By Ugoji Egbujo

Jero is a deity. In church, at PTA meetings, and when he condescends to his town union meetings, he conjures unfathomable dignity. Not the glory of politicians that fades quicker than cheap ‘ankara’ but a permanent invocation of raw awe. Once in a while, at the old boys’, he lets them have the privilege of his scarce humanity. Only a few of his classmates still remember he was never a genius. JB was inconspicuous. Jeroboam, the Justice, is a masquerade.

If he had the conscience of his servile driver he would have crumbled under the weight of his meticulous duplicity. Jero is no longer haunted by the size of his material accumulations. Senior police officers have grown accustomed to being multi-millionaires. All the money he has legitimately earned since he became a magistrate, after youth service, can be calculated in a few minutes. But even before his proxies, those in whose names he owns hidden houses, he carries on, adamantly, like a saint.

Jero knows no one will believe the story about rice business. The idea that the secret service planted money in his house wasn’t actually his. Tribulation has made him vulnerable to puerile suggestions. But it’s okay to muddle things up a little, and give sympathizers and wailers something to cling to. His children shouldn’t behold the starkness of unclothed disgrace. In the bathroom, the morning he dispatched that letter to the NJC, he wondered how he couldn’t come up with something less disjointed. In his circle, to be referred to as ‘Alaba trader’ is barbed mockery. But here, he is struggling to be recognized as one. Over lunch that day, he heard something. “Evidence must be relevant!” It was the voice of his late Evidence Law lecturer.

He took a gulp of beer to drown insolent doubts. His tales about the Ikwerre Lion may have some truths. But are they relevant? By the second gulp, he was convinced that in the court of a divided and polarized public opinion, conspiracy theories aren’t useless. His kinsmen have agreed it’s a witch-hunt. So it’s unlikely any drunkard would call him a thief in the heat of a village meeting someday. You know insolence frequents those meetings.

Jero is a deity troubled by uncontrolled carnality. Like many full time pastors living large off the poor, Jero is not his reputation. His essence is a caricature of the nobility he wears around. If Jero had the attitude of his self -effacing wife, he would have been redeemable. That woman never ceases to wonder how her husband combines his stance of stiff rectitude with the conversations of immoral transaction she has with judicial middlemen in their living room. And before these men, Jero never feels like a thief. In the early days, he had let himself be menaced by guilt. But he has matured. His conscience has lost the tenderness of the fragile‘ugboguru’ stem and is now the bark of an old ‘ukpaka’ tree.

Jero had once wondered how professors who sell marks for sex withstand the internal rebukes new prostitutes have to resist. At the club, he always talked about how university degrees had become tissue paper, and everyone listened to him like an oracle. He would bemoan the rampancy of infidelity amongst married women. And his customary expletive ‘tufiakwa!’ will be followed by – “uwaemebigo” (the world has gone bad).

Jero knows that he is not supposed to receive unholy visitors. But some of them will not deal with his appointed middlemen. The stakes can be so high. Elections and their aftermath are ‘high season’. Jero thinks politicians are buccaneers, so let the highest bidder win. Jero had whispered to some that Nigeria needs a revolution. The revolution would be better welcomed if it met him one morning, in his farm, in his village, after retirement.

He has since stopped looking at newspapers. His heart can’t take them. He is comfortable with the stream of condolence calls from those who can’t stand the tyranny of this government. One caller told him that if it where in the civilized world, all judges would have gone on strike to protect democracy. He nearly agreed. His voluble son-in-law had called from Chicago: “ I don’t give a damn about recession or whatever, they gat to pay through their noses.”

He raved and raved about his father-in-law suing and claiming billions of dollars in damages. Pa Jero promised to sue, but not for the money. He wants to protect his good name. The Chief Justice had talked so much about the independence of the judiciary that he has lost his initial contriteness. In the DSS cell, he was like a punctured balloon. The support he has received from those flying the flag of due process has reflated him. He is worried about the number of bare-faced lies he has told in the last two weeks. But the self-indicting written statements he volunteered to them must be vitiated.

He wonders how he has managed to contrive so much righteous indignation. Doubts continue to fly around, in his head, like termites after a downpour. And bang their heads against the wall of his self-importance and fabricated victimhood like bats in the afternoon. That wall is now firmly in place, the flirtation with the righteousness of coming clean has ceased.He has a moral duty not to set the nation ablaze with his confessions.

He called a classmate who is a physician. He was to ask why a certain brand of anti- malarial drug makes him particularly drowsy. But he remembered and dropped the phone. He had started mixing reality and fiction. They have to stay apart. His story is full of gaping holes. Malaria and its funny drugs can make anyone drowsy. But who retains drowsiness when confronted by life threatening danger? Pickpockets at Oshodi can plant things in your pocket while you are walking let alone the secret police. Did he really tell the minster and his men to go and hire good lawyers? Were they supposed to change the lawyers that argued the cases successfully through the tribunal and appeal court?

Fortunately, the NJC has shown solidarity. They have tied the hands of trial judges in advance. They have declared the process of arrest and search illegal. It doesn’t matter that a search warrant is an order of a court. Comrades help comrades. But Jero must also help himself. He must politicize the case. In a sense, he is a scape- goat. Many are involved. Almost everyone came to his house. If he names all the relevant visitors then his house becomes a brothel. And he becomes a slut. He is a deity.

The pastor that was hired for the night vigil had told him that God will put his enemies to shame and move him to higher grounds. The day after, some lawyers started running around Abuja with placards, in the name of the rule of law. Politicians will pick up the bill on behalf of democracy. If the need arises a governor will relocate him to a government house and cover him with his immunity. His nights are now smoother and longer. He woke up whistling- “He who asserts, must prove”. And his driver whispered to his cook: “Oga is now happy”
Later that night he had a dream. He saw the governor of one of the Niger Delta states jumping out of a court room, screaming: To God be the glory! Justice Jeroboam is not a sepulchre! Oga Justice is immaculate!