That Senator Adamu Bulkachuwa’s confession of June 10, 2023, should ordinarily cause collective bawling in several quarters of our country. It was about the worst form of the mud that our national life has been dragged through, but we tend to be shameless when we should hide our faces. We are not even alarmed!
Handsome Senator Bulkachuwa represented Bauchi North District of Bauchi State in the 9th Nigerian Senate. At the valedictory sitting of that 9th Senate, Senator Bulkachuwa told the world how he got favours from his wife, Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa, who was the President of the Court of Appeal, for his colleagues in the Senate. He was gleefully telling tales of how his colleagues got sexually transmitted judicial favours.
However, he was tactfully told to shut up by the President of the 9th Senate, Senator Ahmed Lawan, before he could spill more damaging content. It was a troubling few minutes for Lawan and some of his aghast colleagues.
However, it is even more troubling that relevant security agencies, as usual, have turned their ailing ear to such demeaning utterances. It came from sacred quarters. And because it came from the untouchables, the agencies that should take action have heard for the sake of hearing only. They have turned a blind eye to the scandal because of the category of people involved. If it was some other kind of person, they are sure to have bared their fangs or swooped with utmost ferocity like a hungry kite does for a chick. So far, those who should cringe and squirm are currently frozen like Fela’s Zombie and would not laugh unless you tell them to.
When a man is without shame, he brings that which he has not got upon his kinsmen. My grandmother had a special way of driving home this saying whenever we were unwholesome in action. She would say ifere e meghi onye oria na-eme umu nna ya − that shame which the infirm lacks is replete among his kinsmen. We understood what my old woman was telling us back then: It is the kinsmen of the ailing man that bears the shame which has been wiped off his persona by his infirmity. This imagery is somewhat different from Yoruba’s aphorism of a man with a gigantic sex organ. The Yoruba would taunt such endowed men by saying that they recognise neither the looks nor the body language. However, the meanings of these descriptions have a convergence… a kind of affinity. The man endowed with a large sex organ lacks shame – just like the man that is not healthy. Shameless people bring shame upon their own. They attract reproach and, in some cases, opprobrium.
That is why many people have been wondering how the retired President of the Court of Appeal, Mrs Zainab Bulkachuwa, would be feeling right now. Is she embarrassed? Is she ashamed? Does she feel scandalised? As a wife, mother, colleague, boss, friend, lawyer, opinion moulder, and woman of substance, how would she be feeling about what her husband has done? Perhaps, more importantly, how would she react as a concerned professional? Is she even concerned? What would be running through her mind as she sees the reactions? Does she care? Her husband brought about these thoughts. Was that a senator’s slip or was it the gods in action?
Legend has it that in Igboland, when a man desecrates the land in secret, the gods would make him confess openly in some mysterious or even hilarious ways. The distinguished Senator Bulkachuwa really distinguished himself with that speech. And it is also apposite to argue that following that sitting if Lawan’s Senate had anything that resembled integrity, it was completely obliterated that day.
Interestingly, Mr Rochas Okorocha and Mr Orji Uzor Kalu − both former governors − spoke at the same event.
Senator Okorocha expressed shock that their Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, was running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. He said while they were fighting like palace eunuchs for Lawan to get APC’s ticket to become Nigeria’s president after Buhari, they did not know that the same Lawan was on another front weaving his plot to return to the Senate. He asked for tutorials.
Senator Kalu also spoke at that valedictory meltdown. He however could not rein in his emotional feeling of betrayal. He was either obviously more hurt or less manly than Okorocha because he wept bitterly through his speech. It seemed he just suddenly realised that Nigeria is not fair to some people − and surprisingly, he was one of those with the short end of the stick. He wept!
Both Okorocha and Kalu have learnt the hard way the kind of lessons that are taught to boys’ quarters’ men who think they belong in the main building. They either failed to remember who the “dot in a circle” submission was meant for or they thought they were outside of that circle.
It must be noted that the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has spoken up on the unforced scandalous confession of Senator Bulkachuwa. The NBA has called for a probe. President of the Nigerian Bar, Yakubu Maikyau, said he saw Senator Bulkachuwa’s confession with “utter shock and disgust.” He called for a probe of Senator Bulkachuwa and assured that “the NBA will at all times rise to the defence of the honour, integrity and independence of the judiciary.” Maikyau said something reassuring: That the National Judicial Council (NJC), at its meeting, also condemned Senator Bulkachuwa’s action.
On individual levels, Dr Monday Onyekachi Ubani of the NBA-SPIDEL was one of the first lawyers in the country to cry out against Bulkachuwa’s statement. He knows the amount of negative impact it has on the Nigerian judiciary as an institution.
But going by another lawyer, Chidi Odinkalu’s contention, the NJC which condemned Mr Bulkachuwa does not have the moral grounds to do so. At best, Odinkalu does not trust the sincerity of the NJC, going by what he said he knew about the body’s composition. He claims that in Nigeria, “judicial appointments have been totally captured.” He said he wrote a letter to former President Buhari when it became such a shameful loading of the NJC with members who were children, concubines and mistresses of particular individuals. “So, judicial appointments have been totally captured. Politicians and judges make up and take up the appointments.”
Odinkalu did not mention names, but he has said enough on the Nigerian judiciary. Even if he has nothing to hold against the third estate of the realm, Senator Bulkachuwa has given him bullets. Or, should we just take his excuse that Senator Lawan did not allow him to finish his thoughts and assume he was not going to spill more? If he had no shame, Lawan saw the need for restraint to curb further damage. But, how would Honourable Justice Bulkachuwa be feeling about all of these even after saying she never compromised her oath of office even after denying she compromised her oath of office?
“I wrote the letter, I signed it in my name. I was not anonymous so I can tell the story of what transpired. There were 33 nominees, then a senior judicial figure who was about to leave the bench put his mistress in there making it 34. She had not been interviewed; she had not gone through the process, and I wrote to President Buhari. To his credit, he listened and suspended the appointment of all of the people we objected to and cleared the appointment of 11. And then, something extraordinary happened. A senior justice of the Supreme Court was retiring and managed to get the NJC to bring back the list of those people who had been suspended and the people who opposed that list were persuaded not to attend the meeting of NJC; and this particular senior justice had their child in there, got the list approved, rushed to the president. All of them were approved. They are now sitting on the bench, including the daughter of Justice Bulkachuwa and Senator Adamu Bulkachuwa.
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