Justice system and national development

We can’t talk of effective leadership and sound development without touching the justice system and then in particular the judiciary and police in specific terms. It is elementary to overstate the place of these two institutions in building a virile nation state. Destroy them and you have a society without order. We all already know that no development can thrive in an atmosphere of chaos.

One has to be alive first before he or she can bother about running after things that make life a song worth singing. The judiciary, assisted by the police, constitutes the last hope of the ordinary, very powerless segment of any human population. Remove the judiciary and the police, life would be very short and nasty. This topic is here again because the operational modus of these institutions in recent times is becoming of great concern to the majority of citizens, both the knowledgeable and the unknowledgeable.

    Citizens have been talking and cursing, but the funny thing is that most of them prefer to do so from the safe confines of their parlour and beer drinking centres. None wants to die. So, they hardly think of hitting the streets to express their fears and to demand change. They forget that true freedom doesn’t come by mere wish, for if wishes were that potent even beggars would ride in private jets. The plain truth is that all human beings desire a good life. Understanding and adding to it make the difference.

The elite with some measure of power to effect changes and bring sustainable progress, know the challenges here but when they have opportunities to speak truth to power, they choose the strategy of arguments rather than discussions. We have been taught that discussions are far better than arguments. The crux of arguments is to identify who is right. This promotes hatred and conflict since everyone has an ego. The focus of discussion is to find out what is actually wrong. A problem identified as they say is half solved.

The Nigerian judiciary is not in the best shape and form. This is a song all of us should be singing, which we are not doing. The omission, if we call it that, is at the root of what our judiciary and the police have turned out to be in recent times, institutions meant to aid development but which have turned out to be monsters baying for massive destruction of the people and the society. When men keep calm, we have been told evil multiplies. What many had passed as minor mistakes in the justice delivery system have grown into adult beasts.

It has long been argued that the structure of power administration within the judiciary and even the police is faulty and cannot promote effective and efficient services. Many have asked why the Chief Justice of the Federation should be head of other equally very sensitive judicial offices designed for discipline and improvement in services. Beautiful, legitimate question. We have been told until one asks a question he or she can’t get an answer. Citizens have asked the question stated above, why are they not getting answers?

As it is today if we say the judiciary has lost her independence that wouldn›t amount to talking fallacy. It is the truth and nothing but the truth.  We take a few examples to buttress our case and they are all very recent examples. The Supreme Court sitting as election tribunal over the 2023 presidential election absolved the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of blame for not meeting terms provided for the conduct of that election. In place of sanctions, the court rather conferred on the body powers due only to God, when they said the body is at liberty to conduct an election they way it felt would be appropriate to it.

That verdict reversed all gains made towards bringing in technology to our management of the electoral process. It returned power to perverts whose speciality is rewriting election results. We can see the consequences in the subsequent polls heldy after the 2023 outing. Consider Rivers State where preparation for election in the local government was in top gear sequel to abSupreme Court judgement in that regard.

A federal court sat and handed down a verdict that the INEC shouldn›t hand over the voters register which is in her custody to the state electoral commission, to conduct the poll. Another one gave a ruling that police shouldn’t provide security in the event the state went ahead to conduct the election. Another one stopped the conduct of the poll thereby overriding the much applauded verdict of the Supreme Court that elections should be held to produce elected leaders for the third tier government.

Keeping the register and provoking disorder and giving out the register to meet the terms of the Supreme Court verdict, which one is more appropriate to do? Why would any judge prohibit the police from carrying out her cardinal responsibility of securing lives and prosper.? In a sane clime the head of the police force would rush to court to challenge such a nasty ruling but our chief law officer quickly accepted that judgement and proceeded with speed to implement.

      A lawyer said the Federal High Courts are seen as one. Going by this they have near limitless jurisdiction. We are also told that all that anyone needs is to bring them into his matter irrespective of where one is domiciled to add the national institution and the police, then a deal could be struck. Another huge aberration of a supposed federal republic. Matters happen in a Southern state and a judge sitting in Sokoto is given powers to adjudicate. Haba! Those who created this system never had a nation in mind at all. We are living with the consequences of such recklessness. Products of narrow minds.

     There are points we must stress and these are very vital if the dream country must come to fruition. We must begin to crave for an independent judiciary. This is very important. A return to the recent past when the verdicts of judges and justices, applauded by the people. Ordinary people could see the equity and soundness. Court verdicts ought to be based on our country’s laws and constitution not “shifting political power or pressures of temporary majority.”

We all may not be lawyers even though it would be very nice if all of us read law, but far many of us know one thing about an independent judiciary. When it is in place it serves as safeguards of the people’s rights. It will promote accountability and foster public trust.

Those of us clamoring for national conference or collection of outcomes of old summits and making sense from them would have lost our reasons to continue the agitation if the courts were alive to help in having a people’s constitution. Most laws in developed settings came by means of progressive judicial pronouncements and verdicts.

    The same for the police which unfortunately still operates like colonial police. Ours appears more interested in enforcement than in building. The truth all of us should know is that when we keep promoting contradictions, it is a question of time before the children of monsters we nurture grow up to become monsters who feed on human flesh. It is not possible to sow rice and harvest beans. What you sow, you reap.