- By Ben Ijeoma Adigwe
The recent public confrontation involving the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and a young Naval officer, Lieutenant A. M. Yerima, has stirred more than momentary outrage or partisan debate. Beneath the headlines lies a deeper, older, and far more troubling question, one that has haunted military institutions, police force, and public service across generations and jurisdictions: what is the fate of an officer who obeys an order that may be unlawful?
This is not a theoretical puzzle debated only in law classrooms or ethics seminars. It is a live dilemma, often unfolding in real time, under pressure, fear, and hierarchy. For officers like Yerima, the stakes are immediate and personal. Disobey a superior, and you risk court-martial, dismissal, career ruin, or worse. Obey, and you may find yourself standing alone before the law, stripped of institutional protection, asked to answer for actions you did not initiate.
Lieutenant Yerima’s position, by his own account, was simple and terrifying in equal measure: he was instructed by his superiors to stand his ground. The instruction allegedly placed him in direct confrontation with a serving minister of the Federal Republic.
In ordinary circumstances, such conduct would raise serious legal and constitutional questions. Ministers are not merely individuals; they are embodiments of executive authority. To resist or obstruct them is not something a junior officer does lightly, nor without consequence.
Yet refusal, in a rigidly hierarchical military structure, carries its own severe penalties. This is the crucible in which the doctrine of “superior orders” is forged, a doctrine born not of moral comfort, but of institutional necessity.
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Security personnel and public officers often operate in environments where clarity is a luxury. Orders come quickly, contexts are incomplete, and dissent is rarely welcomed. The culture of obedience is not accidental; it is drilled, reinforced, and rewarded. Militaries do not function on debate. They function on command like the Centurion of Capernaum.
But the law does not entirely share this logic. While institutions demand obedience, the legal system insists on individual responsibility. This is where the fault line lies. When an officer is ordered to act, the law asks a brutal question: Did you know, or should you have known, that the order was unlawful? If the answer is yes, obedience may become complicity.
For officers like Yerima, this question is not asked in the calm safety of hindsight. It is faced in the heat of the moment, often without legal counsel, and under the watchful eye of superiors whose power over one’s career is absolute. The law, unfortunately, offers no easy refuge.
The defence of superior orders, sometimes referred to as the “Nuremberg defence”, has always been treated with caution, even suspicion. At its core, the argument is intuitive: how can a subordinate be blamed for carrying out instructions from those legally empowered to command him?
Yet history has taught the world the danger of accepting this logic too generously. If obedience alone were enough to excuse wrongdoing, atrocities would always find shelter behind hierarchy. The law, therefore, has drawn a hard line: obedience may explain conduct, but it does not automatically justify it.
The defining moment came after World War II. At the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi officials and military officers repeatedly argued that they were merely following orders. The international tribunal rejected this defence in emphatic terms. It held that individuals remain morally and legally accountable for their actions, even within a chain of command. Obedience could not erase the reality of choice.
This principle was reaffirmed two decades later in the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel. Eichmann claimed he was a bureaucrat, a cog in a vast machine, carrying out policies designed by others. The Israeli Supreme Court dismantled this argument. It ruled that even within oppressive systems, individuals retain agency. The fact that disobedience is costly does not mean choice is absent.
From these trials emerged a global consensus: superior orders do not provide a blanket defence. At most, they may mitigate punishment. They do not absolve guilt.
Nigeria’s legal system aligns with this international outlook, though it expresses it in its own statutory language. The Criminal Code does not expressly label “superior orders” as a defence, but it gestures in that direction with strict limitations.
Section 32(2) of the Criminal Code recognizes that an act done in obedience to the order of a competent authority may be justified, but only if the order is not manifestly unlawful. That single phrase does enormous legal work. It shifts the inquiry from mere obedience to the nature of the order itself.
What is “manifestly unlawful”? In simple terms, it refers to an order whose illegality is obvious on its face. An instruction to torture a suspect, to shoot an unarmed civilian, or to assault a person without lawful cause would fall squarely within this category. No amount of hierarchy can sanitize such commands.
Nigerian courts have repeatedly reinforced this principle. Judges have been clear: public office is not a cloak for illegality. The badge, the uniform, or the letter of appointment does not suspend the rule of law. Where an order crosses into clear illegality, obedience becomes no defence.
At best, compliance with superior orders may be considered during sentencing. It may explain how an officer found himself in that position. It may soften the punishment. But it does not erase responsibility.
Over the years, Nigerian courts have encountered numerous cases where public officers attempted to shield themselves behind directives from above. Police officers have cited instructions from commissioners. Civil servants have pointed to ministerial approvals. Military personnel have invoked command structures.
The judicial response has been remarkably consistent. Courts have insisted that loyalty to the law must trump loyalty to individuals. Public service, the judiciary reminds us, is not blind service. It is a service bound by legality.
This stance, while principled, places officers in a precarious position. The law demands courage, the courage to refuse unlawful orders.
Yet institutions often punish such courage swiftly and quietly. Whistleblowers are isolated. Dissenters are labeled insubordinate. Careers stall or end.
This gap between legal expectation and institutional reality is where injustice thrives.
It is easy, from a distance, to pronounce moral judgments. It is harder to appreciate the lived fear of a junior officer standing before a superior. The power imbalance is real. Orders are not mere suggestions. They come with the weight of discipline, hierarchy, and tradition.
Lieutenant Yerima is not a policymaker. He does not design the architecture of power. He operates within it. If he disobeyed, the consequences would have been immediate and personal. If he obeyed, the consequences may now be legal and public.
This is why cases like his evoke sympathy beyond legal technicalities. They expose the vulnerability of those at the bottom of command structures. They reveal how easily power can insulate itself while responsibility trickles downward.
There is a familiar pattern in public scandals involving authority. When conflict erupts, accountability often stops at the lowest visible rung. The junior officer becomes the face of an institutional failure. Superiors retreat into silence. Political actors issue statements. Investigations begin and end quietly.
The danger here is that Yerima may become precisely that: a convenient villain in a story whose true drivers sit far above his rank. If that happens, the law will not merely punish an individual; it will reward the very abuse of hierarchy it claims to resist.
African wisdom captures this injustice perfectly: when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. Yerima risks becoming that grass, trampled not because he wielded power, but because he stood in its path.
This moment demands more than outrage or scapegoating. It calls for institutional honesty. If superiors issued the instructions Yerima claims, they must be scrutinized. Responsibility should move upward, not stop conveniently at the lowest officer in view.
It also demands clearer protocols. Officers should not be left to guess the legality of politically sensitive orders in moments of tension. Training, legal support, and internal safeguards must be strengthened so that obedience does not become a trap.
Most importantly, it demands courage from institutions, not just individuals. The law already requires officers to refuse manifestly unlawful orders. Institutions must match that expectation by protecting those who do so.
Lieutenant A. M. Yerima’s case is not just about one officer and one incident. It is a mirror held up to the uneasy relationship between power and accountability in Nigeria. It asks whether the law will continue to punish the visible while shielding the powerful.
Superior orders have never been a comfortable defence. History, international law, and Nigerian jurisprudence all agree on that. But neither should obedience become a weapon used by power to sacrifice its own.
As this matter unfolds, one hopes that justice will look beyond rank and uniform. That it will ask hard questions of those who give orders, not only those who carry them out. And that Lieutenant Yerima will not be crushed under the weight of a system that demands obedience but disowns responsibility.
This is so because when authority commands unlawfully, and the law punishes only the obedient, the rule of law itself stands on shaky ground.
• Adigwe is the Director, Department of Law Research, Review, Reporting and Publication, Ministry of Justice, Asaba. Read more about him at benadigwe.com
