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  • The Sorry State Of Nigeria’s Judiciary Among Others Makes The Battle Cry For A Revolution Inevitable By Francis Adewale

    The Sorry State Of Nigeria’s Judiciary Among Others Makes The Battle Cry For A Revolution Inevitable By Francis Adewale

    Lawyers
    Lawyers

    “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
                                                   – President John F. Kennedy (1962)

    This week may be one of the worst weeks for Nigerian judiciary and they might have made the much vaunted Sowore’s revolution inevitable. The first salvo was the list of judges released by the National Judicial Council replete with the names of their sons and daughters as well as hangers on. Second is the farcical decision in EFCC vs Kalu where the Supreme Court “suo motu” created a new section to the constitution of Nigeria by vacating a conviction duly given under an extant law. The strange rationale by the Supreme Court is that the presiding judge, now elevated to the Court of Appeal should not have pronounced the sentence. The Court conveniently ignored the fact that the accused counsel had invited the judge to come back and continue the hearing by a formal letter!

    Gone are the days when Nigerian judiciary is famously celebrated as the last bastion of defense for the common man. The days of Kayode Esho, Chukwudifu Oputa, Muhammed Uwais is long gone. Our judiciary is no more like Caesar’s wife, above board. The problem however is not necessarily down to the hydra headed monster of corruption alone but a more sinister evil called, nepotism. It is my humble opinion that an opaque process for selection of judges led us to where we found ourselves this week. And the problem did not start with the current chief justice. The dysfunction and bastardization have been long in coming, and as we will find out in this piece, the cancer has eaten deep into the fabric of this nation. The revolution is inevitable. 

    The Sorry State Of Nigeria’s Judiciary Among Others Makes The Battle Cry For A Revolution Inevitable By Francis Adewale 1Lawyers

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    What precipitate this write up is a social media post by a good friend of mine and I obtained his permission to repost his comment with my personal edits:
    “It took Orji Kalu only 4 months including Covid lockdown challenge to move from the High Court to Supreme Court to get his so called sound judgment from Supreme Court while it took ten years to get his case completed at the High Court level. Ten good years! And we are told justice in Nigeria is not cash and carry? The Supreme Court is preparing the ground for a revolution and very soon something extraordinary will take place. The same Supreme Court that will give 2021 and 2022 court date for poor defendants, sat and summarily decide a case within 4 months while cases of those facing a life sentence languish in the labyrinth of jungle justice!”

    My first response to the post, is to retort that the problem did not start with judiciary, but they seem to have led the “nunc dimitis” for the internment of democracy in Nigeria. The judiciary may have pushed us to the praecipe but they were not the only one. We all recalled the impunity days of PDP rule and how they ride roughshod on people’s right, celebrating acquisition of jets obtained from corrupt practices while hordes of masses suffer the indignity of scrapping for foods from the gutter. Towards the end of that era, we all thought, if we can just get a man of integrity into Aso Rock, someone who will brook no atom of corruption, we will change the country. The election of 2015 seems to have lulled Nigerians into thinking that all we need is someone or a duo with integrity, so we elect Buhari and Osinbajo, a puritan and a pastor and went home satiated. What we were not prepared for or more appositely choose to ignore is the fact that the vehicle that brought them into governance is none other than the decrepit system that PDP used to feather their nest. In the first 4 years, we were told that the problem is with the National Assembly where the legistlooters shifted their control of the vortex of power in Abuja, opposing every anti-corruption moves of the executives. Then come the last election where the ruling party now controls the executive and legislative arm, but corruption runs through the gamut of the judiciary and Aso Rock looks the other way while nepotism festers in its rank.

