Is it not interesting that the media should be giving Nigerians excerpts from the latest book of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, in the same week that the Afam Osigwe-led Nigerian Bar Association is holding its Annual General Conference in Enugu? President Obasanjo is by far Nigeria’s most published former ruler, civilian or military.
Even when he may offer personal perspectives dispensed by way of anecdotes on matters of national concern, he has gone beyond writing or publishing the usual fare of Nigeria’s public figures, particularly politicians- life writings, be it biographies, autobiographies and memoirs. He, however, doesn’t stray too far from political issues and in his latest offering he has done just that.
Published by the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Obasanjo’s book is titled Nigeria: Past and Future. From what has so far been published, the book is largely political commentary about the Nigerian state. He is as usual blunt with his take. In this instance, he zeros in on the judiciary, coming down hard on and dismissing it as lacking integrity. He would appear to be out for the judges, many of who have made controversial judicial decisions and turned themselves into vendable wares to be offered to the highest bidder, typically politicians, in the zero-sum contests for elective offices and appointments. Obasanjo accuses the judges of turning judicial pronouncements on their head as they engage in what Fela called ‘government magic’ in which they turn blue to white and ‘electric’ is turned to ‘candle’. What is right is called wrong and what is wrong is described as right- all for the highest bidder. For this, Obasanjo says, Nigerians have lost confidence in the judiciary.
Which of what Obasanjo says is untrue? Perhaps we only need to elaborate on that to show how judges deliver rulings that are more confusing than the issues that brought litigants to their courtrooms. Located in grey zones that leave space for various interpretations, some of the rulings by our judges appear to be deliberately obfuscatory, giving litigants, their lawyers and supporters, including paid publicists and PR spin masters, more than enough opportunities to further mislead the public even where the intendment of such rulings are actually clear to any honest person. Once it is about Nigerian politics, there is no way Obasanjo can criticize the politicians without lobbing verbal grenades at the electoral umpire many believe, contrary to its name, is anything but independent.
So, Obasanjo turns his arrow at the Independent National Electoral Commission that superintends Nigeria’s electoral process. But what is INEC without Professor Mahmood Yakubu? If you don’t know the sea, at least you know the taste of salt? And where does the salt come from? When a woman stays long enough in her husband’s house, a Yoruba proverb says, she becomes a witch. Mahmood Yakubu is the ‘witch’ at INEC. Now in the last months of his tenure, Prof. Yakubu has been in the saddle for ten years as the longest-serving INEC chair in Nigeria. In the polarising environment of Nigerian politics, while winners of elections have had kind words for him, the losers have rained imprecations on his head. This, even when the winners and losers have sometimes changed sides.
Both Mahmood Yakubu and his INEC team have been frequently given the rough edge of election losers’ tongues for both fair and foul reasons. The thing about Obasanjo’s interventions, even though he has not stood for an election since 2004 except through surrogates- the thing about his interventions is that they are often as problematic as the target of his criticisms. And yes, his submissions are also often criticisms of infractions he was guilty of. Was Obasanjo not an enabler of judicial recklessness by his disdain of judicial rulings? Has he not contributed to the moral emptiness of the judiciary, what he calls its ‘precipitous fall’ in his latest book? How often did he weaponise the judiciary against his political opponents even though he also moved against corrupt members of the bench? Perhaps, his consolation, as he observes in his book, is that the soiled reputation of the judiciary has never been as bad as it is in this present time of the Fourth Republic.
Just as Obasanjo cannot talk of Nigerian politics or a compromised judiciary without judges, I believe you also cannot talk of judges without lawyers. They are the typical go-to people, the pimps who work for litigants out to compromise judicial officers. We wouldn’t have compromised judges, indeed a compromised bench, without a compromised bar. Many Nigerian lawyers and so-called constitutional or human rights lawyers and what-not can also be accused of making their fortune from electoral fraud. They, like the judges that are the frequent butt of attacks, are fungible advocates of justice and injustice. They run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. They are vicarious vampires whose lips are wet and hands drip with the blood of Nigerians.
As a body, the NBA is an august fraternity but it has progressively fallen short of expectations with some of its leading lights and others who speak as respected members of the bar dedicated to the cause of politicians, confirmed fraudsters and other criminal types. Its activities are now more performative, made for media spectacle, than they are real and life-affirming. How well does it reflect the concerns of Nigerians, fight for them and speak what it likes to call truth to power? Is the NBA not part of the Nigerian malaise with the hosting ‘rights’ for its annual conference now up for grabs by the highest bidder? Was the mutual black-slapping and self-congratulations on protesting against what it views as executive impunity following the imposition of emergency rule in Rivers State necessary, when it moved its conference to Enugu with questions over the princely N300 million hosting right funds from Rivers State?
The NBA called the N300 million largess a gift- for what really? An unspecified consultation job for suspended governor, Siminalayi Fubara? How can the NBA ‘stand out and stand tall’ in the compromised circumstances in which it finds itself behaving like the Chichidodo that hates human excrement but relishes maggot? Whose interest does the NBA serve today? It may as well limit its interest to that of its members like any other professional group and it will be within its right. Otherwise, it must quit speaking in the name of Nigerians while actively engaged in the promotion of group or individual interest. What’s its position on GMO foods, for example? Must everything be about politicians or politics? While it sounds like the advert slogan of a comedian’s show than the considered conference theme of a respected legal group, in what way does the NBA live up to expectation, stand out and stand tall, today?