Of Corruption And Impunity By Kayode Robert Idowu

Conventional morality is absolute: a thief is a thief, and an outlaw to boot. There are very few mitigating circumstances to make a thief into a hero, as in the mould of British folklore legend, Robin Hood, who robbed the rich aggressively just to provide for the needy poor. If a thief is duly proven to be one, he justifiably becomes the butt of society’s rage and opprobrium. He stands condemned and consigned to the thresher of societal amorality.


But justice requires that a thief be sufficiently proven as one, to be rightly condemned and crucified – metaphorically, I mean. Short of discharging the burden of proof, condemning and crucifying a purported thief could be tantamount to the notorious witch-hunts of early Modern Europe when all it required to literally burn an adversary – even an innocent one – at the stakes was to publicly accuse him or her of sorcery, and in effect instigate mob hysteria and moral outrage in the public that would see such a one haplessly through to being frantically torched on erected stakes, with scant opportunity allowed for his being heard in self-defence.

Corruption is a reprehensible violation of societal moral ethic, and a particularly destructive cancer in the history of the Nigerian nationhood. But while we mustn’t countenance indulging this insidious violation, care must be taken as well not to idly savage reputations as would amount to modern-day witch-hunts in our quest for justice. Perhaps that is why the provisions of contemporary law presume innocence even for obvious rogues until they are proven guilty.

The issue of judges recently accused of corruption in the Nigerian judiciary seems to be rapidly unfolding as a mutual witch-hunt between the accused persons, on the one hand, and their accuser, the Muhammadu Buhari administration, on the other. The judges’ homes were raided some fortnight ago by operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS), who in the course of their action afforded the public a rare insight into veritable cash vaults that their Lordships’ homes had become. In carrying out their mission, the DSS operatives struck Gestapo-style in the dead of night, broke down walls and pulled doors off their hinges to execute search warrants that were to uncover mind-boggling cash piles in local and foreign currencies, among other things, before they hauled eight judges off into detention. Among those arrested were two Supreme Court justices. The security operatives were alleged to have also terrorized family members of the targeted judges.

There have been furious questions about the propriety of the procedure adopted by DSS operatives in executing their mission, especially in view of constitutional stipulation of separation of powers between the different arms of government and the dispensational context, namely a democracy. Let me be very clear here: I raise those questions strongly myself. Civil liberty is endangered when arms-wielding security agents invade homes of unarmed citizens in the dead of night and haul them into detention on mere suspicion that those citizens were involved in whatever crime. This is not a martial state. Whatever happened to statutory presumption of innocence until guilt is proven? Some have argued that a good number of citizens had been victims of lawless security culture, and judges who have corruption cases to answer should not be treated any different. But democratization of lawlessness does not make the lawless act lawful; neither does compounding impunity relieve the aberration against collective morality. Everyone as they say is equal before the law, not necessarily so before a travesty of the law.

Few persons would, however, dispute the urgent imperative of tackling the cancer of corruption in the Nigerian Judiciary. Citizens are largely agreed that there are corrupt judges in that hallowed institution, a reality that recommends drastic remedial intervention. And it seems fairly in agreement that the National Judicial Council (NJC), which is empowered by law to discipline erring judges, is notoriously lame in doing just that. Some persons would argue that the NJC’s feebleness is by intention, though it well seems a case of genuine inadequacy of the council’s enabling statutes. Whichever it is, public frustration with the NJC appears fairly widespread, and so, not a few cheered the desecration of the Judiciary by impudent security operatives when they raided the judges’ homes and herded them into detention.

Here, for me, is the catch: more than two weeks after, the factors involved in the crackdown against the accused judges seem rather hazy. There has been a good dose of recriminations between the Judiciary and the DSS ever since, but the accused judges have been proven neither guilty nor innocent. They were allowed back home on administrative bail many hours after their arrest, and they are yet to be arraigned for prosecution on clearly articulated charges. You would think the DSS already had its cases wrapped up for prosecution when it moved against the judges, only we now hear that investigations are still ongoing and specific charges yet being unraveled. So, on what ground was the crackdown?

But the indeterminacy of the matter has not constrained character arsonists, leading Justice officials of the Executive arm among them, from preemptive media trial of the judges and strident calls for their pre-trial sanction. The accused judges, for their part, have shaken off the time-honoured tradition of reticence and are bandying counter-accusations against the Executive, ranging from alleged persecution for duly considered verdicts that did not favour the government, to victimization for outright rebuff of brazen overtures to bribe their Lordships. They are invoking specific names, including that of Mr. President, and hinting at corroboration by named actors including the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN). See the mutual witch-hunt?  

My guess is that the government delays in dragging the accused judges before the law partly because the DSS took a blind leap with its bullish raid on the judges’ homes two weeks ago. I have been informed by senior lawyers, who should know, that the DSS is not a prosecuting agency like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), for instance. Many Nigerians have questioned whether the mandate of the DSS, as spelt out by its enabling law, includes waging civil anti-graft operations. I dare say it is worse that the Department undertook a solo crackdown against accused judges that it has no statutory powers to prosecute, yet it did not take enabled prosecuting agencies like the EFCC on board. Apparently, the government must now devise a peculiar arrangement outside the DSS to take the accused judges before the law. And that, obviously, requires some time.

Another factor is that the ground on which to push the judges’ prosecution seems effectively shifty, as the collectively indicted Judiciary is also the official adjudicator in the impending cases. There is the time-honoured sanctity of professional ethic of judicial practice, and I am not suggesting that the institution would throw such ethic overboard just because some of its own are in the dock. But where is the neutrality that should inform the dispassion of the arbiter?

That is the reason I consider it awkward that many of their Lordships who have been accused of corruption remain on the Bench, while their investigation and eventual prosecution pend and they are only out on administrative bail. Only last week, one of the judges presided over a number of suits and later stood down when the case involving former National Security Adviser (NSA) Sambo Dasuki, who is being prosecuted by the EFCC but is held in defiance of court orders by the DSS, came up for hearing. I just wonder: how does it feel for an accused person to stand before a judge who himself is an accused person only out on bail? Even if the NJC would not suspend them, against the run of advice by the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), personal honour and professional integrity demand that their Lordships step down from the Bench until the allegations against them are proven one way or the other.

‘The government delays in dragging the accused judges before the law partly because the DSS took a blind leap with its bullish raid on the judges’ homes two weeks ago.