    It is as if the cancer has completely swallowed up the entire fabric of the nation. Cases involving the poor dragged on for years while those who can afford senior advocate can get quick justice. Many warned that this will sound the death knell of democracy in Nigeria. Every attempt to even build on free and fair election has been truncated by the judiciary. What with the recent confounding judgment from Imo and Bayelsa. Our two gargantuan political parties now owned our judiciary lock, stock and barrel. They sit in smoke filled rooms to determine who will be governors, legislators and judges, and those who will play ball are readily appointed as pawns in the chest board of the Nigerian ruling class, wives, nephews, cousins, sons and daughters are made judges and senior advocates overnight without recourse to any modicum of meritocracy. A friend of mine recently quipped that the problem of nepotism is not just that it defeats meritocracy and breeds mediocrity but that it infects the entire body politics and renders it comatose. Corruption can be traced, and ill-gotten wealth recovered but nepotism is more sinister. Those who obtain position of power and authority through nepotism hold fealty only to their masters who appointed them. Such appointee will readily twist the constitution, made up section that does not exist all at the behest of their “godfather”. It is insidious and evil.

    I graduated from Nigerian Law School 30 years ago, after an excellent stint at Great Ife. My class at Ife, drawn from the north, east, west middle belt and south-south has in its rank some of the best legal minds any country will be proud of. We graduated with high hopes to take on the world and change the land. Few of us found ourselves abroad on scholarship where we flourish and excel. Those in legal practice in Nigeria, either at the federal or state ministry of justice or private practice are the ones my heart bleeds for, especially those without access to members of the National Judicial Council. I have had the privilege to advance my career abroad as an attorney and public defender. I frequently sit on panels that recommend colleagues for appointment as judges in a fair, open and transparent process; something my colleagues in Nigeria could only dream of.

    When I look at the state of Nigerian legal practice my heart bleeds. The career growth of colleagues in the legal profession in Nigeria is stunted not for lack of excellence but influence in the right place. Influence peddling is an art form in Nigeria and politicians used to have the exclusive preserve of selling it to the highest bidder, but our Judicial Council seems to have mastered the art. The problem will not be this pronounced if the sons and daughters they are foisting on Nigerian judiciary are steeped in the Nigerian experience or have a modicum of merit. As many of my colleagues are apt to complain, majority of the recent appointees hardly spend few years in Nigeria. They all went to schools abroad. Totally devoid of the Nigerian experience, and constantly removed from the everyday life Nigerians suffers under. Majority of them lives in the gilded mansions of their forbears in Abuja and other state capitals, where they are rarely touched by the “better angels of our nature” to use the phrase coined by Abraham Lincoln. It is therefore no surprise that they care only for what their “godfather” demand.

    Let me however warns that the biggest mistake we could make is to think that the rot is only in the heart of our judiciary. Think again. Nepotism is next door, next street, next town and everywhere in Nigeria. It rampages through the land, be it North, East or West. Just look at our churches and mosques, who do you see minister or lead the prayers when the founder/visioner is not around? You guess right,  if you say their sons and daughters. Gone are the days when Pa Fadayomi push to have a meritorious doctor of aerodynamics succeed him. Gone are the days when the leader of the faithful in Nigeria is selected by their aptitude in the knowledge of the Quaran. Nowadays, the exit of the leader is the beginning of the reign of the progeny. It has infected our colleges and universities, scholarship and opportunities that used to be available on merit are now exclusive preserve of the vice chancelor’s children and family members. Woe betide the school senate members that dare ask questions. Advertisement for jobs that has already been reserved for the children of the privileged are means to extort money in the form of application fees a la Abba Moro immigration recruitment scheme. A recent recruitment without advertisement at our apex bank reported by Sahara Reporters shows that successful applicants names were picked out of the rolodex of the governor. Commercial Banks staff are not an exemption, they are either recruited based on sex appeal or influential ministers/senators’ “recommendation” which doesn’t come easy for the educated but less privileged applicants.

    A friend concluded an animated discussion on social media on this issue with a distinctively Nigerian resignation: “It is clear that those who do not want things to work properly in Nigeria are more powerful than those who are working towards finding solutions to our problems.” Again, my response is what do we have to lose if we embrace Omoyele Sowore’s revolution, even with its youthful disdain for experience? Especially when our current experienced leadership seems to treat the Nigerian masses with contempt. Look at it this way: They do not need our votes to win election, as they could procure midnight judgment in Abuja a la Bayelsa and Imo. They do not need to legislate to fill any lacunae in our constitutional experience as the Supreme Court proved in Kalu’s case. In fact, as long as oil flows and they have the means to fill their Cayman Island bank accounts, we may as well not exist. Greed and avarice have become the directive principle of Nigerian ruling class. To rescue ourselves from their vice grip, we need revolution now!

