ARE you one of those clapping for President Muhammadu Buhari for the “sting” operations of the Directorate of State Services, DSS, over the past weekend? Many Nigerians say they are happy that the President “picked the courage” to go against these high and mighty lords of the Bench in a way totally unprecedented in the history of Nigeria. Oh yeah? Even at the height of military rule, nothing quite like this ever happened to judges. All that the military did was to use decrees to oust certain powers of the Judiciary that could prevent the junta from doing what they wanted to do.
It was this same Buhari who, as a military Head of State in 1984, sidelined the regular Bench and created Special Military Tribunals, SMT’s, to try and summarily disgrace, humiliate, jail, dispossess and impoverish politicians in absolute kangaroo fashion in his avowed efforts to recover stolen public funds and property. Nigerians clapped for him.
At the end of it, what changed? If anything changed at all, corruption became an epidemic that overwhelmed the entire system. Buhari’s method of fighting corruption over thirty years ago and today follow the same pattern: using the state agents of coercion to shake down, intimidate and dispossess his targets, with the sole purpose of recovering alleged stolen public funds. Buhari has never enunciated any comprehensive strategy to prevent corruption, catch culprits while in the process of committing an offence and laying an enduring foundation for the sustainable end of corruption. The anti-corruption fight is not an agenda of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Federal Government. Otherwise, you would have seen his kitchen cabinet members and ministers fully involved.
You would have seen it in APC-controlled states. It is a Buhari affair, with the state agents of coercion controlled by his kinsmen as his foot soldiers. And Buhari is a man with lots of axe to grind with people for overthrowing and incarcerating him or preventing him from his presidential aspiration three times, sometimes using the Judiciary against him. During the sting operation, eight judges were targeted: Supreme Court Justices Inyang Okoro and Sylvester Ngwuta; High Court Justices, Adeniyi Ademola (Abuja), Kabir Auta (Kano), Muazu Pindiga (Gombe), Mohammed Tsamiya of the Court of Appeal, Ilorin and the dismissed Chief Justice of Enugu State, I. A. Umezulike. Either by commission or omission, the home of Justice Nnamdi Dimgba was raided, though he was not arrested nor was any amount of money said to have been recovered from his residence.
Was it a mere coincidence that Justice Dimgba had only recently chided the DSS for keeping one retired Air Commodore Umar Mohammed in their office rather than remanding him in prison custody as he had ordered? Reports had quoted him as saying: “I take a strong exception to this type of behaviour; when the court orders that someone be kept in prison custody, the person ought to be kept in prison and not in the office”.
Justice Ngwuta and Okoro had given verdicts against the interests of the ruling APC over election matters. More interestingly, Justice Ademola had dismissed preliminary objections by Buhari’s lawyers during his West Africa School Certificate, WASC, case in court, and also thrice ordered the release of Buhari’s arch-enemy, Col. Sambo Dasuki which the Federal Government ignored. Be that as it may, the sting operation had its positive sides, even if by default. There is no denying the fact that there is an epidemic of corruption in the Judiciary, just in every other sub-sector of our national life.
It has been there for a long time. Years ago, a lawyer pointed his finger at the face of a former Chief Justice of Nigeria and accusing him of helping to procure “black market” verdict for a client for a fee; the accused never even got angry, never took up the matter to clear his name. Years ago, a serving judge built a glittering replica of the “White House” in the choicest part of Owerri, and all the high and mighty attended its “warming ceremony”, no questions asked.
The election tribunals are cash-and-carry deals, with jurists often collecting from both sides and awarding victory to the highest bidder, usually those already occupying the government house and spending from the public till. Indeed, the National Judicial Council,NJC, has not lived up to expectation in bringing erring members of the Bench to book. Perhaps, this sting operation will force the NJC to sit up and take petitions against erring judges more seriously.
The Buhari government’s war against corruption is a national agenda. All hands must be on deck to ensure they keep it so. While agents of state are sent to raid those purported to be involved in graft, all of us must keep reminding the regime that many of its acolytes, friends and stalwarts named in alleged corrupt deals should also be raided and brought to book.
This national agenda must not be used to settle personal scores, revenge against those who have crossed the path of the Commander-in-Chief, intimidate and deprive us of our democratic rights. Nobody is above the law. The judges targeted for the sting are not above the law. But the use of the DSS instead of the Police sent the wrong signals. With concrete evidence, the judges could have been put under surveillance, arrested and their homes searched to recover any stolen funds following the due process of the law.
It is not the arrest of judges that puts our country in danger. It is the use of Gestapo antics aimed at cowing our spirits that is the danger. If we allow ourselves to be cowed by the agents of state working for the interests of a politician, we will all be in chains. We must reject anything that sweeps away our constitutional rights and democratic liberties. The fight against corruption must be made to be even-handed, clean sweeping and in tune with due process. We must not give up our hard-earned democracy for civilian dictatorship.
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