THINGS are getting better, depending on who you are, and what you are looking at. In the past few months you would have noticed that justice is available speedily, actually in a jiffy, for a select few, who approach the court with cases that serve special interests.

While there were arguments on whether the Court of Appeal could hear a case involving PDP chieftain Chief Bode George, the case was heard, quickly, but he lost and is still in jail. The case was meant to stop his committal to jail on medical grounds.

The supersonic arrival of the George case for hearing to the first appeal appalled some, who pointed at the partiality as there were cases that have spent years without getting a chance to be heard. Another case has upstaged the George record.

In four days, a case was filed and verdict given at the Federal High Court that President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had no business handing over powers to Vice President Jonathan Goodluck. According to Justice Dan Abutu, Chief Judge of the court, the Constitution vests the powers of the President on the Vice President, including the powers to sign sensitive document, in the President’s absence. This judgment achieved a record for speed.

Within 96 hours, all the court processes were filed and the judgment given. The interests in the case are obvious. The President is apparently not in any position to meet the requirements of Section 145, in terms of transferring his powers to the Vice President.

Mr. Christopher  Onwuekwe, a lawyer in the chambers of Amobi Nzelu, who appeared for him in the case, got all the reliefs he sought to the effects that Section 5 (1a) and Section 148 (1) meant the President did not need to transfer all of his powers through correspondence to the National Assembly.

Chief Michael Kaase Aondoakaa, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, whose brazen and insensitive remarks (among them, the President can rule from anywhere in the world, Nigerians are not entitled to know the details of the President’s health, and there would be no acting President) have infuriated Nigerians was delighted.

The judgment would not douse tensions over the long absence of the President or answer questions about his health. Nigerians want to see their President back to work. A default President like the one this judgment proposes has no standing with the international community.

Obviously, a country cannot run for too long on default mode. Once Chief Aondoakaa spins one of his legal advancements, a new situation crops up that reminds us that we do not have a President in office. We need a President more than ever before.

Section 145 actually applies in this setting since our President is either on vacation or incapacitated. The problem is that the President seems not to be in a position to give a valid assessment of his state.