Absurdity is not what we crave when we go to court or look at judges. But in Nigeria, it can be fun. Look at the evolving drama on how Governor Aliyu Wammako mounted the throne and how he has remained the kingpin of Sokoto State in the face of overwhelming illegality.

The first scene. A man belongs to a party, but PDP wheel horses call him, and say if he joins them they would flush out their craven nominee and drape him with the party ticket.

In his exuberance, he scurries to PDP secretariat, picks up a form, fills it, becomes a member. The party big wigs of PDP kick out Shagari, the authentic candidate, and make Wammako the winner. Absurd eh? He has no PDP party structure, no time to build and nurture one. He becomes popular overnight.

It turns out Wammako still belongs to another party. He is also the other party’s candidate.

Is that comedy? Hear this. He goes to the polls, wins as the candidate of PDP and becomes governor. When the matter appears in court, the absurdity is not ended. He is flushed out of power when he is attending an event of jollification outside his state. But that was a decoy. He goes to court to prove that he can contest as governor even though he starts as an illegal. He goes to the polls and wins. This same man who belongs to two parties and wins as a candidate of one.

Funny? Not enough. The matter goes to the Court of Appeal. But then, a new script is unearthed. Before the court of appeal gives judgment, the Chief Justice of the Federation asks the Court of Appeal President in a letter not to deliver judgment. The reason: it has been leaked. The petitions come from two lawyers, Alfred Agu and Mahmood Yahaya. Does the CJN investigate the matter deeply before his fingers itch to write a letter? No. A panel report says the verdict does not leak, and the CJN does not investigate the matter well. Two, what the CJN does is against the legal practice. It is not done to stop a judge on his way to delivering a judgment. The absurdity is not over, folks.

He takes the matter in the Supreme Court where he is lord of manor. The CJN is nervous. The media has shone light on this matter, and he is about to leave office. He is afraid of Salami. So he decides to “promote” him into irrelevance. Salami cries out that the man tries to stop him from delivering a verdict because he wants Wammako to remain in office. What is a CJN’s interest in whether a governor remains in power or not? Has Katsina-Alu read legal pundit John Rawl’s theory of the veil of ignorance? He needs to. It will illuminate matters of justice for him.

But the laughter is not coming to an end soon. The NBA sets up a committee to look at the matter, and it reports that Justice Salami is not in the wrong. But again the NJC sets up a committee among its members to investigate the matter. You wonder, who nominates the members of the NJC? Of course, it is Katsina-Alu, the Chief Justice of the Federation.

It is led by Justice Umaru Abdullahi. The report comes out and it says it is a fact-finding affair. Both Katsina-Alu and Salami are at each other’s throat, and the result says no one is at fault. But it agrees that the verdict does not leak. Is it not because of the leak that the CJN forestalls the verdict? So, how can he be innocent who stops a judgment on false premise? He commits two absurdities. He does not establish a substantial proof but he averts a judgment. Two, stopping the verdict is an aberration for an institution that lives on precedents. Maybe Katsina-Alu thinks himself a revolutionary, another absurd possibility. Revolutionaries act on matters of fundamental principles. Not the sort in which the CJN traffics. He is not even an avenging angel of technicality.

Obviously, someone must have erred. A reconciliation committee also issues a report that Salami did not commit anything wrong. Is that not a vicarious indictment of the man on top, that is, the CJN? From the facts on the table, it is not the fault of the accused but the accuser. It has turned out that the accuser is the one who should be accused. That is why I have asked here in this column two times: what manner of chief justice?

But the absurd drama is not over. After the Abdullahi panel, another scene. Enter the Ibrahim Auta panel. This is the latest absurdity. In this case, just as the CJN defied precedent and law by forestalling a verdict, the NJC has asked a junior judge to preside over the case of his seniors. Is this not funny? Is this not a way to make mincemeat of Auta, to make him a sort of judicial pariah? Is this not an act of desperation? Note that the NJC is CJN’s baby, and the man who presides over it in CJN’s absence is Justice Dahiru Musdapher, his heir apparent, the man who already testifies in favour of Katsina-Alu, another absurdity. I also wonder if they are setting up Auta for a fall!

Justices ought to understand that they are a crucial part of this democracy. They remind me of a book I read in my days at the University of Toronto in 1992. It is called Law’s Empire, by Ronald Dworkin, one of the greatest law scholars of the 20th century. The title fascinates me as much as the content. So I wonder whether some judges see the universe of our courts and law as their empires. So they are our emperors of law. What Dworkin meant by the title is that law is an empire which should be more powerful than the court, and no judge should profit from his own wrong. Hope our judges will not imitate the words of Balzac: “the more one judges, the less one loves.”

http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/columnist/monday/sam-omatseye/15078-katsina-alu-salami-and-the-njc.html

Sam Omatseye