What can be more corrupt than disobedience of court orders?

BY OPEYEMI LONGE

Is there any corruption more fundamental than disobedience to lawful court orders? I doubt. Ask me what can be more corrupt than a failure or omission to discharge a statutorily imposed — particularly a constitutionally imposed — obligation and I will tell you there is none.

President Buhari and all holders of public office across the length and breadth of the land swore an oath to defend the Nigerian Constitution. I understand the defence of the Nigerian constitution to include the obedience to lawful court orders and respect for the rights of the citizens. This is common sense and I am sure the President and the State Governors know this. But if they are not, the law has offered them an easy way out. Both have the benefit of the guidance of an Attorney General and Minister of Justice and an Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice at the Federal or the State level respectively, who possess a fine understanding of the law and the obligations imposed.

But what do we have? We have today the unfortunate and brazen disobedience of valid and subsisting court orders from the courts of the land. Dasuki and Zakzaky are meant to be on bail as free citizens but they are both still illegally subject to detention by the state agents, simply because of a corrupt refusal to obey lawful court orders by the government. Dasuki, the allegation goes, is corrupt and the Zakzaky is a security risk. But tell me, how do you defeat corruption through a corrupt process? The corrupt process of violation of lawful court orders and abdication of constitutional duties. How do you diffuse a security risk by inventing a greater atmosphere for security risk? There is a greater security risk that each and every citizen would be prone, perhaps rightly so, to take laws into their hands where there is a systemic failure of laws and institutions expected to protect their interest blatantly and wrongfully refuse to do so. Is this not a contradiction? Fighting corruption in a corrupt manner and preventing insecurity by encouraging tendencies for insecurity?

But that is the contradiction you find today in Nigeria, and sadly so. Perhaps more pathetic is that these brazen illegalities and constitutional violations are happening under a leadership that supposedly has some of the ‘finest’ in the legal profession in Nigeria. I use the word ‘finest’ advisedly because of the contradiction this situation. As an example, for the first time in the political history of the country, we have a Vice President who has attained the zenith in both the academia and the legal profession. He is both a professor of law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, the highest possible distinction in both fields. But things look too bad that one tends to forget if such a personality is part of the system. Can he not save us from this corruption? I believe he can. Is he able and willing to? The evidence do not show this.

And what do we hear? The judiciary is slow, inefficient and corrupt. Why not? The system encourages and in fact engenders the tardiness and corruption of the judiciary. By filing frivolous and sometimes politically motivated cases which has no evidential support. Such cases are simply not able to stand the test of judicial scrutiny. When such cases crumble like a pack of card, the State, in this case the Executive, is quick to resort to the cliché ‘the judiciary is corrupt and that is why we lost the case’. Then the average man on the street takes this up and parrots it around as a fact. We may not blame the average man. He has only been fed with a political statement and sadly in many cases, he lacks the intelligence to subject this statement to a fair analysis. More unfortunate is that the political class is responsible for this intelligence deficit by depriving him of qualitative education that increases his reasoning and ability to spot when a dummy is being sold.

A political statement by a corrupt executive which files a corrupt process – corrupt in the sense that there is no basis for it in the first instance other than to harass an innocent citizen or otherwise score cheap political points. I have seen this times and times again in my practice of law. I have seen this sheer abuse of power by those who should know better, those we entrust with powers to act in the nation’s best interest who would rather act for their political and selfish interest. It plays out today as it did in the past. I am only alarmed by its sheer magnitude today. More alarmed because of the presence of knowledgeable men of law in the corridors of power and the transfer of blame to the judiciary – an institution which needs protection and respect. What is left of a nation whose judiciary is subject to scorn and ridicule? What? Who stands to protect the common man when his rights are trampled upon by those who are meant to protect him and offer him a guarantee?

Yes, the judiciary has its fair share of the systemic problem of corruption in Nigeria. No doubt, some judges may be corrupt or even more corrupt than the biblical Judas, betraying the judicial trust imposed on them and auctioning justice to the highest bidder. But is this a general trend? Hell no! We can deal with those corrupt elements by strengthening the institutional capacity to address this. Can we do it? Yes! Are we prepared or already doing it? Yes and No. Yes, because the present Chief Justice of Nigeria and the National Judicial Council are making frantic efforts to address, as best as they can, the phenomenon of corruption on the bench.

No, because the executive arm continues to cow, harass and intimidate the judiciary to submission by the corrupt disobedience to lawful orders. A judge who gives an order who is deemed to have been motivated by financial corruption needs to be disciplined through the lawful and due process. The law envisage this possibility and the law in its wisdom, as always, prescribes ex ante a due process for addressing this. That due process is not a corrupt disobedience of the lawful orders. Obey and exercise the guaranteed right to appeal the orders. Shy away from institutional corruption by a corrupt disobedience to a lawful order. That due process is also not the illegality of the judicial harassment we have witnessed, through the arrest and prosecution of serving judicial officers. A judge who gives an order against the government is nothing but corrupt, the executive wants us to belief. But what happens to the freedom and independence of a judge to determine issues simply by established facts and the law?

And one more corruption. Governments says our courts are overburdened with cases, there are not enough judges, there are not enough court rooms. True, the government is right on this score. But the actions of the executive shows something different. And this is the sense in which I perceive a form of institutional corruption. Despite the well-understood and obvious deficit in human and infrastructural capacity of our courts, the courts continue to be daily burdened with unfounded cases with the consequence that the finite court resources are dissipated on frivolous cases. We waste funds that would ordinarily be available for infrastructure, for subsiding tuition fees in our higher institutions of learning, for promoting research in our ivory towers and providing affordable healthcare across the land. How do I know they are unfounded? I refer you to one simple example among the lot.

On 17 April 2018, the report in the news is that the Nigerian Police arrested over 115 protesters, whose protest had been forcefully disbanded by the Police. These peaceful protesters branded as unlawful protesters (or you may say rioters or even violent rioters) by the Police would now be arraigned in court. The frivolity of the case is apparent – every citizen has a constitutional right to peaceful protest. This is a trite point which has been affirmed by the Nigerian courts up to the Supreme Court – its apex court. The overburdened courts would now have to attend to these frivolous cases triggered substantially by the corrupt action of the state agents. Would there be any protest at all if the government had obeyed the lawful orders for the release of Zakzaky? Would there be a need for an arrest if the Nigerian Police would simply, as they are constitutionally obliged to do, provide protection to citizens in the course of the lawful and peaceful protest? Your guesses are as good as mine.

All these show the pretence going on today in Nigeria in the corridor of power but this sham must stop. This institutional corruption must stop. All of us have a role to play to stop it and it is an obligation we have to save this nation. Rights must be respected. Laws must be obeyed. Decisions of our courts must be obeyed. The executive cannot pick and choose when to obey court orders and what orders to obey. Financial corruption is bad and must be condemned but in stamping this out, we must do well to avoid the greater evil of corrupting our institutions by using them for political vendetta or turning an institution on its head to violate the self-same right which it is constitutionally created to protect. We must save the legal system, less we be destroyed by this greater evil.

Opeyemi Longe is a current postgraduate Law Student at the University of Oxford.  He can be reached by mail at [email protected]; [email protected]