Special to USAfrica magazine (Houston) and USAfricaonline.com, the first African-owned, US-based newspaper published on the Internet.
Agbedo is a Professor of Linguistics, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and contributing analyst to USAfrica
When the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Olukayode Ariwoola chose to describe the retiring Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad, in glowing superlative terms, it was not for the love of hyperbole, flattery, blarney, blandishment, or humbug. Instead, it was borne out of genuine desire to delineate the character of a man he had known for decades as a colleague in the proverbial “temple of justice” with every measure of exactitude and ultraprecision.
The setting was the valedictory session organised by the Supreme Court in honour of Justice Muhammad, who bowed out of the apex court bench on Friday 27 October 2023, after spending 47 years in active judicial service and attaining 70-year mandatory retirement age. In his opening remarks, CJN Ariwoola described his disposition towards the ‘uncommon valedictory session’ as a mixture of emotions and exhilarations. It wasn’t because he has not presided over such sessions before but for the fact that they were honouring an exceptional retiring jurist, he described as a “quintessential judicial icon with dazzling qualities and alluring stature, who could, in one breath, be classified as a model of excellence that transcends the legal profession.” He described Justice Muhammad as “an epitome of jurisprudential finesse; an insuperable lion with an irrepressible voice in the temple of justice…an accomplished jurisprudential iconoclast that has offered the best of his intellect to the advancement of the legal profession through his several years of unblemished and incontrovertible adjudications at different levels of Courts in Nigeria.” The CJN laced his glowing tribute with an ironic clincher: “His Lordship is one judicial officer that could be blunt, even to a fault; and is never known to be afraid to say things the way they are; and also, never shies away from calling a spade by its name, irrespective of whose ox is gored.”
Ironic in the sense that the retiring colleague he profusely draped in glossy emblazonment would in the next moment direct his blunt iconoclastic sting at him. Perhaps, the CJN would have been less prodigal of his eulogies if he had a premonition of Ugwuoke Eji’s fate that awaited him. In the Ọmabẹ masquerade tradition of Elugwu-Ezike, it is the exclusive duty of Ugwuoke Eji to kit and dress up his highly dreadful principal, Eji. However, the Ugwuoke Eji has to contend with the unenviable role of a guinea pig, whose schedule of duty impels him to surrender his back for the Eji to test his flogging prowess on as soon as the kitting process was complete. But a more discreet Ugwuoke Eji would stand astride like a coil primed to spring out and retreat into a tactical withdrawal as soon as he handed over the mask to its principal to round off the kitting ritual. Yet, try as much as he would, Ugwuoke Eji’s deft manoeuvres would still be too gawkish to save him the hot whacks of his terrible principal, whose combined brutal mien and legendary savagery is without borders. And like the Eji masquerade who sways and swings his cane at will without deference to ‘federal character,’ Justice Muhammad’s fabled bluntness didn’t fail him when he rose to kick-start his valedictory speech.
Retirement from the Supreme Court is a significant milestone in the career of any Justice. A valedictory speech is not a merely a farewell address. It is a time of reflection, reminiscence, and often an opportunity to impart wisdom and offer insights into the functioning of the judiciary.
For retiring Justice Muhammad, the valedictory speech session, among other things, utilized a unique platform to cast a critical searchlight on the dark corners of judicial corruption. He equally advocated for institutional reforms.
To this effect, he followed the footsteps of retired Lt. General Salihu Ibrahim, Chief of Staff of the Nigerian Army when he was retiring in 1993 to underscore brazen institutional failure that has come to characterise the judicial arm of government in contemporary times.
Recall how the retiring army chief declared in unmistakable terms that the ‘Nigerian Army has become the army of anything is possible’. Justice Muhammad began his speech on the same tone of regret. “It is obvious that the judiciary I am exiting from is far from the one l voluntarily joined and desired to serve and be identified with.” Reason? “The institution has become something else,” the eminent jurist lamented.
