This week I had planned to write on something else away from politics and our nation’s numerous problems. However, following the judgment of the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) upholding the election of President Bola Tinubu and the heated reactions it has generated, I am prompted to suspend my planned subject matter to focus on the judgment. I do not intend to offer any view as to whether the court’s decision is jurisprudentially sound or not. I do not have the professional competence to embark on such a usually chequered exercise. I will restrict myself to how public reaction to that judgment speaks to our existential dilemma as a people badly in need of moral redemption.
Many people are expressing outrage at what they perceive as an outright perversion of justice. While this perception may be very right, it throws up the question as to what people were really expecting – a judiciary that will be un-Nigerian within Nigeria? Our dear nation, her government and institutions have been notorious for corruption that is so deeply entrenched; so were people really expecting a sudden cosmic change that would transform the third arm of our government into something radically different from Nigeria itself?
In a video that trended shortly before the Justice Haruna Tsammani-led PEPC delivered its judgment, the erudite Catholic Bishop of Nsukka, Most Rev. Paulinus Onah, warned against what may be an unrealistic expectations. He reminded that the justices of the court were not imported from another planet but are full-blooded Nigerians not immune from the perennial pandemic of decay that has left our clime virtually with no values.
What the eminent professor of philosophical anthropology was trying to say resonates the point I have laboured to make in the 3-part piece that I ran in this column over the last three weeks where I tried to bring to the fore how all our institutions and of course all of us have become captives in a self-reinventing wheel of impunity and lack of accountability; a vicious circle that, if not remedied, will perpetually reproduce corruption, injustice, lawlessness, and underdevelopment. In the part two of that piece, I argued that all our institutions for censuring misconduct and remedying their impact have been rendered impotent by the pervading moral ferment. While I pointed out that the judiciary, as important as it is for rescuing this degeneration, has unfortunately not been left out in the general decay, however, I was careful to point out that we cannot understand the problem if we don’t look at the situation holistically. I wrote: “Unfortunately, not even the judiciary, which should be our last resort in the face of impunity is itself spared by that epidemic of impunity. That hallowed institution, which is the ultimate enforcer of our common norms and equality and before whom all of us should tremble irrespective of status, has become so much weakened, turned into an object of ridicule, and with the phrase ‘go to court’ recently becoming a popular way of expressing this ridicule.
“But then it’s important to observe that the sense in which the ridiculing phrase ‘go to court’ is now being invoked tends to trivialise our judicial quagmire by making it appear as though what we have on our hands is an isolated case of a band of APC politicians (now led by Tinubu) seizing power and emasculating the judiciary in order to have it dance to its tunes. No, the apparent redundancy of the courts (which we are now joking about) rather represents something bigger, more fundamental and historical; it’s a reflection (this time at the highest societal level) of our perennial culture of impunity; a thoroughly pervading culture which is both the cause and the product of the sad situation where the institutions that should censure misconducts have remained ridiculously impotent.
“The judiciary is not alone in this as the decay affects everywhere and everyone; from the government to the civil service, from the universities to the security agencies – all mechanisms for censuring misconduct have become next to redundant. Impunity now reigns. I have seen a police officer in Lagos tell a motorist who wouldn’t succumb to extortion to ‘go and tell the CP (commissioner of police) that I’m holding your vehicle.’ I have seen a lecturer who vowed never to teach a particular class that allegedly disrespected him (he was certainly taking the law into his hand) tell his would-be victims, the students, to ‘go and tell the VC’. It’s not unlikely that ‘go and tell the director’, ‘go and report to the perm sec,’ ‘go and tell the commissioner’ and similar impunity-laden phrases would be common invocations in the civil service circles. My purpose for elaborating all this is to illuminate the full societal depth of the institutional and moral decay from which the now popular catchphrase ‘go to court’ drew its life.
“In other words, ‘go to court is another way of saying ‘I will do this or that and nothing will happen.’ It is another manner of telling a motorist not willing to part with his 100 naira note ‘I will detain your vehicle, go and report to the commissioner of police.’ And it is another way of telling a student ‘I will no longer teach you because you disrespected me, go and report to the Vice Chancellor.’ Thus ‘go to court’ emerges as an omnibus idea embodying the various shades and moments of our endless acts of lawlessness. It expresses that one big mess of impunity wherein we all – from the man in Aso Rock to the least personnel in the public service – are both victims and culprits.”
I have gone this length to reproduce these statements in order to underscore the fact that the problem with our judiciary is not isolated but systemic and historical. No one approaches any institution in search of remedy in Nigeria with real confidence about getting justice, especially when you are up against a more powerful foe. Should we talk about the Nigeria Police which no one trusts anymore? Or should we talk about the Public Complaints Commission (PCC), our national ombudsman? A professional colleague years ago told me how she had brought a complaint at a state office of the Commission only for the usual “Nigerian factor” to frustrate it. Based on that despairing experience, she has adjudged the body incapable of doing justice to any complaint brought before it. Those in the civil service, the security agencies, higher institutions of learning and other arms of the nation’s bureaucracy will testify that your chances of obtaining justice upon laying any complaint is inversely proportional to the position and power of the foe you are up against.
Thus, those who may have expected a different outcome from the PEPC last Wednesday will have to look at the full picture so as to properly situate their expectation. It was an expectation founded absolutely on nothing. When citizens of advanced democracies have such expectation, it is usually founded on shared norms, historical precedent and collective memory. On the contrary, our expectation has been anchored largely on wishful thinking and sometimes on faith in the supernatural. For example, I have in the past few days read social media comments like “what God cannot do does not exist,” “nothing is impossible for God,” “God will see us through” etc. – all these regarding what the Supreme Court may decide when the petitioners appeal the PEPC judgment.
Attitude like this reveals our true innermost thoughts, our near absolute distrust of our institutions such that we can rightly be said to live on HOPE and not EXPECTATION. Needless to say, the decision of the Justice Tsammani-led court, however flawed it may have been, represents who we really are. Make no mistake about that, any decision to the contrary would have been unexpected and would have surprised many, including those now expressing outrage at the judgment. Our people actually know that the level of moral and professional rectitude we are expecting from our courts does not represent what our society can offer. This is our existential irony.
So, the judgment is a mirror through which we can view our naked self as a people, a mirror replication of our soul and body in their perfect natural state, undisguised and unembellished. It is a faultless mirror image of our dysfunctional system. But naturally, we would not love this image nor like to stare at it because it is unpalatable. People are usually pleased looking at their mirror or photo image when their natural self has been disguised and embellished with makeups, flashy wears and ornaments. The increasing acceptability of software tools like Photoshop and Snapchat underlines this psycho-social inclination of humans.
But then I am strongly convinced that our people were not really expecting so much from the judiciary regarding the 2023 presidential election. We were merely living on false hopes akin to the optimism a student may have of having a good grade when they knew quite well they have not answered their exam questions well enough to pass. Naturally, no human person likes nursing unpleasant thoughts, hence we usually choose optimism over pessimism, hope over despair. Psychology calls this defence mechanism, and it is important for our sanity and motivation.
Again, the sarcastic phrase “go to court” which we popularized after the election is evident of this absence of any real expectation. Another one is “All eyes on the judiciary” – a phrase that may appear quite innocent, but indeed is clearly symptomatic of the systemic distrust of that hallowed institution. In climes where the judiciary still retains its honour, such chorusing would have sounded patently discordant, indeed would have been taken as an unnecessary affront and blackmail of the third arm of government, a desecration of the temple of justice, and contempt of court. Our laws recognise as contempt of court any conduct, in speech or in deed, that brings the court to disrepute, but, as seen over the years, the judiciary has become so stripped of reputation that any accusation of contempt in this sense becomes untenable.
Where then do we go from here? My suggestion is that we muster the courage to behold our mirror image as displayed to us by the PEPC judgment of last week. It may be unpalatable, but we must stare at it intently in order to better appreciate who we are and what is that that we lack and require to make us better. Living in false hopes is not an option at all. Therefore, I present the same solution as I have always done; let institutional reforms be the number one agenda in our engagement of our leaders during and after elections. Tinubu and whoever that presents himself to become the president in future should be asked to tell us what they intend to do to strengthen the judiciary and rule of law. This is pivotal to our ability to finally take one step forward to end once and for all our perennial stagnancy. Strengthening the judiciary will not only enhance electoral transparency, but will as well strengthen democracy and good governance.
Let the discussion and debate focus primarily on governance as against the fruit of governance – being that once we get governance right the fruit naturally follows. The last election remains a reference point where as usual little was said about institutions and governance both on the part of the candidates and the electorate who were supposed to engage them. It was all about fuel subsidy, monetary reforms, job creation, infrastructure development, food security etc. Little or no attention seemed to have been paid to the fact that realisation of all these objectives would depend on existence of strong and efficient institutions.
Prof. Kingsley Muoghalu made this point succinctly when, in a television interview before the election, he observed that the candidates all had good plans in their manifestoes but had failed to address the question of state institutions through which these plans would be realised. He observed that the Nigerian state is quite weak, hence anyone hoping to deploy the apparatuses of the state to achieve development must first think of how to strengthen the state.
Unfortunately voices like this were drowned in the mass hysteria of false hopes that was dominant in the buildup to the election. But whether we like it or not, we must heed this counsel, otherwise our unpalatable mirror image will continue to force itself onto our face, and we can only shy away from staring at it but cannot erase it.
Henry Chigozie Duru, PhD, teaches journalism and mass communication at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.
