of the Tinubu government, justice has become “one-way traffic”. Only the government is the winner, and everyone else a loser. This is contrary to one of the famous quotes of the ‘lion’ of the Supreme Court of his era, late Justice Chukwudifu Oputa, in the case of Josiah Vs the state. That philosophy is no longer the nexus of many court judgments of the present judiciary. Those cherished virtues have gone now among many judges in the country despite public complaints.
A 2019 joint survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes(UNODC) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed that corruption in the Nigerian judiciary has been quite extensive. The survey revealed that 20 percent of those who had contact with the judiciary complained bitterly that they were confronted with “requests for the payment of bribes”. The survey also stated that though male and female judges were involved in the the cash-for- judgement scandal, however, it noted that “male judges are far more involved in seeking bribes than their female colleagues”.
Another survey by the Independent Corrupt Practice and Other Offences Commission(ICPC), disclosed that Nigerian lawyers offered N9.4bn bribes to judges between 2018 and 2020. The alleged bribes from lawyers were specifically for judges handling elections petitions and other political cases. Most of the lawyers interviewed by the ICPC survey, reportedly admitted paying N5.7bn as bribes for election cases they were handling for their clients. What may happen next could far exceed what happened in 2023. And as Nyesome Wike will always brag, “heavens will not fall”.