Perhaps, in the fairness to the ‘accomplished jurisprudential iconoclast,’ it is pertinent to observe here that Justice Muhammad was not the first retiring eminent jurist to raise red flag on the all-pervasive and corrosive corruption virus threatening to destroy the sanctity and integrity of the judiciary. Shortly before he passed on to eternity on 16 November 2012, the renowned retired Justice of the Supreme Court, Kayode Eso, had once taken a swipe at the Nigeria’s judiciary for brimming over with judicial square pegs in round holes and decried the corruption stench that has polluted the all-important arm of government. Still going back further than Justice Eso, the early warning signs of this festering judicial decadence were detected some twenty years ago by Honourable Justice Odemwengie Uwaifo in his valedictory speech on his retirement as Justice of the Supreme Court delivered on 24 January 2004. According to him, the lowering of standards in the judiciary of this country was once thought to be only in the magistracy until it gradually crawled to the High Courts, infecting a noticeable number of judicial officers there. Then came the nerve-jangling apprehension that the appellate court may soon be infested if not already contaminated with some of these vices. Given the unnerving reality of that moment, Justice Uwaifo earnestly wished that a day would “never come when it may be said that the Supreme Court could not stand forthright enough but buckled under pressure having regard to the manipulative dimension prevalent in our socio-political environment, but manifesting as an undergrowth, and tending to overshadow with unpredictable consequences our sense of honour and direction as a nation.” It was one earnest wish, which Justice Uwaifo had implored God to grant without hesitation because the omen, which that trend of falling standards portended for the country was too frightening to even contemplate. For him, “a superior court (in particular) owes itself the duty to administer the law in a manner which ensures that there remains reasonable validity in the claim that the Judiciary is the last line of defence and hope of those who approach it. A corrupt judge is more harmful to the society than a man who runs amock with a dagger in a crowded street.” Whereas a mad person can be restrained physically, Justice Uwaifo posited, “a corrupt judge deliberately destroys the moral foundation of society and causes incalculable distress to individuals through abusing his office, while still being referred to as honourable.” The judgment of a judge that worth its salt must be characterised by the quality of its analysis and transparency. An unconvincing judgment, according to him, “is like a song rendered in awkward decibel: it can neither entertain nor can it be danced to.”
Unfortunately, the jurist’s wish had become too tall for even a fleeting consideration by God as Nigerian courts in contemporary times have witnessed a number of judicial decisions, which have been adjudged as being informed majorly by such indices of injustice as bribes, corruption, influence peddling, and executive arm-twisting. The frequency and intensity have been garnering momentum such that perversion of the course of justice is gradually becoming a sociological reality of the contemporary Nigerian state. The foregoing explains the preponderance and regularity of ‘jankara’ court judgments (illegally procured judicial pronouncements) that resonate in ‘awkward decibel’ and defy all jurisprudential logic. In his valedictory speech, Justice Muhammad made thinly-veiled references to untoward developments in the Nigerian judiciary. And like the Eji Ogbene masquerade, he began by whipping the system that stuff the CJN with absolute powers and its inherent absolute corruptible propensities. From there, he went on to decry the unpredictability or pendulous swings of the apex court judgments (as instantiated by the cases of Ahmad Lawan and Imo State governorship), the strange company kept by some judicial officers, nepotism and cronyism-driven appointments into key judicial positions, serial breaches of Rule 8.3 of the Judicial Code of Conduct, the sickening contrasting realities of increased budgetary allocations and corresponding decline in the justices and officers’ welfare and the quality of service rendered by the judiciary, willful exclusion of two geopolitical zones (Southeast and Northcentral) from the bench of the apex court’s presidential election petition panel, the non-representation of the same zones in the current composition of the Supreme Court, the ‘unjust and embarrassing salary difference between the Justices and Chief Registrar, negotiated and ‘voluntary’ retirements of the former CJNs. All these examples have a common denominator – corruption. What could have vindicated Justice Muhammad’s claims about the rots in the judiciary that have continued to affect the justice delivery system in the country more than Senator Adamu Bulkachuwa’s confession during a valedictory session of the 9th Senate in June 2023, which represented a grave blight on the integrity of the judiciary. The Senator had unabashedly boasted of how he had leveraged the privileged position of his wife, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa (who as the President of Appeal Court, appointed herself to head the five-member panel of the Presidential Election Petition Court in 2019) to procure favourable judgments for himself and friends. “I know – I look at faces in this chamber who have come to me and sought for my help when my wife was the President of the Court of Appeal and I am sure…we know ourselves…I must thank particularly my wife whose freedom and independence I encroached upon while she was in office and she has been very tolerant and accepted my encroachment and extended her help to my colleagues.” But for the prompt intervention of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, who on realizing that the 83-year-old senator representing Bauchi North senatorial district in the 9th Senate was set to squeal and divulge the filthy secrets of the owl, stopped him, it would have been quite heart-rending to hear specific examples of how he colluded with his ‘honourable justice’ wife to pervert the course of justice. This was a stark contrast to the jurist’s stout denial of spousal influence in February 2020 when she shared her four-decade experience with journalists in Lagos, during which she pointedly denied an allegation that she took a six-billion-naira bribe. “There was a time when allegations were flying around that I was given N6 billion and I laughed. So, if I was given N6 billion, do you think I would still be here?” she had retorted rhetorically. However, given her husband’s open confession, it would remain to be seen how her cock-n-bull yarns would convince even a toddler. In his reaction to Bulkachuwa’s ‘extra-judicial heroic exploits,’ Prof Chidi Odinkalu, former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), slammed Justice Bulkachuwa, who he argued was “neither honourable nor interested in justice,” noting that her proven subversion of justice, as alluded to by her senator husband, had dented the integrity of serving judges who would easily be dismissed glibly as “trading judicial decisions in their bedrooms.”
The inglorious ascendancy of the likes of Bulkachuwas and their jolly good cruise on the inebriate crest of judicial corruption combines with other proven instances of judicial sleaze to paint a horrid picture of the deep-rooted malfeasance that desecrate the temple of justice, which expectedly curried the brusque bluntness of the enfant terrible in Justice Dattijo Muhammad.
There is no gain saying the fact a corrupt judiciary portends grave implications for constitutional democracy. In constitutional democracies, the judiciary plays a key role in upholding the rule of law, protecting fundamental human rights, and ensuring that the government of the day operates within the bounds of the constitution. But a corrupt judiciary is a vicious virus that pollutes, corrodes, erodes, and ultimately undermines the very principles on which constitutional democracy is built. The retiring jurist, aptly captured by the CJN and a colleague of long standing as an iconoclast looked up to the valedictory session as a breather to yank off the constraining manacles of self-censorship and savour his inalienable fundamental right to free speech, unencumbered by the statutory ethical provisions that tend to impose the unwritten ‘see something, say nothing’ code on judicial officers.
Having spent decades of his prime professional life in the hallowed chambers of justice, where integrity, impartiality, and trust constitute the bedrock upon which the edifice of the judiciary stands, Justice Muhammad saw valedictory speech session for retiring jurists as more than just a ceremonial farewell. As an experienced legal mind whose voice carries enormous weight, both within and outside the corridors of justice, he saw it as a veritable platform to shed light on the malaise of corruption that can tarnish the judiciary’s reputation and erode public trust. It is almost certain that he is not unaware of the challenges of speaking out against corruption in the judiciary as a retiring jurist. If anything, addressing brazen judicial corruption as a retiring jurist must be done within the boundaries of legal and ethical constraints. Ordinarily, by taking on this delicate responsibility of speaking truth to authority, a retiring jurist would naturally contend with such several significant hurdles and considerations as ethical dilemma, risk to reputation, legal and ethical constraints, public scrutiny, complex nature of corruption, effective communication, and personal and professional consequences.
In effect, such jurist is reasonably expected to get prepared for the ethical and professional complexities involved in speaking out against judicial corruption and understand that his pronouncements can have lasting impacts on the legal profession and justice delivery system. Fortunately, Justice Muhammad hardly lacked demonstrable experiential insights; he appeared too well-versed in the delicate art of balancing his right to free speech with his ethical and legal obligations as an exiting member of the judiciary to allow those hurdles and considerations to deflect his arrow from hitting its prime targets. For any objective and impartial observer, the motivation behind raising allegations of official malfeasance by the retiring jurist was clear: to expose unethical practices, initiate far-reaching reforms and institutional resilience, and ultimately protect the integrity of the judiciary. An institution that lays claims to integrity, such as the Nigerian judiciary, should not be threatened by allegations of corruption; rather, it should emerge stronger and more trustworthy after thorough, impartial, and transparent investigations. In any democratic society, a robust and independent judiciary is a fundamental pillar of the legal system. A strong and independent judiciary should have the capacity to withstand scrutiny and allegations as well as be receptive to advocacy for institutional reforms. To maintain its integrity, it behooves the judiciary led by the CJN, Justice Ariwoola to investigate allegations of corruption within its ranks when they arise. Herein lies the challenge, which the arrow inherent in Justice Muhammad’s valedictory speech represents. Whether His Lordship, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, has the disposition to rise up to the occasion remains in the realm of conjecture for now.
However, what is certain is that the handling of such allegations is sure to exert a significant impact on public trust in the judiciary and the overall integrity of the legal system of the Nigerian state.
The Nigerian judiciary cannot afford to miss the golden opportunity that Justice Muhammad’s arrow presents.
Surely, Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad deserves our warm congratulations for having successfully dislodged the sludge that had constituted a knee on his neck; he can now breathe freely as he retreats with dignity and respect into the warm comfort of his well-deserved retirement!