    Francis Adewale
    Tioluwanimi@gmail.com

    Opinion

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  • THE THIRD STORY—BABY BIRDS

    When our little girls were seven and nine this talk was given. The previous stories were reviewed bringing out the resemblances and differences. They were permitted to ask questions. In this talk they were very alert to see and apply all the lessons learned from previous stories.

    The beginning of love.—In this review of the story of life, among the plants and fish, we found no love or personal feeling between the male and female. Among the insects and reptiles we found that the males and females choose each other, when led by instinct to bring their young into the world. From the fish to the birds we find the simplest form of love and interest on the part of the parents in their young. This is shown by the care the parents take in the protection and care of the eggs and the food prepared for the young before they are hatched. The male crawfish picks up the fertilized eggs with his feelers, that are arranged in a double row underneath his tail, and, by means of these feelers, he carries the eggs close to his body until they are nearly ready to hatch. The frogs and toads show great tenderness for their eggs. A great many books have been written about all these animals and when you are older you will be greatly interested in learning more of the detail of reproduction among these curious animals. Among all the animals we have studied the male and female separate as soon as the eggs are fertilized and laid, in other cases as soon as the eggs begin to hatch. The parent animals show no interest in their young after they are hatched and their children never know their parents or love them.

    The ant and the bee.—Two exceptions should be made to the above statement, the bee and the ant. They do not pair off and mate, as do other insects, but they live in colonies, or societies. They do not seem to have any special interest in their offspring or even a mate, but in the whole community of bees or ants. The perfect social organizations they form and the homes they build rival the skill and intelligence of man. There are some interesting books written about the bee and ant by persons who have spent years in studying them. When you are older you may be interested in reading such books.

    Baby birds.—We will study God’s plan among the birds. In studying the family life of the birds we find a higher form of instinct, more love and care for each other and their young than among the animals we have studied.

    We often feel disgusted at the ugly, slimy toads, lizards and serpents living in swamps and pools. But not so with the birds. Most of them are very interesting and beautiful and some are fine musicians. Among most of the wild birds of the fields and forests, in the spring time the male chooses among the females the one that most suits his fancy and they are mated or married. When they decide to raise them a family they build them a nest. This is their home. The partridge and lark build their nests on the ground, the swallow in chimneys, the pigeons in barns, the woodcocks and woodpeckers in hollow limbs, the wild ducks and geese on the ledges of rocky cliffs, or in the high grass and weeds on the edge of a lake, but most birds build their homes in bushes and trees. The cuckoo does not build a nest, but lays her eggs in the nest of other birds, to get rid of all labor and trouble of hatching, feeding and rearing her young. We feel a natural contempt for the cuckoo. In every female bird there are organs called ovaries where at certain seasons little eggs are formed.

    While small or soft they are fertilized by the male bird. As the egg grows in the body of the mother bird a hard thin shell is formed around them. When the eggs are fully formed and the nest is completed, the mother bird lays the eggs in the nest, usually one egg a day. For several days these eggs must have some extra heat or they will not hatch. Among most birds, the mother sits on her eggs so that the warmth of her body will cause the fertilized cell in each egg to form the little bird. While she sits on the eggs the father bird gathers fresh berries and worms and brings them to the mother bird to eat. When not bringing her water or food, he is usually found perched upon a nearby limb cheering his wife by talking and singing to her. When her little legs become tired, he will take her place, while she goes and finds fresh food or water. When the little birds are hatched, from sunrise to sunset the parents are busy catching worms and insects and feeding their young. As their children grow older and larger, in some mysterious way, they teach them the danger of men and guns, cats and snakes. When they are about grown they are taught to fly. From this time until the next spring they will live in flocks, when they will again mate and raise a family. In this way all the beautiful feathery songsters are brought into this world.

    Extract from EBook of Self Knowledge and Guide to Sex Instruction, by T. W. Shannon

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  • Glossary of Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene, by G. Stanley Hall

    Glossary of Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene, by G. Stanley Hall

    GLOSSARY

    AGAMIC. Unmarried; unmarriageable, sometimes non-sexed.

    AGENIC. Lacking in reproductive power; sterile.

    AMPHIMIXIS. That form of reproduction which involves the mingling of substance from two individuals so as to effect a mixture of hereditary characteristics. It includes the phenomena of conjugation and fertilization among both unicellular and multicellular organisms.

    ANABOLISM. See METABOLISM.

    ANAMNESIC. Pertaining to or aiding recollection.

    ANEMIC. Deficient in blood; bloodless.

    ANTHROPOMORPHISM. The attributing of human characteristics to natural, supernatural, or divine beings.

    ANTHROPOMETRY. Science of measurement of the human body.

    ARTIFACT. Any artificial product.

    APHASIA. Impairment or lose of the ability to understand or use speech.

    ASSOCIATIONISM. The psychological theory which regards the laws of association as the fundamental laws of mental action and development.

    ATAVISTIC. Pertaining to reversion through the influence of heredity to remote ancestral characteristics.

    ATAXIC. Pertaining to inability to coördinate voluntary movements; irregular.

    CALAMO-PAPYRUS. Reed papyrus or pen-paper.

    CATABOLISM. See METABOLISM.

    CATHARSIS. Purgation or cleansing. Aristotle’s esthetic theory that little renders immune for much.

    CEREBRATION. Brain action, conscious or unconscious.

    CHOREA. St. Vitus’s dance; a nervous disease marked by irregular and involuntary movements of the limbs and face.

    CHRESTOMATHY. A collection of extracts and choice pieces.

    CHRISTENTHUM. The Christian belief; the spirit of Christianity.

    COMMANDO EXERCISES. Gymnastic exercises whose order is dependent upon the spoken command of the director.

    CORTEX. The gray matter of the brain, mostly on its surface.

    CORTICAL. Pertaining to the cortex.

    CRANIOMETRY. The measurement of skulls.

    CRYPTOGAMOUS. Having an obscure mode of fertilization; or, of plants that do not blossom.

    CULTUS. A system of religious belief and worship.

    DEUTSCHENTHUM. The spirit of the German people.

    DIATHESIS. A constitutional predisposition.

    EPHEBIC. Pertaining to the Greek system of instruction given to young men to fit them for citizenship; adolescent.

    EPIGONI. Successors; followers who only follow.

    EPISTEMOLOGY. The theory of knowledge; that branch of logic which undertakes to explain how knowledge is possible and to define its limitations, meaning, and worth.

    EUPEPTIC. Having good digestion.

    EUPHORIA. The sense of well-being; of fullness of life.

    EVIRATION. Emasculation; loss of manly characteristics.

    FERAL. Wild by nature; untamed; undomesticated.

    FORMICARY. An artificial ants’ nest.

    GEMÜTH. Disposition; the entire affective soul and its habitual state.

    HEBETUDE. Dullness; stupidity.

    HEDONISTIC. Relating to hedonism, that form of Greek philosophy which taught that pleasure is the chief end of existence.

    HETAERA. A Greek courtesan. This class was often highly trained in music and social art, and represented the highest grade of culture among Greek women.

    HETEROGENY. (1) The spontaneous generation of animals and vegetables, low in the scale of organization, from inorganic elements. (2) That kind of generation in which the parent, whether plant or animal, produces offspring differing in structure or habit from itself, but in which after one or more generations the original form reappears.

    HETERONOMOUS. Having a different name.

    HOROLOGY. The science of measuring time and of constructing instruments for that purpose.

    HYGEIA. The Greek goddess of health; health.

    HYPERMETHODIC. Methodic to excess; overmethodic.

    HYPERTROPHY. Excessive growth.

    INDISCERPTIBLE. Incapable of being destroyed by separation of parts.

    INHIBITION. Interference with the normal result of a nervous excitement by an opposing force.

    IRRADIATION. The diffusion of nervous stimuli out of the path of normal discharge which, as a result of the excitation of a peripheral end organ may excite other central organs than those directly connected with it.

    KINESOLOGICAL. Pertaining to the science of tests and measurements of bodily strength.

    KINESOMETER. An instrument for measuring muscular strength.

    MEDULLATION. The investment of nerve fibers with a protective covering or medullary sheath, consisting of white, fat-like matter.

    MERISTIC. Pertaining to the levels or spinal and cerebral segments of the body.

    METABOLISM. The act or process by which, on the one hand, dead food is built up into living matter—anabolism, and by which, on the other, the living matter is broken down into simpler products within a cell or organism—catabolism.

    METAMORPHOSIS. Change of form or structure; transformation.

    METEMPSYCHOSIS. The doctrine of the transmigration of the soul from one body to another.

    MONOPHRASTIC. Pertaining to or consisting of a single phrase.

    MONOTECHNIC. Pertaining to a single art or craft.

    MORPHOLOGY. The science of form and structure of plants and animals without regard to function.

    MYOLOGY. The scientific knowledge of the muscular system.

    MYTHOPOEIC. Producing or having a tendency to produce myths.

    NOETIC. Of, pertaining to, or conceived by, mind.

    NUANCE. Slight shade; difference; distinction; degree.

    ORTHOGENIC. Pertaining to right beginning and development.

    ORTHOPEDIC. Relating to the art of curing deformities.

    OSSUARY. A depository of dry bones.

    PALEOPSYCHIC. Pertaining to the antiquity of the soul.

    PANTHEISTIC. Relating to that doctrine which holds that the entire phenomenal universe, including man and nature, is the ever-changing manifestation of God, who rises to self-consciousness and personality only in man.

    PATRISTICS. That department of study occupied with the doctrines and writings of the fathers of the Christian Church.

    PHOBIA. Excessive or morbid fear of anything.

    PHYLETICALLY. In accordance with the phylum or race; racially.

    PHYLETIC. Pertaining to a race or clan.

    PHYLOGENY. The history of the evolution of a species or group; tribal history; ancestral development as opposed to ontogeny or the development of the individual.

    PHYLUM. A term introduced by Haeckel to designate the great branches of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Each phylum may include several classes.

    PICKELHAUBE. The spiked helmet of the German army.

    PLANKTON. Sea animals and plants collectively; distinguished from coast or bottom forms and floating in a great mass.

    POLYGAMIC (LOVE). Pertaining to the habit of having more than one mate of the opposite sex.

    POLYPHRASTIC. Having many phrases; pertaining to rambling, incoherent speech.

    POST-SIMIAN. Pertaining to an age later than that in which simian or monkey-like forms prevailed.

    PRENUBILE. Pertaining to the age before sexual maturity or marriageability is reached.

    PRIE DIEU. A praying desk.

    PROPEDEUTIC. Preliminary; introductory.

    PROPHYLACTIC. Any medicine or measure efficacious in preventing disease.

    PSEUDOPHOBIAC. Pertaining to a morbid condition in which the subject is continually in fear of having said something not strictly true.

    PSYCHOGENESIS. The origin and development of soul.

    PSYCHONOMIC. Pertaining to the laws of mind.

    PSYCHOSIS. Mental constitution or condition; any change in consciousness, especially if abnormal.

    PUBERTY. The age of sexual maturity.

    PUBESCENT. Relating to the dawning of puberty.

    PYGMOID. Of pygmy size and form.

    RABULIST. A chronic wrangler; one who argues about everything.

    SCHEMA. A synopsis; a summary. In the Kantian sense, a general type.

    SCHEMATISM. An outline of any systematic arrangement; an outline.

    SUPERFOETATION. A second conception some time after a prior one, by which two foetuses of different age exist together in the same female. Often used figuratively.

    TEMIBILITY. (From Italian temibile, to be feared.) The principle of adjustment of penalty to crime in just that degree necessary to prevent a repetition of the criminal act.

    TIC. A nervous affection of the muscles; a twitching.

    TRANSCENDENTAL. In the Kantian system having an a priori character, transcending experience, presupposed in and necessary to experience.

    TRAUMATA. Wounds.

    TRAUMATISM. A wound; any morbid condition produced by wounds or other external violence.

    VERBIGERATION. The continual utterance of certain words or phrases at short intervals, without reference to their meaning, as seen in insane Gedankenflucht or rapid flight of thought.

    Extract from Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene, by G. Stanley Hall

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