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There can’t be many Nigerians out there who think
that the Nigerian judiciary managed to escape the epic decline that has
become the story of Nigeria’s government institutions. But the recent
revelations from the very public falling out between the Chief Justice,
Aloysius Katsina-Alu, and the President of the Court of Appeal, Ayo
Salami, have taken the justice system’s reputation to record lows.

Justice Salami, in a recent petition to President
Jonathan, and the National Judicial Council, alleged that the Chief
Justice attempted to unduly influence him in the judgement concerning
the 2008 Sokoto State governorship re-run elections, and has also made
plans to “promote” him from the Court of Appeal so as to leave the
position of president vacant for a more pliable person.

This is not the first time that allegations of
impropriety would be levelled against senior members of the Nigerian
judiciary. In 2004 an anonymous organisation, the Derivation Front,
based in Delta State, accused the Supreme Court of receiving N5 billion
in bribes from the then governor of Delta State, James Ibori, who was
battling allegations that he was an ex-convict and thus not qualified
to be governor in the first place.

A decade before then, something unprecedented in
the history of the Nigerian judiciary had happened. It also had to do
with hints of material inducement to alter the course of justice. The
justices of the Supreme Court sued the Weekend Concord for libel, after
the paper reported that President Babangida had secretly bought
Mercedes Benz limousines for them all, and that it wasn’t clear whether
the cars were given to them in an official or private capacity. (We
ended up with a scenario in which the nine Justices of the Supreme
Court filed a libel suit against a newspaper at a High Court).

The difference however, between the
Katsina-Alu/Salami case and its predecessors is that in the current one
the allegations are not coming from outside. This is not a case of an
expose by a newspaper or a faceless organisation. This is the President
of the Federal Court of Appeal accusing the Chief Justice of the
Federation, of working to subvert the course of justice. At times like
these one is tempted to invoke Fela’s “Confusion Break Bone.” As it
happens with these revelations, where muck is easily predisposed to
begetting more muck, we are learning more by the day. In simple
English, this is the situation as it currently stands: The PDP believes
that Justice Salami is an ACN sympathiser, while the ACN believes that
Justice Katsina-Alu, and Justice Thomas Naron (who presided over the
Osun State Election petition tribunal whose decision Salami’s Court
upturned, and who, like Salami now stands accused, through leaked phone
records, of being in suspiciously close contact with litigants) are
ruling party men.

And what do the ordinary people of Nigeria
believe? That it is finished for the judiciary. Need we point out that
once citizens come to that conclusion, they will not hesitate to
completely turn their backs on the courts and seek redress for their
grievances by other means.

The extent of the mess beggars belief. But the
immediate solution is clear. To salvage the already battered reputation
of the judiciary, both Justices should immediately resign their
appointments. Nothing less than a total relinquishing of power by
Justice Katsina-Alu and Justice Salami – best seen as career hara-kiri,
the face-saving Japanese ritual suicide form associated with the
exposure of a shameful act – will suffice in this case.

No excuses are tenable. The National Judicial
Council must go ahead to thoroughly investigate all the allegations.
The probe must be extended to exhume the allegations levelled against
Justice Naron.

Justice, Wole Soyinka said, decades ago, is the
first condition of humanity. Indeed it is. Things are no longer normal
when we have to start qualifying the word “justice” with words like
“true” or “genuine”; justice ceases to be justice as soon as it is up
on offer to the highest bidder, or as soon as those entrusted with it
can no longer convince us that they are above betraying it.

While delivering judgement in a murder trial in
which much pressure had been put on him to exert the course of justice,
a certain Mr. Justice Oyemade was quoted by the Daily Times as saying,
in July 1965: “The only thing we have now in this country is the
judiciary. We have seen politicians changing from one policy to another
and one party to another. But the only protection the ordinary people
have against these inconsistencies is a fearless and upright
judiciary.” Four and half decades later, we affirm that those ideals
remain unassailable.