Nigeria has never been ruled by a true believer in the democratic credo. It is a lineage of despotism that stretches back to independence and to the colonial foundation of Nigeria. Goodluck Jonathan is the latest in a long line of Viziers selected to superintend the Nigerian post-colonial collage. No matter the garb our viceroys wear or the creed they profess, the result has always been the same: a deepening of the crisis of the state and the further emasculation of democratic norms.
Unluckily for Goodluck, this situation cannot subsist for much longer. All evidence and statistics point to the fact that the beast of burden has been straining its leash for quite some time under the torture of its crushing baggage. No one is sure of which straw will break the proverbial camel’s back. But given Jonathan’s relative inexperience and the lackadaisical flippancy with which he appears to be sleepwalking his way from one avoidable crisis to the other, we may be set for a major rumble in the jungle.
The way and manner Jonathan has endorsed Justice Issa Ayo Salami’s suspension from office, despite the crass illegality and judicial absurdity, leave much to be desired. It does not portray a president interested in deepening democratic norms or expanding the frontiers of the rule of law. Jonathan seems to have acted with the cynical calculations of a political survivalist rather than the ennobling discretion of a statesman interested in civilized procedures and the progress of his nation. Surely, this cannot be part of the transformative leadership Jonathan has promised Nigerians.
Enemies of Nigeria pretending to be friends of Jonathan seem to have persuaded him that he should do all that is in his power to avoid Justice Salami at the Appeal Court no matter the damage to the system. The prospects of the fiery, no-nonsense judge tearing into his case with his customary severe frown are enough to put the fear of the lord into any president’s heart, particularly one that seems to enjoy the perquisites of office more than its prerogatives.
Having demonized the poor Justice out of all proportions, the PDP power-mongers are mortally afraid of the monster they have created. But even monsters are entitled to reliefs. For Jonathan to have relied on the report of an improperly constituted Kangaroo panel, a panel that willfully and criminally avoided lawful writs and sat without a quorum just to arrive at preordained punishment, is a sure invitation to political anarchy. The Nigerian judiciary has had its moments of low self-esteem, but this is the lowest depths of abject self-abasement it has sunk in its history.
As usual, the grand irony that may escape all the major actors in this deplorable drama is that in its resort to self-help, and in its attempt to shore up the fortunes of the state, the judiciary might have created a major crisis for the state. The subsisting crisis of the Nigerian post-colonial state inheres in the fact that despite the veneer and cosmetics of modernity, it is essentially an authoritarian feudal state which treats its citizens as subjects and one in which a feudalized selectorate replaces the electorate as a succession of strongmen rule and rape the roost.
Ordinarily, there ought to be a major contradiction, indeed a violent anomaly, between judicial feudalism and a modern state. The very notion of judicial feudalism is a stark oxymoron, because the modern judiciary is not an ideological apparatus of the old feudal state. But in all its modern and ancient history the Nigerian judiciary has always acted as a loyal and dependable ally of the feudal state in its struggle and war against its own captive citizens. Rather than helping to deepen democracy and facilitate the rights of humanity in a modern society, the judiciary has proved a willing tool in deepening despotism and strengthening the hands of tyrants. Such is the anomaly and fundamental absurdity of nationhood in contemporary Nigeria.
If anybody believes that this is a mere hysterical assertion, the concrete facts are sobering enough. In its colonial incarnation, the judiciary was a willing tool in the hands of imperialist interlocutors dishing out improbable punishments to Nigerian freedom fighters while helping to turn the prison yard into the default abode of Nigerian patriots bent on seeing the end of colonial subjugation. The likes of Herbert Macaulay, Mokuwgo Okoye, Raji Abdallah, Bello Ijumu and Anthony Enahoro paid a stiff price for their nationalist recalcitrance.
After independence, the judiciary famously and willingly tied its hand behind its back in order to perpetuate a feudal and tyrannical status quo. There was the infamous Treasonable Felony trial, the tacit endorsement of ouster clauses by the military which put the judicial nose out of joint, the 12 2/3 chicanery and judgments that cannot be quoted as a legal precedent, the annulment of a presidential election and the murder of its putative winner with the connivance of the bench, the judicially sanctioned state-execution of Kenule Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni nine, the politically motivated endorsement of the fraudulent presidential elections of 2003 and 2007, the arrest of a pending judgment because the interest of a feudal fiefdom may be jeopardized, and now the criminally motivated ouster of a sitting president of the Appeal Court by elements within the judiciary.
Yet, this is not to say that the Nigerian judiciary does not parade its glorious avatars and immortal icons; men and women of intellectual caliber and moral timber: the CID Taylors, the Agudas, the Oputas, the Aniagolus, the Eshos, the Akanbis and a host of others. For example, it was a female judge, Dolapo Akinsanya, who sacked the Shonekan interim nonsense on the grounds that it had no basis or foundation in the grundnorm. The clearest indication that the Nigerian state does not derive its strength or authority from the rational branch of the judiciary was Shonekan’s warning from Port Harcourt that the judiciary should steer clear of matters above and beyond it. If the political apprentice from UAC was looking over to Abacha for support, the goggled one was already rehearsing his take-over speech.
The point to be made is that every class consists of its dominant faction and dominated fraction. The judiciary is no exception. The dominant faction of the judiciary has been in bed with the dominant state and social order from the amalgamation, thwarting the legitimate aspirations of the Nigerian people in the process and destroying the career of progressive and forward-looking judges within its own profession. As a result of growing disenchantment, significant sections of the Nigerian populace often resort to self-help after they have been victims of electoral robbery.
As it is today, the Nigerian state is neither a modern or modernizing state, nor the nation it forcibly superintends a modern nation or a genuine federation. For the past twenty years, the Nigerian multitude has fought a desperate battle to revalidate their citizenship and to reclaim the stolen sovereignty of the Nigerian electorate. This is where the real war for the transformation of Nigeria is fought and anybody with any genuine transformative agenda for Nigeria ought to know where to pitch their tent. By underwriting the dubious claims of judicial despots, Jonathan has failed the elementary test of any political transformation.
The tragic consequences of this failure will outweigh any immediate political relief accruing from the ouster of Justice Salami. Whatever they claim to be his failings and mortal sins, Salami’s enemies have helped to invest him with the halo of judicial martyrdom by the shabby manner of his dismissal. Whether he goes under or is dramatically rescued, Salami has already joined the judicial Hall of Fame and for a long time to come his implacable gaze of sublime contempt will haunt the gallery of electoral miscreants in this land.
As for Goodluck Jonathan, the honeymoon is all but over. The gale of protests that has greeted his political deviancy may or may not crystallize into a critical mass of national tempest this time around, but it is just a question of time. An idea seems to be taking firm roots among the educated classes of this country that things cannot continue like this. It is either Nigeria transforms voluntarily or it faces an involuntary resolution of its crippling contradictions.
If Jonathan cares to take a closer look at the crowd of protesters this past week, he would have discovered the same forces that had supported his ascendancy against a feudal cabal bent on subverting constitutional rule in the country now inveighing against his own capitulation to judicial feudalism. A presidency which began on a groundswell of national affection and fondness may yet end up in bitterness and bile.