Editorial
Kekere-Ekun: How soon, how far for judicial integrity?
Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, was on Friday, August 23, 2024, inaugurated as the 19th Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) – Nigeria Judicial Council (NJC) record. She is the 18th Nigerian to occupy the position, down from Justice Adetokunbo Ademola, who took the first shot, as the first Nigerian from 1958 to 1972, having taken over from Justice Stafford Foster Sutton, a Briton, the first Nigerian CJN, who occupied it between 1955 to 1958. She is also the second woman to occupy the position after Justice Mariam Aloma-Muktar – 2012-2014.
Apparently to underscore how important the assignment was, President Bola Tinubu, who jetted out to France in his new Presidential aircraft on Monday, August 19, had to return to the country to perform the swearing-in ceremony, at the State House, Abuja, before hundreds of eyes from the Nigerian judiciary and millions of Nigerians watching the event.
Armed with Masters degree in law, from the London School of Economic and Political Science in November 1983, Kekere-Ekun, was pulled out in December 1989. From private practice where she was a lawyer from 1985 to 1989, she moved to the bench, beginning as a Senior Magistrate Grade II, in the Lagos State Judiciary in December 1989, and later appointed a judge of the High Court of Lagos State on July 19, 1996.
There, she served as Chairman, Robbery and Firearms Tribunal, Zone II, Ikeja, Lagos, from November 1996 to May 1999, from where she was elevated to the Court of Appeal on 22nd September 2004, serving in various divisions of the court and as presiding justice of two divisions of the court (Makurdi & Akure) in 2021 and 2023, respectively. She finally made it to the Supreme Court of Nigeria as the fifth female justice of the court, on Monday, July 8, 2013.
What this means is that the new CJN is not bereft. She has history behind her and plenty of experience to boot – experience picked up both in the classrooms, where she was equipped with adequate knowledge, and in practice, where she honed it for the past 39 years. It then means what comes out of her office as the head of the judiciary, henceforth, is deliberate. Her actions and deliverables cannot be a function of inexperience or lack of knowledge.
Why do we emphasise on this? Simple! The Nigerian judiciary she is taking over is in complete tatters – a mess – desolate, dishevelled and disgraced. Incidentally, she is part of that awful history, and in some cases, directly responsible for why many Nigerians turn away their faces and cover their nostrils at the very mention of that arm of government, especially in the years of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Not that other arms of government – the executive and the legislature are better in any way. But the emphasis on the judiciary is because of its superintending powers over the other two. The judiciary, apart from possessing the power of life and death, so to speak, also has the power of redemption, not only to tame other powers, but to heal the society.
Till the end of humanity, long after the bodies of the present generation must have completely decayed and manured the earth, the name of Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, would always be mentioned as the lead-judge that delivered that notorious judgement, which made Hope Uzodimma the Governor of Imo State on January 14, 2020, catapulting him from the number four to the first position in the original rating by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Now, it does not matter, neither does it redeem the situation, whether the erudite jurist delivered the judgement according to law as it is, which many in the legal profession, could argue is The Justice. What matters more is how much justice has been done and is seen to have been done to the society. In other words, how much did that particular outing, satisfy the three-way traffic concept of justice – justice to the accused, justice to the accuser and justice to the society, so poignantly made by the late Chukwudifu Oputat, Justice of the Supreme Court (JSC), as he then was?
Put differently, how did that judgement satisfy the dictum in law that justice must not only be done, but seen to have been done? That was the contentious issue in the Imo case and many other cases in the Nigerian judicial system in recent years, particularly in the APC years and more particularly in last year’s general elections and even in the latest cases – Imo, Kogi, Bayelsa, governorship election cases that were decided by the apex court on Friday, the same day the new CJN was inaugurated.
Even non-lawyers, these days, have come to terms with the fact that law in itself has two components – the letters of the law and the spirit of the law. But over the recent years, the Nigerian courts seem to have concentrated on the former and completely ignored the latter. Court verdicts taper more on technicalities to cushion nagging questions, rather than answer them.
That is why the pronouncements of the courts, particularly the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) and the Supreme Court in the last presidential election cases, have at the best, remained suspicious, while at the worst, totally dismissed as horrifying. It is because neither the original court nor the apex court, answered the basic questions, based on the actual winner of the election, based on examination of figures, but merely relied on technicalities in deciding the cases.
That is why we find it gratifying that the new CJN is thinking about restoring judicial integrity as one of her priorities. What is more? The adverse public feeling about the judiciary, would have been mitigated if it is coming from ordinary members of the society not counted as “learned.” But when such is coming from as high as Musa Dattijo Muhammad (JSC), who, in fact retired as second in command to Kayode Ariwoola, the immediate past CJN, it is no longer a function of ignorance.
Now that Kekere-Ekun, has vowed to take up the matter, we recommend that she visits that classic treatise of October 27, 2023, where the retired erudite jurist, in his valedictory address, all but agreed with the public perception that the judiciary is oozing the stench of corruption, sleaze, and mismanagement.
“Well, my expectation is that we will take the judiciary to higher heights. The reputation that it has, we will improve it. We will make sure that people have more confidence in the judiciary. I believe that it’s not a one man job, we all have to be on board. And because we all see where the areas are that need improvement, I believe that there will be cooperation, because we all want to see a better judiciary.
“A better judiciary is for the benefit of the entire nation. Whatever the shortcomings that we see today, we’re all members of the society. So if you want to see improvement, let the improvement start with each and every one of us and our approach to justice. Let us also have faith in the system.” These were her words after taking her oath of office on Friday.
What could more comforting. Some people have actually claimed that her appointment is to continue where her predecessors left and complete what they left behind. Nigerians will be waiting to see where the wind blows. Luckily for her, the Nigerian Senate is a rubber-stamp institution. So, nobody expects any sort of hiccups regarding her confirmation.
But, as William Shakespeare, once wrote – the purest treasures mortal times afford, is a spotless reputation. The misgivings about her previous outings could actually be excused by the argument that she was under some hierarchical leash in the apex court and could therefore be beholding to some powers therein. Now, she has no such constraints. She is now in charge. It is left to her to swim or sink. Her decision! We wish her luck.
It began less than 10 minutes after taking the oath of office. In his address to the nation, he uttered those three-letter words – subsidy is gone. The ink with which he signed the documents declaring him President was yet to dry.
That was it. From that moment, Nigerians have known nothing but poverty, tears and death. It was a declaration that came out of impulse rather than articulacy. It was not even contained in his original speech prepared for the occasion. But it sprouted out – from a rash, unthinking and impetuous mental construct.
But the effect was instant, the impact direct. From that moment, Nigerians have never known peace. Every thing took a cue. Minutes after, the news broke that the price of Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol had jumped from N189 to N550. It was that instant. Today, it hovers around N1,500.
The effect: Within minutes, transportation cost quadrupled. So too, commodity prices. Caught unawares, marketers, who had earlier thought it was a day of the rains as customers rushed to their shops, soon became suspicious and then got wiser – these were not ordinary customers but smart alecs playing a fast one on them.
They stopped selling, retrieved the items they could from those who had not disappeared with their goods and closed shop to study the situation properly. Hours after, they responded. A plate of eba and soup, went up from N200 to N1,000. Prices hit the rooftops.
In fact, the vehicle transporting what used to be Nigeria, which had been moving at a horse and buggy pace in the days of Muhammadu Buhari, stopped abruptly, engaged the reverse gear and began galloping backwards. That has remained the ugly, parlous tale of the Tinubu days, since May 29, 2023.
Now, the expectation would be that the President and his government that wrought such a horrendous punishment on the polity, would themselves take some blows. But nada! Instead, the opposite was the case. Within months of plunging the citizens into the untold hardship Tinubu went on a binge, spending money – in the words of Olusegun Obasanjo, former President – like a drunken sailor.
Few weeks after, as Nigerians were reeling and gasping in pain from the impact of their new situation, 469 newly-minted Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs), rolled out from factories in Japan, where they were produced into the premises of the National Assembly for the just inaugurated members.
Put the cost at N100billion – that is N160million for each unit, plus other charges. Reason: The lawmakers needed the vehicles because of their good suspension system, to navigate the so many bad roads in Nigeria. Yes, you heard right. How could they think well and make good laws after the hassles of the bad roads? Tinubu saw reasons, acquiesced and voila!
But it did not end there. Tinubu suddenly realised that Kashim Shettima, his deputy, needed a new home “befitting” his new office. Pronto! A voucher of N21billion was raised and he had it. Till date a haze still hovers over the project.
The last news that was heard was that Number Two refused to take residence because the entire environment, including the toilets was wired to the teeth to monitor him. And Number Two needed privacy.
Again, in the same weeks, Oga Patapata, also realised that Madam needed to transport more comfortably. Pronto! It was arranged. Another voucher was raised for cars for the Office of the First Lady. Cost N1.2billion. Of course, madam needed the comfort for peace at home.
Naturally, since transportation is not done by land alone, he also took care of that. For the sea, a yacht was procured. Cost N5billion. Because the birds in the presidential fleet were not good enough, Tinubu did the needful.
He enriched the fleet with the one befitting of his status and had it transformed to mimic the US Air Force One. To complete the status symbol project, he also added a replica of The Beast, the US presidential automobile.
Ironically, the funds used in procuring these luxury lifestyle, came, not out of productive ventures of Nigeria, but through borrowing. Today, Tinubu has practically borrowed Nigeria blind, doubling or even tripling that of his predecessors.
Meanwhile Nigerians had upped the ante from mere groaning and skreiching. Citizens, unable to take it anymore, now stop their hitherto sleek vehicles on the Third Mainland Bridge and plunge into the Lagos lagoon to end it all. The option is now more rampant than remote and occasional.
Many others, taking the Socrates option, now drink hemlock and many more simply sleep off without any intention of waking up. That is where we are. That is the new Nigeria – the Tinubu Nigeria. But there is more.
Terrorists and the landlords of the forest, having now discovered that the Commander-in-Chief has other fancies than security and welfare of the people – the constitutionally-declared primary purpose of government and scant regard for the citizens, have practically gone haywire. They have taken over and established their authority.
Presently, outside those wantonly slaughtered or butchered in their homes like animals at the abattoir, incinerated alive while sleeping on their beds, among other forms of decimation, many more citizens are now spending months, going to years as victims of captivity with them in various forests in Nigeria.
In their rampage, the terrorists have since broken all barriers considered out of place hitherto. One of their escapades is the present videos of the school children and teachers taken from Oyo State. The gory imagery captures the current Nigerian story.
For instance, on Thursday, just as the sound of heavy celebration was going on in neighbouring Ogun State as the world marked the Ojude Oba yearly carnival, two of the victims, one of them with a toddler on her back, were pleading for their lives, as others went through various forms of torture, including heavy whipping like beasts.
Don’t forget that the terrorists had earlier slaughtered one of their colleagues. In the new video, the totally terrified women, informed that they had chosen another victim to be similarly eliminated. Yet, no word about rescue! Terrible!
Interestingly, if not painfully, Tinubu’s response, in the few cases he bothered, was to see the crisis through the politics lens. His most recent reaction was to tell the world that the harvest of attacks and carnages ravaging the country, were sponsored by his political enemies, intent on shoving him out of power. That to him was all that mattered.
Now, where are your powers as C-in-C? They are mostly found in the most disgraceful economic and political acts of impunity. Nigerians now waking up to hear of the award of brain-dazing contracts such as the N15trillion Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway and Badagry-Maiduguri Highway – with scant regard for official regulations, is now becoming more common than rare.
Few days after one of the teachers was beheaded and the video of the hideous act made to circulate on the social media, the President and his All Progressives Congress (APC), party, rolled out the drums of his winning the party’s ticket to contest the 2027 presidential election.
To say that it has been three years of weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth, is a clear euphemism. There is no starker way of putting it than calamity – pure, unmitigated catastrophe – disaster.
Then comes the big question. Nigeria is already breasting the tape of these ruinous years of the first term. Suppose Tinubu succeeds in renewing his tenure by January next year? Will Nigeria survive five more years of a life like the last three? What will be left of Nigeria? Is there a way out, outside shouting – God forbid!?
Now that Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) has fully executed his plot against Siminalayi Fubara, Governor of Rivers State, where would it be placed in terms of identity, nuances, ethos and history? Where would it be placed in democratic arrangement and value? In other word, by what name would it be called?
So, this is what President Bola Tinubu’s much-advertised democratic credentials is all about? This is what being listed among the arrowheads in the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), the body that fought relentlessly against the late Sani Abacha and his henchmen has finally come to?
Is this where “The Last Man Standing” – apologies Tony Elumelu – has ended up? So, after wedging an epic battle for and through Lagos State, against then President Obasanjo and practically defeating him, even if perceptibly, in all the struggles – such as running government without federal allocation for years and surviving the political onslaught that took away other South West states like a tsunami, it has come to this?
Don’t forget that it was this selfsame Tinubu that served as the bastion of opposition in Nigerian politics from when he was Governor of Lagos State, not only standing up against Obasanjo, but undertaking the relentless battles that led to the All Progressives Congress (APC), winning the war eventually in 2015.
So, this is what all the struggles, the speeches, the colloquia, the meetings and the strategies have come to – the end result? So, the definition of democracy, to Tinubu, is selling the dog to buy a monkey – replacing democratic bad-behaviour with democratic-heist? So, this is it?!
Make no mistake about it. What you saw play out in Rivers is nothing but Tinubu at work. It is all about him, it is for him. Never make the mistake of adorning Wike in the toga of a powerful man. That would be a fatal error of judgement. Every power he exercises, real, imagined, inferred or contingent belong to and are exclusive to Tinubu.
Take away the President and Wike would turn to a political meek-lamb or a jellyfish. Fubara would have eaten him for lunch a long time ago. So, Tinubu it is – the reason the klieglights must be beamed on him. That is why he must carry the can in this odious construct in Rivers in particular and the entire Nigerian political scenario in general.
With the picture that assaulted Nigeria regarding the APC primaries that have just held, what is different from the edition we saw in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) of old? Is it not worse or the worst in real and imagined terms? What then has Tinubu been fighting all these years?
Incidentally, where we have Wike today, we had Lamidi Adedibu, the Amala Politics exponent, Tony Aneni of the Mr. Fix-it fame and the Uba brothers in Anambra to whom the political firmament in Nigeria once bowed, among many plethora of examples.
So, there is nothing really new about the development, but for the fresh dimension that has been introduced into the narrative by the Wike phenomenon, which is totally novel. Before now it was a case of one behemoth in a political party rampaging the system.
But today, it has gone beyond that. Wike has developed the penchant for taking no prisoners. In his own strange construct, he has now coalesced the entire APC and PDP structure into his shoulder basket, from where he dispenses favours.
Imagine Kingsley Chinda, purchasing APC governorship election form, as a PDP federal lawmaker without first resigning from his original party. That is how wacky it has become. Wackier still is that nobody – not even the APC apparatchik has been able to raise a finger. Why? Obvious answer – the Tinubu factor.
Now, here is the danger. By the heist in Port Harcourt adding to the sequence of political oddities and absurdities since the Tinubu years, it has become obvious that Nigeria is headed towards a Paul Biya’s Cameroun, a Yoweri Musaveni’s Uganda and Zimbabwe under the late Robert Mugabe.
Tinubu, has shown obvious incapacity to tackle the parlous economic crisis in the country with 150 million Nigerians plunged into multidimensional poverty and many more growing the list daily, while also displaying uncommon powerlessness towards addressing the debilitating state of insecurity.
Under his nose citizens are daily being forced from their homes into the forests by terrorists, with some of them taken from their crutching positions, positioned before the camera and slaughtered – heads cut off like animals at an abattoir and video images freely displayed on social media.
Yet, by what has now happened in Rivers State, it has become obvious that Nigerians are not being factored into the whole equation and if they were, scant regard is paid to their opinion, ending in their powerlessness to change the situation. That is the tragedy!
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