INDEPENDENT

 Wed May, 12 2010  
 

EKITI: Between Judgment And Justice
Kola Odepeju 

Two tragedies struck Nigeria last week. They happened on the same day - Wednesday. The first was the judicial somersault that happened in Ekiti State, while the second was the eventual death of former President Umaru Yar’Adua which put an end to the series of lies being fed the nation concerning his critical health condition. On Yar’Adua’s death, I don’t have comment. Not for want of what to write but because one, much have been said about his passing. Two, his case has become a past event that doesn’t have any bearing on our lives again. Thus, as I am not in a position to judge the dead, I can only say that he will be judged by his creator according to his deeds and misdeeds while alive. May his soul rest in peace.    

Wednesdays are usually work free days for me. So, as early as 9am Wednesday last week, I had sat on the sofa in my sitting room to start tuning in to one TV station and another to see which one would televise the much awaited verdict of the Ekiti gubernatorial re-run polls of last year. Unfortunately, none of the stations did the expected. But by 12 noon while listening to the news on AIT,  breaking news appeared on their screen. ‘Could it be news from Ekiti?’ I asked myself. Truly, it was. Sad news flying from the mouth of the innocent newscaster – victory has again been given to ‘Governor’ Segun Oni in a split judgment of three against two. ‘Yet again another judicial abracadabra; what a country?’ I said to my self.

A few minutes after, a friend, who had also kept his ears to the ground and had heard the news strolled in and asked:  ‘Kola, is the judiciary truly the last hope of the common man?’  ‘Yes, it is but not in this country’, I answered. The reason for his question couldn’t have been far-fetched. My friend could just not marry the judicial charade that took place in Ekiti together with the statement or the belief that the judiciary is the last hope of the common man as to attempt to do so will be an impossibility while doing so forcibly will mean a contradiction. And no answer could have been more correct than the one I gave to his question for it is quite inconceivable that those who take pride in referring to themselves as learned fellows could be bold, sorry, cowardly enough to deliver such a wishy-washy judgment on a re-run election that even a foetus saw and could speak of the open shenanigans that surrounded it. But learned or not, no qualification is actually needed to call a spade another name. 

The majority decision that gave victory to the PDP in Ekiti has  further lent credence to the statement that the Law is an ass. But truly, is it the Law that is an ass or its interpreter(s), that is the judiciary? We will surely need the help of legal giants like Professor Itse Sagay, who has also condemned the Ekiti verdict, to answer this all important question because to me, the concept of the Law being an ass is somehow nebulous. Honestly, we must admit that some judges, just like many have said of some politicians within the polity, really need psychiatric test. It will surely be asinine to argue to the contrary. How on earth could judges in their right senses have concluded that the petitioners failed to prove allegations of substantial non-compliance beyond reasonable doubt even when a victim of PDP’s attacks whose leg was shattered during the violence ridden re-run election brought his amputated leg to the court for the whole world to see? Or did their lordships think that all of us could have, within this short spell, become amnesiacs to forget the Ayoka Adebayo drama which unfolded in our very eyes?  

The Ekiti verdict was nothing less than the description that has been given to it by eminent Nigerians – ‘judgment but not justice’. There shouldn’t be any disputation about the fact that there is a clear difference between judgment and justice. To employ the meaning that is more relevant to our discourse here, while judgment means ‘opinion or decision of a judge’, justice means ‘just treatment or fairness, the quality of being fair or reasonable’. The polemics goes thus: every ‘idiot’ can deliver judgment on any issue – legal or otherwise if we are to widen the scope, but it is not everybody that can deliver justice. To deliver justice, one must possess two basic qualities. These are common sense and courage. Common sense will make a judge to be reasonable, courage will help him to put justice above any other considerations and to deliver justice. Where any of these two is lacking, what a judge will pronounce is not justice but judgment. This is exactly what has happened in Ekiti by the majority decision that gave victory to Segun Oni.

The judgment in Ekiti as delivered by Justice Hamma Barka did not come as a surprise to me because one, justice has for long been for sale in post-colonial Nigeria. Two, given the antecedent of some of the judges, I had severally expressed my skepticism about their ability to deliver justice and I had told those who cared to listen that it may be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for Dr. Fayemi and the Ekiti AC to get justice with such judges sitting on the election petition panel, particularly one of them. This is because his woeful performance at another tribunal recently was there for all to see.

On the Ekiti judgment, I have continued to crack my brain on why God put the destinies of the cheated and the oppressed Nigerians in the hands of judges. But I found solace in the fact that it is not that all judges are bad. As there are bad/corrupt judges, so are there good and incorruptible ones. It depends on who handles your case. As Dr. Fayemi prepares to proceed on Appeal, I pray that his case will be handled by judges in the later category. The truth is that only very few judges will not succumb in the face of monetary inducements especially as they involve the amounts being carried about by the PDP elements who are desperate to foist themselves on the people for the next sixty years. Now that it is clear that justice is difficult to get in these so-called election petitions tribunal, I am afraid if the law of the jungle will not put an end to our nascent democracy in 2011. The only way to avert this is for President Goodluck Jonathan to adopt and implement fully, the content of the Justice Uwais-led committee on electoral reforms.