Tag: Justice Onnoghen

THE federal government continues to give the impression that the four months delay in forwarding the name of Justice Walter Onnoghen to the Senate for confirmation as the next chief justice is a reflection of its thoroughness and assiduousness. But there was nothing in the presidency’s method last week to indicate its actions were motivated by care or by duty. A month before the former chief justice, Mahmud Mohammed, vacated office, the relevant statutory bodies involved in recommending the next chief justice, to wit, the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) and the National Judicial Council (NJC), had carried out their constitutional responsibilities by forwarding Justice Onnoghen’s name to the president. It was not until a day or two before the former chief justice was to vacate office that a face-saving measure was suggested to the presidency. Despite precedence — and the devil is in the detail — a chief justice in acting capacity came unexpectedly to the fore.

Carefulness and thoroughness? If those were the concerns of the presidency, surely one month was more than enough to do an internal vetting of Justice Onnoghen. It was clear, whether the presidency liked it or not, that other matters preoccupied the minds of those who had the responsibility of taking a decision on who the next chief justice should be. That initial one-month delay in forwarding Justice Onnoghen’s name, not to talk of the subsequent three-month hiatus, enabled speculators and other amateur mind readers to indulge themselves to the fullest. First, the Department of State Service (DSS) had to battle to dispel the furious speculation that it raided the residence of Justice Onnoghen as part of a wider conspiracy to tar the judge with misdeeds and deny a southerner that exalted juridic office. The jurist’s house was not raided nor was he under probe of any kind, the DSS struggled to assert, mindful of the flanking battle it was also waging against the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

But contrary to the presidency’s self-serving reading of its own body language, other speculators and rumourmongers believed that the presidency was actually concerned about the rumoured allegations of misdeeds against Justice Onnoghen, especially the fact that his name allegedly featured in the 1994 Justice Kayode Esho panel report that probed judicial malfeasances. This newspaper, in its February 6 edition, put it succinctly, quoting reliable government sources. It reported that that the presidency ordered the following investigations to be done on Justice Onnoghen: Justice Onnoghen’s antecedent as a lawyer; What the 1994 Justice Kayode Eso (JSC) panel said on Onnoghen; How NJC Review Committee of 1999 on the Eso Panel’s report, headed by Justice Bola Babalakin (JSC), addressed issues concerning Justice Onnoghen; Outcome of recent investigation of bribery allegations against some Supreme Court Justices by the DSS; Recommendations of the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC) and the National Judicial Council (NJC) on Onnoghen.

To round up the report explaining why Justice Onnoghen’s nomination was delayed, The Nation quoted government sources as saying, “As a matter of fact, the nomination was delayed as a result of the need to address these allegations. Now, Justice Onnoghen has been given a clean bill of health…Every allegation was investigated and proofs indicate that Onnoghen has no case to answer. The government went to this extent to ensure that the holder of the office of CJN is above board.” Perhaps the delay in the presidency making up its mind was also due to the fact that it took many discomfiting years since 1994 before the Olusegun Obasanjo presidency in 2002 (some say 1999), mandated a review of the Justice Esho Panel report. By that time, said some sources, none of the 100 copies of the report was found, and Justice Esho’s personal copy, which the review panel relied on for its work, did not have the appendix that contained details of the allegations against the accused judges.

It is pointless opening up old wounds, whether the conclusions released to the public represent the true feelings of the government or not, or whether in forwarding Justice Onnoghen’s name the presidency was not simply deciding to cut what was becoming increasingly a Gordian knot. What is important is that it took all of four months for the Buhari presidency to convince itself to forward the justice’s name to the Senate. This slow method of governance is of course not uncharacteristic of this presidency. It took the same government about six months to emplace a cabinet on the excuse that a cabinet was after all excess to requirement. Indeed, it had to take the NJC needlessly pushing the constitution to its limit to again recommend Justice Onnoghen as the chief justice in acting capacity to avert another constitutional embarrassment. There is no doubt that the government could have handled the matter much better and differently.

It is, however, impossible for the Buhari presidency to convince the public that the delay was both necessary and cautionary. Or that, eventually, Justice Onnoghen was their happy choice. Had the Supreme Court been composed in such a way that would not open the government to allegations of ethnic bias, it is not certain that Justice Onnoghen’s nomination, which put the presidency at sixes and sevens, would not have been discarded. Or failing that favourable Supreme Court composition, had the presidency not made many skewed federal appointments that elicited a terrible public outcry, it would probably have nominated someone else as chief justice. In a way, unable to get the leeway it wants, the government seems to have been hoisted with its own petard. And in order to continue to make its underperforming administration a little tolerable to an angry and frustrated public, the Buhari administration will for some time to come compel itself to make more galling concessions than its customary rigidity would normally allow.

Whatever arguments the government has offered to expiate the untidy manner it nominated Justice Onnoghen do not atone for the administrative disaster that was evident right from the beginning of the affair to the very inelegant and hurried end. But at least an end, no matter how badly midwifed it was, has finally come. Whether they can now put the matter behind them and henceforth operate more thoughtfully and circumspectly remains to be seen. The Buhari presidency does not yet run like the head of an executive arm presiding over a federal system of government, nor as one imbued with the patriotic and nationalistic instinct and gumption that conduce to a secular and multiethnic society. And its security organisations, including the heavily underfunded police, have often acted with the passion and culture of a dictatorship eternally at war with its own citizens. The Buhari presidency is the most recognisable public face of the ruling All Progressives Congress. At its current dismal steam and amperage, and at its present unthinking worst, it is inconceivable that anyone will give it any electoral hearing in a little over two years to come.

But two years is a long time in politics. Fortunately for the Buhari presidency, it has no ideological conviction to recant, no lofty administrative height to fall from, and no philosophical principles and great public precepts whose disavowal would make it fear self-immolation. It can, therefore, on paper, still change, since there are no complications to deter or fluster it. But that is if it does not keep up the adamantine delusion that change begins with others.