What season is it?
It’s the political season again in Nigeria, and that is as good as calling it the “courts” season!
In Abia State, where the governorship primaries of the All Progressives Congress (APC) were successfully conducted, a local court has thrown the entire political turf into disarray by nullifying the glaring victory of High Chief Ikechi Emenike on the improbable grounds that he is not a bona fide member of the APC.
A group of people had approached the court alleging that Chief Emenike, a long-serving, loyal APC stalwart had been suspended from the party. His consternation and spirited denial of the charge and protestations of his solid, continued membership at the highest level, since the very birth of the party almost a decade ago will have to be heard on appeal where the truth will trump the gangster-like attack by detractors at the local court. The echelons of the party are equally nonplussed that any such action could ever be taken against one who, arguably, was an early bird and a pioneer in the setting up of the APC’s base not only in Abia, but also in the South East as a whole.
Chief Emenike is not the only victim of this type of unconscionable misuse of the judicial processes to thwart the genuine will of the people as well as the democratic spirit and principle in Nigeria. The nation’s polity is scarred with hundreds of bogus cases instituted by merchant politicians who have perfected the systematic abuse of court processes in their bid to corner political power for their selfish ends.
The casual observer may come away with the conclusion that Nigerian courts only deal with political cases in this season as media headlines clog news bulletins with the shenanigans of political actors. Already, the country’s fragile democracy is getting bashed on all sides by desperate politicians who think nothing of using the pliant judiciary to cause confusion and foment trouble in the polity.
Last year, the judiciary got so bogged in the mire of abuse of judicial processes by political gladiators that Chief Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad openly decried the complicity of some judges and made moves to curb the menace by threatening to sanction judicial officers caught condoning the practice or any underhand dealings. He was particularly incensed at the ease with which politicians went forum shopping, hopping from one state court to another with actions featuring the same parties and subject matters, just to obtain favourable conflicting judgements to earlier cases, regardless of the fact that the second court is of concurrent jurisdiction and powers as the first.
Observers of the performance of Nigeria’s Judiciary in the rough and tumble game of politics are convinced that the orchestrators of the Abia APC gubernatorial case have only gone for the odious but now familiar “black market judgement”, which would not stand the test of appeal or time.
In the meantime, Chief Emenike, a veteran of the topsy-turvy judicial gymnastics of the nation’s democratic turf has asked all bemused, but supportive APC members and delegates who diligently cast their votes in his favour in the primaries to stay calm until the will of the people is retired at a competent court in the course of time. He believes in the eventual self-correcting might of the justice system as Chief Justice Tanko Muhammad had stated when he admonished the entire judicial system to be wary of hijacking the role and function of the electorate as the deciders of who sits in public office to govern the citizenry and the land.