If anyone still doubts that the judiciary has been hijacked, or that the capture was done for nefarious purposes, they need to ponder the statement made by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) president Olumide Akpata last week at the NBA National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
He was on the National Judicial Council (NJC) committee that recently screened the nominees for appointment to the Court of Appeal.
The nomination was last month embroiled in controversy over the qualification and competence of many of the nominees, prompting the Court of Appeal president Monica Dongban-Mensem to remonstrate with those who alleged that unethical conduct had seeped into the process.
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Mr Akpata said that at the screening some of the judges could not answer some of the important legal issues put to them, and more ominously were interviewed for only a few minutes.
More damning, said the NBA president who was worried that some of the nominees could in his opinion certainly not be heading for the appellate court, some members of the screening committee shockingly suggested that the incompetent nominees “would learn on the job”.
If they didn’t learn at the magistrate level, what would they learn at the higher courts? Or would judgements, as many suspect, be written for them? It is disturbing that the NJC, defying the protests of well-meaning and worried Nigerians, has gone ahead to uphold the injurious work done by the Federal Judicial Service Commission on the nomination process.
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By upholding incompetence and nepotism, the NJC and FJSC have defiantly told Nigerians to eat their hearts out.
Clearly, the judiciary has been hijacked for totally and depressingly nefarious reasons. But the consolation is that soon, things will come to a head, and the story of this ignoble period in the Nigerian judiciary will be written.
Without a doubt, all the ugly details of the period will come out regarding how the institutions of the judiciary were captured, contaminated, and deployed to serve ethnic, religious, political and parochial interests.
Mr Akpata is right to take umbrage, but the shortsighted forces which have hijacked the judiciary, especially in light of the brazen subterfuge they deployed to unseat former Chief Justice of Nigeria Walter Onnoghen, don’t care a hoot.
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They are too inebriated by power to care. The NBA should continue to rail against the monstrosities taking place in the judiciary; in the end, change, real and true change, will come, perhaps after this cruel and unjust judicial edifice has been dethroned.
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