Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first Africa-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Charlie C. Chikezie, New Jersey-based lawyer and contributor to the opinion page of USAfricaonline.com since 1998. This commentary is published, exclusively, by USAfrica
Nigerian journalist Dr. Reuben Abati, in his recent Arise News program, rightly articulated the much ado about nothing that is being spun out of retired Justice Mary Ukaego Odili’s (née Nzenwa) statements at a colloquium in Abuja, on Sunday, September 3, 2023, celebrating Joe-Kyari Gadzama, SAN’s 25th anniversary as a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and book launch.
Justice Odili, who opined that feeling cheated in 2023 election does not justify blackmailing Judges or bringing Nigeria down, commended two lawyers representing President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal Court (PEPT) – Wole Olanipekun (SAN) and Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, who is the Attorney General of the Federation, who were at the colloquium by describing them as masters and experts of election petitions.
Mrs. Odili further warned against fanning the embers of hatred, bigotry, and tribalism without restraint following the 2023 presidential election, saying it could consume everyone.
According to her, “this colloquium and book launch of Chief J.K. Gadzama upon the attainment of 25 years as a senior advocate of Nigeria is an epochal achievement. It is no doubt appropriate that the theme is ‘the Nigeria of our dreams, a call to the patriots.’ I say so in light of the prevailing situation in Nigeria as a result of the 2023 general elections which has generated a lot of storms necessitating the conversation we are about to indulge in as there seems to be a move to draw the nation into chaos or conflagration. This may be brought about by some individuals and groups who fan the embers of hatred, bigotry, and tribalism and fail to see the possible outcomes of utterances without caution that are being thrown around. It is human to feel cheated or having the short end of the stick but one who is not declared a winner at any of the electoral contests, such a notion however grieved does not justify bringing the roof down – the roof of our nation. An unguided missile could land anywhere and upon anyone, [therefore], in ventilating our points of view and facts at the electoral tribunals or other courts, a sense of responsibility from all parties is demanded.”
“The situation does not call for the blackmail of judges or the positing of speculating hypotheses given them such a life of their own which run riot and accepted by the heartless and innocent in the society as the truth.
“Knowing the quality of participants in the colloquium, I am happy that those who are well-equipped in litigation matters or electoral disputes are here – Chief Olanipekun is a master and our Attorney General recently sworn in; these are experts.”
“I am confident that having such persons here including our chief host, Chief J.K. Gadzama, there is confidence that at the end of the day, a resetting of the mind would take place and we will keep things in perspective in the full knowledge that elections are seasonal and litigation relating thereto of the same vain and so, when the seasons are gone, the court gets back to their natural and regular duties of adjudication regarding the affairs, and rights of all persons irrespective of their status in life.”
“J.K. Gadzama SAN has called us to this discussion lest we forget our past, the recent happenings in our country, and the need for a restoration of the ethos and the values for which the founding fathers have set a motion as a guide to all of us young and old irrespective of the positions we occupy in their society, we all have to get our axes together and rebuild our nation.”
Anyone who is familiar with Justice Odili’s position on the Nigerian civil war will not be surprised by her cautionary plea hereinabove. In her retirement speech on May 12, 2022, at her 70th Birthday mandatory retirement age, she recounted with a deep sense of sadness on the precursor incidents “that became the crisis [that] dovetailed into the Nigerian Civil War and we were in the theatre of war named Biafra.”
“During the war, we survived the air raids with the bombers and fighters as low as the height of fruit trees with me catching the eyes of one of the pilots on an occasion. I am bringing this period up not to whip up animosities or negative feelings but to call to the mind of all and sundry the emergency situation which now faces our Nation. Some of the actions or speeches that propelled the unfortunate war which took the lives of millions of our people are being re-enacted at this time hence the necessity for this reminder.”
