Chief Justice Walter Samuel Onnoghen is faced with grievous charges of gross turpitude; and the reflex action of senior lawyers — at least the most vocal among them — is to flex legalistic muscles!
Do they hope that infantile bluff would make the stain and the shame go away — and help the beleaguered CJN in any way?
Ahead of the CJN’s arraignment before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) yesterday, the lawyers, bristling with thunder, bluster and fury, made it known that 30 SANs would “storm” the tribunal to defend the CJN.
Later, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), the lawyers’ conclave, virtually decreed every lawyer (perhaps living or dead!) should press themselves into service. The CJN must be defended. The judiciary must be saved!
But saved from what or who? Indeed, patriotism is the last bastion of the scoundrel!
Yet, look at the lawyers’ technicality way. The law, they swoon in legalistic triumph, says you couldn’t drag the CJN, or any judge for that matter, to any court, without the National Judicial Council (NJC) first sanctioning them. True.
To support their case, they whip up a Court of Appeal decision (awaiting endorsement or rejection, on appeal to the Supreme Court) on an earlier case, of senior judges accused of sleaze but saved by technicality — not because they were innocent or guilty — to buttress their case. All well and good.
But isn’t there something, more fundamental values, on which even the law is founded? In real life speak, what makes everyone defer to the CJN, or any other judge for that matter, when a matter is before him?
Surely it can’t be his forensic brilliance alone, even if that is also a key criterion? No. It is the presumption that the CJN is not only sound in learning and sound of mind, but also that he is the very palladium of integrity. Not only is he stainless, he is perceived un-stainable.
But here we are: that perceived very palladium is accused of a dire stain, that could send the whole of the judicial infrastructure crashing down!
How? He is chair of the NJC — the NJC stipulated by law to discipline judges. Even if he could recuse himself, can the NJC, going through such integrity strain, be the same in the eye of the right-thinking public?
From formal to the informal: the CJN’s influence, in a rather close judiciary that some times looks like a closed cult, is all-pervading. If the CJN is above board (as he is perceived to be), that may not be a disadvantage. But if he faces a grievous accusation, as he does now, then the whole infrastructure of justice is endangered.
In this tragic case, the hunter just turned the hunted. That is precisely because though Nigeria’s No. 1 judicial officer’s scholarship is undiminished, and his brilliance undimmed, this scandal would appear to put a big question mark on his integrity; without which the majesty of that office is rubbished.
That is where the SANs waffle in scholastic hubris, flexing the technicalities of the law of which they are masters. But what right-thinking people of conscience see is a pitiable rally at turning shame to fame. That collectively diminishes the rest of us.
The Nigerian judiciary, with this mess, is in the most rotten scandal in its history. Rather than this emotive “we must save the judiciary” claptrap, these senior lawyers would serve themselves and the society better by embracing sobriety; and plot how the judiciary can, at least, work hard to regain its prestige, respect and glory.
That is the solemn and narrow way that leads to redemption. The present path, on which they now groggily barge, leads nowhere but perdition.
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