|
To Be Or Not To Be?: The Dilemma For Justice By Wilson Iyke
The Ogegbe led tribunal is still ruminating over the barrage of documents, evidence and witnesses that assailed and inundated it during its sittings, while the nation itself waits in suspense. The burden of justice has become weighty on the shoulders of the learned men of the bench as the decide whether to annul or uphold the last year’s presidential election. However, the verdict from the tribunal of public opinion is already in, that verdict, as we know, is not unanimous. It is a verdict that is split between dissenting and assenting voices. What is interesting though is a kind of justification proffered by the dissenters.
Majority of those who dissent that the presidential election should be annulled put up a consequential argument. They argue that annulling the elections will create a power vacuum in the polity and which will inevitably lead to a chaotic state of affairs. Nature, they say, abhors any vacuum. Therefore, whatever may be the shortcomings of the elections, it should be upheld. This writing aims to counteract this kind of reasoning. If this kind of reasoning is not rebutted it may find itself in the verdict of the Ogegbe led tribunal which is of more important than that of the public opinion.
It is our onus to continue to remind the judiciary of the nature of its calling. The judiciary and especially the Ogegbe led tribunal, we hope, should not forget that the judiciary is the guardian of society. They should be reminded that justice is the key of such guardianship. We will continue to remind them as the philosopher John Rawls said that justice is the first virtue of the social institution—the judiciary being the summative institution of all social institutions.
Democracy is one form of expression of various institutions of a society. Democracy thus is a natural right. It is in democracy that people express their natural right of whom to put in-charge of the common goods of the society, nation-state, country etc—in this case Nigeria. To subvert this natural right is a criminal act against justice, humanity and society. This is why Augustine of Hippo(saint) once said that a state which is not goverened according to justice would be just a bunch of thieves “Remota itaque iustitia quid sunt regna nisi magna latrocinia.” (De Civitate Dei, IV, 4: CCL 47, 102)
Politicians who ascend to power based on a subversion of people’s natural right and justice are nothing but band of robbers, brigands and buccaneers. Politics is not merely a game rather an act rooted in justice. As Ratzinger (Pope Benedict xvi) puts it “Justice is both the aim and the intrinsic criterion of all politics. Politics is more than a mere mechanism for defining the rules of public life: its origin and its goal are found in justice….” (Cf., Deus et Caritas no 28)
No consequential argument will justify a robber or an informed beneficiary of robbery to be placed in-charge of the common good. As the philosopher Rawls also said “each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many…the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interest.” (Cf., A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, 1999 p.3. )
The last April elections were not only a fraud but also a day-light robbery of the Nigerian people. Therefore any attempt to justify a self-evident day-light robbery on the basis of technicalities or consequentialism will only tantamount to a negative-precedence consolidation. The law as we know is a teacher (leges es magister) and the gravitational pull of precedence, we also, know is forceful on the psyche of citizens and students of the law. It then means that upholding the Yaradua led government that emanated from the subversion of the natural right of the Nigerian people will not only set the clock of our democracy back, but it will also set a dangerous precedent that will forever hunt the judiciary, our children and our society at large. We have a moral duty not to pass on a dangerous legacy to our children yet unborn and the growing ones and the world at large are watching and waiting.
Anosike Wilson
|