Buhari isn’t judiciary’s messiah (5)

Going by the emerging scenario in the judiciary, all stakeholders are guilty, but the President is certainly the one playing Jekyll and Hyde. You know where you stand with the governors; they want back, the regional constitutional power that produced the likes of Omoba Adetokunbo Adegboyega Ademola, as Chief Justice of Western Nigeria between (1955-1958) before becoming the federal CJN between April 1 1958 and 1972 and Mbanefo, Sir Louis Nwachukwu as Chief Justice of Eastern Region of Nigeria, between 1959 and 1967. Hopefully, the 36 deities, are also ready for full restructuring and all responsibilities, constitutional, moral, financial, mental and finesse, that go with the unhindered freedom to tinker with their state judiciaries.

NJC, the constitutional symbol of the judiciary is just about 20 years old and for nearly all to be growing weary on it, is a shame its operators must bear. If they think the time is still there to hang on to the deceptive claim of judiciary being a conservative arena that can’t be opened up to deeper public scrutiny and subjected to more progressive ideas, I shake my head, because something will do them soon, with irreparable consequences.

I know enough from within that the system operators do not regard the President as their Knight in shining armour, yet there isn’t a coordinated plan to confront the Armageddon staring them in the face, let alone a Plan B or C, or even D and E, if A fails, because the combination of Aso Rock and Governors’ Forum, has proved to be devastatingly lethal, again and again.

Kayode Fayemi, Ekiti governor of Governors has said give and take is being worked into the content of the Executive Order 10, for it, to be acceptable to teru tomo (all stakeholders). Is the judiciary involved? Is the leadership of NJC paying the requisite attention to the Ts and the Is? Or is entire focus on the expected windfall the gazetting, would deliver? Does judiciary leadership think the governors would walk away as the losers? Fayemi spoke of a win-win situation. Do Tanko and his men know what that means for politicians, including Malami, who is negotiating with the governors? Will it be acceptable to NJC if what is being whispered about losing one to have one, turns out the “real deal”? If NJC is asked to surrender state judiciaries to governors in exchange for bullion vans of cash, will all live happily ever after?

A Yoruba folklore should interest NJC here. There was a rich man who had a son and a slave. While he hardly noticed the son, the slave got his whole attention, affection and manifest love. Yoruba will say o fi ohun gbogbo ba lo (He gave him his all). At the death of the rich man, his Will says the true-born should take just an item of his possession and the slave, the rest. Like any human, the boy was sad but his father’s death-bed wish, must be respected. Unsurprisingly too, the slave got cocky and carried himself the new heir apparent, waiting for the seventh day after the burial, to be coronated into a new world of affluence, freedom and absolute luxury. He couldn’t wait. In contrast, the boy was forlorn, wishing his father would rot wherever he made it to, especially, hell. He couldn’t believe a man would hate his blood so much and love a slave with unknown ancestry so much, to practically switch their chi overnight; the slave becoming the lord and the true born, about joining pigs for regular meals, despite not putting himself to the father as a prodigal son.

In his misery, he strayed to a wise old man, and told his story with plenty of unpleasant wishes for his dad. The wise one laughed heartily and told the boy that he was his father’s beloved. The young man couldn’t understand. The man made him. His father just wanted a thinking heir apparent who will always make the right call with momentous wisdom when he is long gone, starting with the inheritance he is leaving behind for him. As an aside, that rich man is the one the Word of God talks about in Proverbs 13:22 which says: “A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children”. While this could be translated as leaving behind a sounding understanding of the Way of the Lord with the coming generations, it also means a man won’t be committing a sacrilege, leaving his earthly inheritance for the children rather than the wife. I digress.

Well, the wise one drew the beefing boy nearer and whispered in the right ear and the face beamed. Then, came the D-day when the Will was to be executed. In the presence of the whole family, the boy would make his singular pick, then the favoured slave, would move the rest into his anticipated new life. The boy, brightened and sprightly, was ramrod in the presence of all. He thanked the family elders, prayed for his father for loving him so much, to the astonishment of those in the knowledge of the content of the Will, then asked the slave to come closer to him. Cocky and all confident, the slave drew closer with the majesty of our illicit money men who steal today to ruin tomorrow and asked the son to hurry in making his sole pick. Alas, he (the slave) was the boy’s pick and as he laid his hand on the shoulder of his new acquisition, it dawned on all, including the slave that the son got all his father left behind, because Yoruba will say eni leru, lo leru (the owner of the slave owns all the slave owns). In Exodus 21:6, God was very explicit with the fate of such a slave; “Then his master shall bring him to God (the judges as His agents), he shall bring him to the door or doorpost and shall pierce his ear with an awl (a sharp object) and he SHALL (emphasis mine) serve him for life”.

If the current leadership of the judiciary allows the President to engage in any Cash ‘n’ Carry on its behalf, those men and women of big wigs on the Council will end up like the unthinking slave.

Already, the Council is like a kitten, trapped in a box, in its relational with the President, who delayed a crucial appointment to the Court of Appeal and still delaying much-needed appointments to the Supreme Court, just for one man!. That fellow from Zamfara, expected to retire from the Bench on July 16, 2028, and his kind, are sustaining Buhari’s divide-and-spoil style against the Bench. This “you-have-rubbed-my-victory-and-I-must-rub-your-career”, isn’t really out of this world, but to hold four destinies down for the sake of the favoured one, is blue murder. We must scream it.

To be continued

YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THESE HEADLINES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE