By Obi Nwakanma
An old school friend of my father’s, a judge, never accepted private invitations to parties, or government cocktails, so as not to be corrupted or seen to be compromised by his public associations and gestures. Judges lived intensely private lives, isolated by the burdens of their responsibility. They had moral authority.

They were highly accomplished practitioners of the law, highly read, and highly regarded by their peers – either as scholars or as advocates of the law – before their appointments to the Bench. They came with the gold standard. The judgeship was an acknowledgement of their authority and of a life-time of accomplishment in the legal profession, and a final call to service.

Judges were well-maintained and well-regarded. They were paid from the “consolidated fund.” Their hands and their moral spines were strengthened by a lack of want; by financial independence guaranteed by the judicial contract. Their security was guaranteed.

Their tenure was guaranteed, and so was their pension. You could never harm a judge. You raised a finger or as much as a voice at a judge and you came close to committing treason. You disobeyed the injunctions of a judge, and you committed the terrible sin of contempt. To hold the court in contempt was to destroy the foundations of the laws of the nation.

Judges lived in the glow, not of adulation, but of trust and fear. They were dignified. They were colourful and full of oomph! Their judgments were neutral. I guess like many things in Nigeria, even that tradition of judicial independence, and its shielding from the wider interplay of economic, social and political forces, had to be undermined too.

The greatest way to undermine a nation is to pervert its judicial system. To pervert a judicial system you must corrupt it – inundate it with incompetence, and with ignorance, and with greedy men and women fearful of their own incompetence and, therefore, unwilling to defend justice. This is what has happened to the Nigerian judiciary in the last quarter of a century.

We have watched its evolution, and the downward spiral of Nigeria’s justice system. In the years of military dictatorship, the soldiers packed the courts with third-rate people whom they made judges simply because they could control them; make them do the bidding of power rather than the bidding of the blind lady.

As an older generation of judges trained and raised in the finer tradition of justice began to retire from the courts, a new generation that replaced them came from among these military appointees, many of whom have very little capacity to mete justice unless it is spoken for.

The recent fray between Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, Chief Justice of Nigeria, and Justice Ayo Salami, Chief Justice (President) of the Federal Court of Appeals, highlights this very troubling situation even at the highest bench of the nation.

It is a scandal of the proportion that should bring down a government. I’d briefly rehash the circumstance: the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria had apparently engineered the elevation of the current President of the Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court. In another context, this promotion to the Supreme Court would be regarded as the highest honour offered to a judge.

However, Justice Salami did not quite see the honour. He considered Katsina-Alu’s move to promote him a Greek gift. It was no elevation, it was levitation. Why so?

Here’s where motive and action got curious. One, he was not even consulted and his opinions were not sought in making this career choice for him. Two, he had no problems – not much ambition for the Supreme Court; he loved his job at the Court of Appeals (Apparently, the President of the Court of Appeal is no small fry either).

The president of the appeals court promptly sued the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Federal Judicial Service Commission, the National Judicial Council and the Attorney-General of the Federation. In his precise and unambiguous choice of words, Justice Ayo Salami details the reason behind the plot to levitate him to the Supreme Court.

But, here is the scandal: Justice Salami specifically accused the Chief Justice of attempting to force him to pervert the course of justice! Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu had asked him to prevent justice, specifically in the election petitions against the governor of Sokoto State. His resistance to this, Judge Salami claims in his petition, is behind the Chief Justice’s attempts to send him upstairs, and plant his own minion at the Court of Appeals.

Justice Salami’s accusation is groundbreaking. The implication of the Chief Justice attempting to manipulate the outcome of justice is a perverse and treasonable conduct. It is unbecoming of a judicial officer of the state of the calibre in question to be seen manipulating the course of justice.

This must compel the Chief Justice to resign, principally because enough doubts have now been cast on his person. It is clear to me that Justice Salami’s accusation makes it impossible for anyone now to trust the judgment that might emanate from Aloysius Katsina-Alu.

This scandal also draws important attention to the Judiciary – the so-called third estate of the realm. While Nigerians have focused mostly on executive power, and, to some extent on the legislative, it is often forgotten that three arms constitute the government of Nigeria: the Executive, the Judiciary, and the Legislative.

Each is equal to the other, and each is constituted to create a balance of power through the scrutiny of the other. We have frequently neglected the place of the judiciary – of a fair justice system – in the administration of state. The failure of the judiciary and the failures of the sanctions of the law are at the roots of corruption and violence in Nigeria.

A corrupt judiciary leaves the citizen vulnerable and open to alternative means of justice. Self-help justice in turn has grave implications for the state.

The current scandal makes Nigerians trust the courts – including the highest court of the land even less. It does register even worse in the mind to think that NJC has tried to cover up this scandal rather than reach its very depth.

Indeed, the Nigerian Bar Association basically called on the media to “show restraint.” This is unacceptable. Justice Katsina-Alu should resign. We must also now question how justices are appointed to the Supreme Court.

We must do what the Americans do: the president nominates candidates and we put them through tough, public, legislative scrutiny. It should not be up to the Chief Justice to nominate candidates to the court. It is an executive act, and it must follow legislative scrutiny. We must protect the independence of the courts.

That’s our only chance at justice for the citizen. If justice is not to be for the highest bidder the judiciary must be transparent!