Nasir el-Rufai, former Governor of Kaduna State, spared no negative expression to describe the Nigerian judiciary, which he said has remained at nadir of integrity in the eyes of ordinary people in recent years.
At the the Law Week of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Bwari branch in Abuja on Monday, el-Rufai said the public no longer trusts the judiciary due to “delayed justice and biased rulings,” regretting that justice in Nigeria often favoured the rich and powerful, also criticised the abuse of ex parte orders in political matters, while blaming lawyers of using the courts for political gains.
Himself a lawyer, having obtained a law degree from the University of London, the former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) said: “In parallel, our judiciary, meant to be the bedrock of fairness and order, is under intense scrutiny. Concerns about delayed justice, procedural inefficiencies, and in some cases, judicial compromise (to put the matter delicately), erode public confidence.
“The rise in forum shopping, the weaponisation of ex parte orders in political matters, and the growing perception that justice is for sale and available only to the rich and the powerful would cause the perceptive observer to conclude that what Nigerian courts do is the administration of law and not the administration of justice.
“In Nigeria, there is a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between law and justice. Not only is justice wanting, but the law that is administered seems to be according to the wishes of the executive. The demand on you, as practitioners in the temple of justice, is a sober introspection as you contemplate whether indeed Justitia is blind and whether she holds the scales of justice in fine balance.”
Carpeting the National Judicial Council (NJC) for “failing in its core mandate of disciplinary oversight,” citing inconsistent judgments, opaque judicial appointments, and minimal consequences for erring judges as key factors contributing to the judiciary’s loss of integrity, he added: “If we must be honest, we must admit that the perception of a high level of judicial corruption is now mainstream. This is not helped by the opacity of judicial appointments, inconsistent rulings on electoral matters, the inexplicable delays in critical judgments and the slap on the wrists meted to notoriously bad judges by the National Judicial Council which, I would respectfully say, has not succeeded in its mission and is now itself desperately in need of reform and restructuring.
“Once upon a time, ordinary citizens tiptoed past the homes of judges. Not any longer. Now, judges are abused and maligned with almost reckless abandon. They are physically and mentally assaulted, sometimes roundly disrespected by the ordinary citizenry. How indeed are the mighty fallen.”