Prior to Justice Odili’s September 3, 2023 J.K. Gadzama SAN’s colloquium speech, on or about August 10, 2023, an online blogger and publisher of pointblank news, Jackson Ude, circulated a story that Justice Odili is “currently negotiating a pathway for Bola Tinubu’ and that ‘she meets regularly with Appeal and Supreme courts’ in that regard”
It is interesting to note that Jackson Ude, who worked as a special assistant to Dr. Doyin Okupe, who was a Senior Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan on Public Affairs, had prior to his allegations against Justice Odili, also made several unsustainable allegations of corruption against other public officials, including former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who he accused of receiving N4bn bribe from former Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) acting chairman, Ibrahim Magu and similarly, former Governor of Bayelsa State and former Nigeria Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Marlin Sylva and Engr. Simbi Keisye Wabote, who was appointed the Executive Secretary Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) by President Muhammadu Buhari on the 29th of September 2016, and who, prior to his appointment, was an Executive Director of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Nigeria Limited and the General Manager Business and Government Relations for Shell Companies in Nigeria (SCiN), and both Timipre and Wabote prevailed in their Defamatory falsehood Complaints against Ude in United States, and compelled him to retract his malicious falsehood publications against them.
In Case No. 5:21-cv-02214-JFL, Simbi Kesiye Wabote v. Jackson Ude (the “Lawsuit”, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania) (the “Court”), Wabote alleged that Ude committed several acts of defamation against Wabote by accusing Wabote of accepting bribes and painting him as a corrupt Nigerian government official.
After loosing series of pretrial motions, Pointblank News and Ude and Wanbote reached an out-of-court settlement of the case with Ude agreeing to pull down the offensive articles from his website and social media handle and paying Wabotes Counsel $10,000.00 in Deposition costs.
Similarly, former Governor of Bayelsa State and former Nigeria Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Chief Timipre Marlin Sylva, won a case he filed against the same Publisher of Point Blank News, Mr Jackson Ude, in a US District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania.
While I disagree with Justice Odili that refusal of Nigerians to accept an unacceptable judgment from the PEPT constitutes blackmailing the Judges or bringing down the roof of our nation, I agree with Dr. Abati that the retired learned Justice is entitled to her opinion as guaranteed her by Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and that the torrential criticisms trailing her September 3, 2023 colloquium statements are much ado about nothing as long as her “sense of responsibility from all parties [that] is demanded”, and that all parties includes the judges, the candidates and the electorate.
Whether Oluwole Olanikpekun, SAN and Lateef Fagbemi, SAN are are in PDP or APC or LP, their acknowledgment at the colloquium by the retired eminent Justice as masters and experts in election matters, is a statement of fact in light of these learned Silks verifiable records and experience at the Bar, and her affirmation of this obvious fact in no way endorses or validates these Learned Silks arguments at the PEPT.
In Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s April 16, 1963 Open Letter from Birmingham, Alabama City Jail, captioned *”The Negro Is Your Brother”,* he reasoned that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. He wrote “I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws,” but “[c]onversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.”
In the letter, Dr. King further insisted “that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is, in reality, expressing the highest respect for law.”
Justice Odili and the entire Nigerian political class and the Judiciary have to realize that Nigerians have come to the end of their rope with unjust laws and unjust judgments, and that having endured the obvious indignity of Mahmood Yakubu and his Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) result from the February 25, 2023 *”unjust law”* charade with utmost civility and restraint, that further expectation of acquiescence to *”unjust law”* maladjustment from Nigerians from the PEPT Judgment will not only be provocative, but treasonable.
As abolitionist Frederick Douglas said in 1857, it remains true today that *”[i]f there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will.”*
Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 6, 2023 is Nigeria’s date with destiny and whether our national roof remains intact or blown to smithereens or whether we will all be consumed by the judgment of PEPT depends of our collective sense of responsibility of judges, politicians and electorate alike.
May God help us!
USAfrica: Rtd Justice Mary Ukaego Odili and misapplication of justice. By Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe
