Editorial Judiciary in the Dock

There is no doubting the interlocking facts that a virile democracy gives birth to a vibrant judiciary, which in turn would strive to be independent enough to sanitize and sustain that democratic atmosphere in which it has its being and existence.

​The judiciary prides itself, and rightly too, as the last hope of the common man, the bastion of an oppressed people seeking the alluring aroma of justice in a society fraught with constitutional breaches and moral in-exactitudes.  This is the textbook relevance of the judiciary in the affairs of civilized man.

​In Nigeria today, a majority of the people would easily agree that justice is a cash-and-carry affair; that the Poor can hardly get favourable judgment because the Rich infiltrate into the administration of justice.  The judiciary has been accused of not exerting its independence and of not being able to break away from the apron string of the executive arm of government.  And by so deficient, it has mortgaged its very soul and relevance to the whims and caprices of a morally deficient executive arm.

​Recently, in our democratic politics, some analysts have had cause to question the appropriateness of some judicial pronouncements and decisions, which were glaringly at variance with the upright ethics of the legal profession.  Those in support of the actions of the judiciary have risen in defence to aver that the law is an ass; that judicial pronouncements and decisions are influenced by other extraneous factors other than the right/wrong divide.

​While all these could be true, we, however, urge the judiciary to lift itself above board and be dispassionate in its pronouncements.  What is fundamentally wrong is wrong, legal gymnastics not withstanding.  Some have argued that because the judiciary has no instrument of force to coerce the executive arm of government to accept and implement its decisions that is why it often does not want to give judgments that go contrary to the wishes of the executive arm.

​Even at that, there is nowhere in the world where the judiciary has a standing army in its control to enforce its pronouncements.  It should avail itself of the enduring and more potent moral authority by making definitive pronouncements against attempts by government to employ unconstitutional and immoral methods to implement its unpopular wishes.

TheNavigator