EARSHOT

EARSHOT

Sharing Of The Loot In Plateau
Botmang and Mantu have been engaging in a battle of wits over who to appoint as deputy governor and cabinet members. The new governor, who is supposed to be a stooge of certain interests and whose first statement as a foster governor was that he was loyal to Mantu and Obasanjo, is no longer sure of his loyalty or how far he wants to push the loyalty. This only shows that it is easy for a gang of thieves to rob a bank. It is the sharing of the booty that is the problem.

LAST WORD
See What The Judiciary Has Done To Nigeria
The dignity of Nigerian judges is at its lowest ebb. Nigerians no longer respect the courts or, worse still, the judges. The image of the judiciary in Nigeria today is that of an institution where anything goes. The last seven years have exposed the soft underbelly of an institution that was designed to be the last hope of the weak. If you are rich enough or well connected to power enough, you can just get justice delivered to you at home.

Had the judiciary in Nigeria been working, people would not be worried as they are today about next year’s elections. There is apprehension and disquiet everywhere as we approach another election year. As it stands now, only a fool would proceed to the courts next year after being cheated or rigged out of any election. Any candidate who cannot construct a private army for the election, and fight with as many weapons of mass destruction as he can garner, should not even bother to declare an interest. Next year’s election shall be a war, and only warriors are invited to take part in it.

The 2003 elections effectively killed democracy in Nigeria , but it was the judiciary that buried it. The elections were rigged beyond the word “rigging”, and every election monitor said so. The Catholic Secretariat in Nigeria , which deployed more than 30,000 election monitors, said there were no elections in most parts of Nigeria where the president’s cronies were declared winners. People in the opposition parties, and even those in the PDP enemy factions, who went to court thinking that the judiciary was the last bastion of democracy were shocked at what they discovered. They returned poorer but wiser.

The net effect of what the judiciary did to Nigeria as a consequence of the aggregate judgements is that over-voting, violence, murder, vote looting, use of the police and army to rig elections do not matter, contrary to what the electoral laws of the land expressly say. That is the judicial precedence that has been set and it is going to be quoted by the lawyers of those who will rig the elections next year. For instance, the election results that were presented to the courts as evidence in the several election petitions showed that both Chief Bola Ige (assassinated in 2001) and Marshal Harry (assassinated in 2003) not only voted during the 2003 elections but they, in fact, voted for the PDP. No court had integrity enough to annul the elections of the clowns who were beneficiaries of that parody. In Plateau State , the courts were presented with a photocopy of the cheques that Governor Joshua Dariye used to bribe the police and other agencies; yet, that was not enough to annul his election. INEC initially announced that Ibrahim Mantu, who behaves as if the word “corruption” was coined by the Englishman with him in mind, was defeated by the AD candidate, but today he sits as the number two man in the Senate. He is the president’s pointsman and an expert in sharing bribes. Thanks to the judiciary.

In Anambra State , there are still members of the National Assembly today who were not even candidates in the elections. Again, thanks to the Nigerian judiciary. Senator Adolphus Wabara, the former Senate president, was not even a candidate in the elections. INEC even said so in the court. That did not stop him from becoming Senate president. Yes, thanks to the courts that are now populated by magicians. He was removed only when Obasanjo no longer needed his services. He was accused of receiving bribes in the course of his duties. Never mind that the president himself and his cronies shared N50 million bribes to senators in a bid to obtain a fraudulent third term.

Obasanjo is adept and has always understood the nature of greed of the members of the Nigerian judiciary. During his first term, after forging the 2002 Electoral Law, he addressed the nation on national TV and, with a straight face, advised whoever disagreed with what he had done to proceed to the courts. Of course, he knew what would happen in the courts. The courts had already been suborned to play according to his script. The language of Ghana-must-go is the best understood at that level and nobody is more fluent in it than our squeaky clean president. After they had rigged the 2003 presidential election like common criminals, General Muhammadu Buhari, the candidate who was cheated, caused a bit of a scare when he initially declared that he would not be seeking redress in court. The president and his men became jittery and started howling. They said that Buhari was not a democrat and hurriedly got distinguished personalities whom Buhari respected, including General Yakubu Gowon and Nelson Mandela, to convince him to proceed to court. When Buhari eventually decided to heed the counsel of the statesmen and gave a press statement to that effect, Obasanjo and his henchmen began rejoicing and cutting the cake of victory in Aso Rock. Buhari eventually went to court against the better judgement of some of his associates and that chimed perfectly with Aso Rock’s stratagem.

After more than two gruelling years in different courts with tons and tons of evidence of killing, maiming, over-voting and even mass murder in some parts of the South-East and South-South, both the Justice Umaru Abdullahi and Justice Lawal Uwais courts declared that Obasanjo was duly elected. Even the fact that INEC could not produce the ballot boxes to verify the fact of over-voting did not matter. Both the Appeal and Supreme courts legitimised the massive fraud and rigging. Only Justice Sylvanus Nsofor, as far as I can remember, declared that his conscience would not permit him to endorse such nonsense. He retired from the judiciary a few months later an indigent man compared with some of his colleagues whose standard of living (some of it dollar-denominated) speak for them. Nsofor may be poor today but he still has his name and integrity which his children and progeny will remain proud of.

Today, we are heading towards an election year that has been principally shaped by the Nigerian judiciary. If the judiciary had behaved itself in the aftermath of the 2003 elections, Obasanjo would not be shameless enough today to seek a third term. He might not even have been in Aso Rock to superintend the sharing of N50 million bribes to members of the National Assembly to commit a crime against the people. Indeed, if the judiciary had not sold its birthright over a cheap mess of porridge, no decent aspirant would be planning what most of them are planning today in order to get elected. If the judiciary had taken its raison d’etre seriously and acted appropriately, Obasanjo would not have been able to remove Gov. Rasheed Ladoja the lawless way he did, and five members of the Plateau State House of Assembly out of 24 would not have had the guts to contemplate impeaching a governor, nor would a sacked chief judge swear in Botmang as the new governor.

I am not in any way saying that all members of the judiciary are crooks. I have just paid tribute to retired Justice Nsofor. When pressure on Justice Mashud Akinfemi Abass of the Ibadan High Court, regarding a case involving “Senator” Iyiola Omisore, got unbearable in 2003, after he had rejected a car boot full of Ghana-must-go bags, he recused himself from the case. But the judiciary has too few Justices Nsofor and Abass, and undesirable elements like Justices Wilson Egbo-Egbo and Stanley Nnaji now represent the face of the judiciary.

Indeed, if the Nsofors and Abasses have outnumbered the Egbo-Egbos and Nnajis, most Nigerians would not today be thinking of the painful possibility of a Fifth Republic. And that’s the pity of it all!