THE chickens of destiny have come home to roost. In October of 2007, the Supreme Court in a fit of indignant anger reached a decision that puzzled most Lawyers. They decided that one Mr. Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, who did not in fact receive any vote from the good people of Rivers State, has been elected the Governor of Rivers State.

The source of the troubling annoyance of their Lordships can be traced to General Olusegun Obasanjo’s apparent no holds barred rigging of all the elections conducted under his watch as President. The Supreme Court had months earlier ruled that Senator Ifeanyi Ararume was duly nominated by the People’s Democratic Party,PDP, as their gubernatorial candidate in Imo State. Quick as lightening, INEC contrived a PDP loss of Imo State after they had “won” more than 90% of the votes cast in other elections in the same state. This brazen twist must have irked their Lordships to no end, hence their resort to a final decision on who won the election in Rivers State.

Despite the legal monstrosity created by this Supreme Court verdict, nobody accused them of corruption and Rotimi Amaechi naturally praised the court as the proverbial last bastion of hope for the common man. The Supreme Court in that case and in several other cases protected the interest of the weaker person in our then fledgling democracy. It must have been considerably easier to have sided with the powers that be in PDP in 2007, than to side with then puny Rotimi Amaechi.

Achebe’s proverb that those whose palm kernels were cracked by benevolent spirits must not forget to be humble clearly had no effect on Mr. Amaechi. During his tenure, he had the unfortunate distinction of being the first and only Governor who ensured that all courts were closed in his state for more than a year, thereby depriving innocent litigants of justice. He also had a running battle with the National Judicial Council over the appointment of a Chief Judge for Rivers State that clearly crippled the Judiciary in that hapless state.

The recent spate of accusations and counter accusations involving the Supreme Court Justices has managed to swirl around Mr. Amaechi. The struggle for public acceptance of multiple versions of events has been a rather unfair fight. The Supreme Court Justices have no media aides. They have no contacts in the press. They have never been involved in high tech media exchanges in their lives.

They are clearly like fish out of water. They only managed to discreetly disclose the letters they wrote to the Chief Justice of Nigeria and thereafter retreated into their natural position as silent operators in the Judicial arm of government. Their opponents on the other hand have years of experience in mud slinging and control of the media. They have  tens of Internet trollers on their payrolls. They have infinite resources to control public opinion and they are using these their resources to the fullest. A mismatch made in hell is unfolding before our very eyes.

The unfair nature of the fight can be easily captured by the fact that Justice Inyang Okoro actually detailed his legitimate income and thereafter stated that the money found in his house is part of his legitimate earning. This defence in the absence of direct evidence to the contrary should have settled the case of Justice Okoro, but naturally the press and social media commentators have ignored this seemingly unassailable defence and preferred the narrative of “huge sums of money.”

The case of Justice Ngwutta is much more complex. The issues he raised should ordinarily lead to the setting up a Judicial panel of inquiry or a crack team of impartial detectives that can unearth corroborative facts on both sides of the divide. The allegation that he told the CJN to remove him from the panel that will sit on Rivers State Elections, but was informed by the CJN that apart from him, other Justices have also been approached by a serving minister is actually the worst allegation about executive corruption against the Judiciary in Nigeria’s history. To sweep such an allegation under the carpet, without eliciting comments from the CJN and other Justices will amount to sending our Judiciary to the guillotine. If that allegation is true and is not visited with any form of punishment, or worse still is rewarded by punishing the stubborn Justices, then no Justice will have any motivation to be stubborn.

Chickens of destiny have this awful way of inflicting pain on those that sent them out to roost. In this partisan attempt to hobble our Supreme Court, we may end up creating a Supreme Court that is supreme in name only, but the real decisions are reached by threat wielding cabals. That prospect is monstrous. In normal climes, the facts of a matter as related by Law Enforcement Agents are presumed correct. But the type of contradictions that emanated from the bungled attempt to arrest Justice Liman in Rivers State and the ridiculous leaked evidence that he had $2M in his house, which has clearly turned out to be mendacious has made the DSS to lose the moral high ground in this matter.

The Supreme Court remains akin to the holy grail of Lawyers. It is a court that every country holds out for prescribing what will remain the real laws of the land. Even in far away USA, appointments to the Supreme Court has resonated as a campaign issue. In Nigeria, the Supreme Court has managed to temper the all powerful politicians in our clime. The all conquering PDP of yester-years were worsted severally by this court, thereby preserving the opposition. To use partisan bickering to destroy this court as some of us are currently doing will have tragic consequences for our democracy.

Mr. Emeka Odikpo, a lawyer, wrote from Lagos.