By Ikeddy ISIGUZO
JUSTICE in Nigeria comes with cost, curse, and cause, otherwise consequence. When we discuss justice Nigeriana, we are ultimately talking about the rising cost of injustice.
It is well before us. Whether we do anything about it or not will not change a thing about the fact that there is so much injustice in our system that mentions of justice for Nigerians challenge our unfairness to injustice which rules and ruins Nigeria.
Where is the justice when governments and individuals threaten opponents knowing that injustice would be served? Not even the military was as brutal in dispensing injustice as we see today with civilian governments that are neither democratic nor civil.
Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, dragged justice to the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, annual conference in Enugu, lamenting the cost of assessing justice. There was the more damning matter of justice being on sale, available to people of means and influence.
Injustice has become controversial because we define it in ways that suit our purposes. We justify injustice in line with the needs of the times and the interests of who is in power. Injustice has become dynamic, bendable, and vendable.
Enugu was doused in copious controversy well before the the conference started. The matter remains unresolved. The re-location of the conference from Port Harcourt to Enugu was a bold NBA decision that is worth commendations. NBA was protesting the “military” rule in Rivers State which would seem to have NBA’s endorsement if its annual conference held in Port Harcourt as earlier planned.
Also worthy of condemnation is NBA’s refusal to refund the N300 million from Rivers State Government, which according to NBA, was a “gift”. NBA cannot deny that the “gift” was linked to hosting the conference in Port Harcourt.
There is no point keeping a “gift” from a relationship that NBA breached on moral grounds. The same morality would demand that NBA returns the “gift” with the same loudness with which it cancelled Port Harcourt as venue of its 2025 conference.
If resources had stopped NBA from acting in this direction earlier, the estimate of over N500 million it made from registration fees and “gift” from the new host, would pay off Rivers State and leave a lot in the purse. Anything short of this would be injustice against the people of Rivers State even if it is not the type of injustice Sultan of Sokoto spoke about
Poverty is not the major issue that result in injustice. Determined government officials – elected, appointed, self-imposed – have appropriated justice long ago, defining it, deciding it, and dividing it, with extensive interests as beneficiaries.
Injustice starts with the systems, or lack of them, that get people into public office (the injustice in the private sector will be a matter for another day). Injustice is almost a legitimate way of getting government positions whether through elections or appointments. In both cases, exclusions, consistent subversion of the law, deliberately unclear criteria, and confounding judicial pronouncements are common. Some of these court judgements are so ridiculous that they give new meaning to injustice as justice.
Judges, most of them, are a main obstacle to justice. A major voice has accused them of corruption.
“The great fear of most well-meaning Nigerians and good friends of Nigeria is that where ‘justice’ is only available to the highest bidder, despair, anarchy, and violence would substitute justice, order, and hope,” read excerpts of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s new book, Nigeria: Past and Future. Note, the title avoided the present.
Obasanjo released the excerpts on the eve of the NBA conference.
“I went to a State in the North about ten years after I left public office. Next to the government guest house was a line of six duplex buildings. The Governor pointed to the buildings and stated that they belonged to a judge who put them up from the money he made from being the chairman of election tribunals.”
What did Obasanjo and the Governor do with the information? Was the judge ever punished?
Obasanjo went on this long tirade, again all in the past, including a dead Muhammadu Buhari:
“No wonder politicians do not put much confidence in an election which the INEC of Professor Mahmood Yakubu polluted and grossly undermined to make a charade. Most politicians believe in the will of the tribunal judges, court of appeal judges and supreme court judges.
“No matter what the will of the people may be, the Chairman of INEC since after the 2015 election had made his will greater and more important than the will of the people.
“And worse still is the will of the judges – two out of three, three out of five corruptly overriding the will of millions of voters.”
“Buhari threw caution to the wind, no matter what had transpired between him and the judges who did his bidding. In his election cases, financially, he topped it up with appointments for them no matter their age and their ranks.”
“After a false declaration of results, making losers winners and winners losers, the victim of the cheating is advised to go to court, which is a court of corruption rather than a court of justice.”
Obasanjo is truthful but he could have done more whether in or out of office and while those involved could have benefitted from his worries. His view of injustice is blind to the injustices the poor, the common man suffer. Their last piece of land – the mainstay of their survival, the economy they know – would be taken from them, no compensation or replacement offered. The laws do not speak for them. They have no confidence in a system that hardly recognises their existence. They are not amused with preachments about all men being equal before the law. Which law?
These Nigerians are hopeless, helpless and are resorting to “leaving” all matters to the Almighty. Those who can take laws into their hands with the attendant consequences of choas and lawlessness in a society that churns out laws frequently.
The National Assembly, Sultan, Obasanjo, and their class should impress on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu the imperative to run a government of law and order, “Where no man is oppressed”.
We may lament the cost of justice. We should not forget the cost of injustice, a rising curse on what used to be a land of peace and plenty.
Finally…
WHY do we have to hear great news about Nigeria from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu only when he is abroad? Corruption has ceased, been abolished in Nigeria and we don’t know, we have not heard? We have to be told from Brazil? Which stakeholders did the President consult before this great decision? Are there new definitions of corruption different from ones we know? When the President abolished corruption, with what did he replace it? Corruption is a huge slice of the economy. Can we live with the vacuum the President has created? The international community will suddenly have new challenges understanding us.
THE most profound thing Bashir Bayo Ojulari, Group Chief Executive Officer, GCEO, of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, has said since his appointment in April 2025, is that he is “a Northerner”. Whatever that meant, some thought it was an unfortunate political slip that had no value for the competences Ojulari required for the job. Did his being “a Northerner” mean he was not Yoruba? Since Thursday Ojulari has been raising alarms about some powerful forces trying to remove him from NNPCL because he was implementing the President’s reforms. Who are these forces who are more powerful than the President? Is the President unable to protect his appointee?
“The President has not put pressure on me to do the wrong thing. The mandate is to ensure sustainability. There is no negative political pressure for NNPCL to continue running at a loss,” Ojulari told Festus Osifo, President of PENGASSAN, who on a visit to NNPCL raised concerns about the productivity of the refineries.
Anyone privy to the terms of Ojulari’s appointment can advise him. As an outsider, I think he should resign for suggesting that there were forces more powerful than the President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, who is also the Minister of Petroluem Resources, and sole administrator of Ojulari’s tenure at NNPCL.
Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues
