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From: Orebe Femi [zurielle2009@yahoo.com]
Sent: 06/13/2010 12:30 AM MST
To: ekitipanupo@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [EKITIPANUPO] WEAKEST LINK IN A CORRUPT SOCIETY
weakest link in a corrupt judiciary
Justice being so sacred and divine, I never thought a day would come when I will have to write about the Nigerian judiciary in this deprecating manner. Never. But what we have here is no doubt a caricature. A judiciary brought low by its own shenanigans; through the actions and inactions of weaklings within the system, so nauseating you feel no sense of shame treating it with outright disdain. A system which is on all fours with what the character, Thrasymachus in the REPUBLIC, argues is the interest of the strong -merely a name for what the powerful or cunning ruler wants imposed on the people .which must be why Justice Hardy in sentencing Ibori's crime couriers in London could not restrain himself from describing the Nigerian judiciary as usurped. Although there is no clear-cut federal character to this drama of the absurd, this 'mala fide', in which no section of the country can claim innocence, one can, with considerable justification, claim that many judges of Northern extraction have proved to be extremely weak and pliable; remorselessly standing justice on the head ,egregiously calling their training and/ or experience to question and proving, without a shadow of doubt, that they are the weakest link in a very weak and corrupt Nigerian judiciary. The likes of Justice Esho, a retired Supreme Court judge have shouted themselves hoarse about corruption in the judiciary and meeting Justice Babalakin , his other highly regarded colleague, at the launch of Gen Olutoye's The Awo I knew last week,in Ibadan, I could not but wonder what must be going on in the mind of that perspicacious judge about the state of the judiciary in Nigeria today.. There are, of course, several instances to cite from in support of this heavy charge which some would see as an unkind profiling, but nothing will ever compare with the sacrilege committed by the three Northern judges who concocted the majority judgment in the Aregbesola Vs Olagunsoye Oyinlola case and no judicial summersault is likely to ever thump what they did in their findings on the critical issue of one Alhaji N.O Nofiu , who signed Forms EC8B in nine out of eleven wards in Ife Central Local Government Area of the state. Curiously, but understandably, the court would later request that the Petitioner's lawyers return the Certified True Copy of the judgment which they have quickly obtained immediately after the court's pronouncement. For bringing this seminal shame to the public place we have a Non Governmental Organisation, the JUSTICE NOW FOUNDATION .based in Osogbo, Osun state, to thank.. In an advertorial in THE NATION of Monday, 7 June, 2010, in which a photograph of two adjoining paragraghs were shown with the upper one cancalled out, obviously in consideration of some evil juggling, the JUSTICE NOW FOUNDATION wrote as follows: 'On that page, the tribunal judges make two contradictory findings as regards the evidence of signing of forms EC8B in nine out of eleven wards in Ife Central Local Government Area by one Alhaji N.O Nofiu. In the upper paragragh, as shown in the photo, the tribunal wrote 'In respect of Ife Central LG, evidence was led in the open court and our attention was drawn to Form EC8B in 9 wards out of 11 in the LG, and after perusing we confirmed that the said Alhaji N.O Nofiu signed the forms EC8B, and no reason was advanced by the Respondents to explain why that happened. We are therefore of the view that this is a clear case of irregularity. Curiously, in the second paragraph which now subsisted 'the tribunal makes a sommersault and writes: 'In respect of the allegation that Alhaji N.O Nofiu signed 9 form EC8B in the Ife Central LG, the Petitioner referred us to the evidence of RW29 and RW42 who stated under cross examination that he is the PDP Secretary, and we have gone through that evidence , but we could not find where they were confronted with forms EC8B's in relation to the said wards of the Local Government. There must be an oral evidence to link the documentary evidence which is lacking here' The NGO then asks: Is this the way judicial minds work; finding irregularity in one breath and having a quick 'rethink' and holding that there is no evidence in another breath thus approbating and reprobating at the same time? Why did Alli Garba and the others later shut their eyes on the same page of the judgment to the glaring irregularity that they had earlier found in the signing of the forms by one person whom the Respondents' witnesses confirmed was the Secretary of the PDP in the Ife Central LG?' In Agagu Vs Mimiko, they continue, the Court of Appeal held that the court has the power to take judicial notice of of geographical divisions of the ward and that in that case, the tribunal rightly, without pleadings and evidence , took judicial notice of the boundary lines of wards and the distance between the collation center and another and found that one of the polling agents of the appellant's political party who signed Form EC8B for three electoral wards that are several kilometers apart could could not have signed the forms at the ward collation centers because the collation of results of electoral units into Form EC8B was supposed to be done at the same time at different ward collation centers. The Court of Appeal therefore held that the Tribunal rightly nullified the results of the three wards. The JNF then concluded in that regard by saying : 'Clearly, Alli Garba and his fellow judges had to run away immediately from the earlier finding that would have led automatically to the nullification of 53,882 votes for Oyinlola as against 3,883 for Aregbesola in the LG area alone. Now, if you want to be kind to these judges, you would question only their competences, their training and experience given the great disparities in conditionalites for appointments to the bench in the two geographical divides in the country. But much more than this, and as a result of possible gratifications many have come to the conclusion that , indeed, initial decisions of judges from the North are probably submitted for vetting to some of their more experienced, and evilly -minded colleagues or even senior members of the bar from the South. It can therefore not be a mere coincidence that the chairmen of election tribunals in the South-West, are almost always, from the North. But as the Yoruba would say, every day for the thief, but one day, these colluding scoundrels will be shamed. But Justice Garba and co did not stop at that. They had to equally turn blind eyes to blank Forms EC8B, as well as unsigned and unstamped forms EC8A, in Odo Otin LG tendered as Exhibit R18 by Oyinlola's Counsel because that again would have led to the nullification of another 43, 606 unlawful and unearned votes posted for Oyinlola in his native Odo-Otin LG. One could go on and on and when you remember the antics and judgment of a Bwala in the first Ekiti Tribunal which was unceremoniously thumped by the Court of Appeal sitting in Ilorin, the shenanigans of Naron and the Hammar 'wayo' in Ekiti about which I have written copiously, you will be helping these judges a great deal if the only thing you question is their competence and confidence. But why write all these dangerous things? For one I am not eager to be a posthumous hero given all that we know that those who hire these people are capable of but what did Oscar Wilde say of times like this? Am I being simply an unrepentant ethnicist? . I guess not; but things have got to be said the way they are if Nigeria will escape the looming Armageddon. A group of people, assembled within the greatest rally in Africa, has already seized this country by the jugular.Fortunately Then the era of tribunals would have been over. That, precisely, is the historical conjucture which Dialectical Materialism predicts and which by saying these things now, I want Nigeria to escape from if , like the Americans have said, Nigeria , as we know it, would not be history by 2015. |
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