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The Judiciary, described by Marie Mariano as the weakest branch of government is also regarded as the just branch of government and conversationally popularly referred to as the bastion of hope of the common man. In a hierarchical structure and sphere of influence, power, and authority, the judiciary is often undermined because it seem to have the least power. While the executive arm has the power to make executive and judicial appointments and the legislature has the power to ratify such appointments and to approve appropriations, the judiciary is condemned to the responsibility of checking the excesses of these other arms and will call them to order where they attempt to go overboard or breach their constitutional roles.
Nevertheless, the dynamism of the judiciary has never been in doubt or dispute. It has the prerogative of approbating and reprobating based on exigencies of time, condition, and situation. The Supreme Court being the apex court is not only a court of last resort but a court of policy. It can reverse and overrule itself where the decisions were reached per incuriam, where public interest demands, or where it is confronted with two of its own conflicting decisions. Of course, there is a catena of judicial authorities to support this. Indeed the perceived mistakes or inconsistencies of other arms of government are corrected by the judiciary while also correcting itself from time to time.
Sometimes past, the judiciary appeared to have descended into the abyss of ignominy and infamy with its flip-flop judgments emanating from courts of co-ordinate and concurring jurisdictions, the resultant effect was the unprecedented delivery of four conflicting and contradictory rulings within two days as regards whether or not the National Convention of the People’s Democratic Party should hold. While Justice Ibrahim Watila of the Federal High Court, Port Harcourt Division ruled that the convention organised by the Ahmed Makarfi faction should be held, Justice Okon Abang ruled against it. Instructively, the two judges have earlier delivered conflicting rulings on the same issues raised and canvassed by the parties. The same scenario is repeating itself yet again in Rivers State. This time concerns whether or not the elections to be organized by the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission should be held.
In the orders of the High Court in Rivers State, which were given on 4 September 2024, the Judge said the defendants are bound by Section 7, sub-section 1 of the Constitution and Section 5 (A) of the RSIEC Law Number 2 of 2018 to make provisions and conduct the local government poll within the shortest possible time, especially following the expiration of the tenure of the former elected officials on June 17.
The court also cited as a necessity, the recent decision of the Federal Government mandating states without democratically elected local government to do so within three months, following the judgment of the Supreme Court on local government autonomy. The Court urged that all necessary arrangements be made to ensure the conduct of the election on October 5, 2024, as announced by RSIEC.
But a Federal High Court in Abuja presided over by Justice Peter Lifu on Monday, six days before the conduct of the Rivers State local government area election, restrained the Independent National Electoral Commission from releasing voters’ register to the Rivers State Independent Electoral Commission, to conduct the LG election in the state.
The court also barred the Inspector General of Police and the Department of the State Service from participating and providing security for the conduct of the local government area election. Justice Lifu issued the order while delivering judgment in a suit brought before him by the All Progressives Congress challenging the legality or otherwise of the processes leading to the fixing of the for the election. Justice Lifu held that the RSIEC was wrong in fixing the date for the conduct of the poll when all relevant laws guiding the election had not been complied with. According to him, the Rivers State electoral body violated provisions of the local government election conduct law by not publishing the mandatory 90-day notice before fixing the date. He also held that the update and revision of the voters’ register by INEC ought to have been concluded 90 days before an election date can be legally and validity fixed in law. He, therefore, ordered INEC not to make the certified voters’ register available to RSIEC until all relevant laws have been fully complied with.
Justice Peter Lifu also barred RSIEC from accepting any voters’ register from INEC or using it for the LG election.
The term ‘agree to disagree’ was made popular by John Wesley in 1770 when, at the death of George Whitefield, he wrote a memorial sermon that acknowledged, but downplayed the doctrinal differences. The Politicians in Rivers State ought to adopt this as a mantra for the interest of the people.
It has been more than twenty years of unbridled democratic experience and of course, the Judiciary has contributed in no small measure to its sustainability. The road, however, has been tumultuous and turbulent with some of the rulings and judgments eliciting controversies and enormous condemnation from the public. Now it is being turned into an arena of discord. Nigerian politicians are highly litigious and are hardly graceful in defeat or magnanimous in victory. Thus, in 2003 when Olusegun Obasanjo’s mandate was renewed, expectedly the losing candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari of the All Nigeria People’s Party, challenged the results to the Supreme Court. Although the court acknowledged the irregularities in the election, it fell short of cancelling it because the irregularities were not substantial enough to warrant cancellation. The case became one of the most extensively supported in Nigerian history, with the highest number of witnesses, legal claims, and affidavits ever recorded. It was so bad that the matter ran into nearly half of President Obasanjo’s tenure.
The Peter Obi case was also one that was equally controversial and spanned two years with a total number of 482 witnesses testifying. The judgement of the tribunal was about 700 pages. These scenarios were repeated in ANPP v Boni Haruna in respect of Adamawa State which involved about 2188 respondents while the case of Akpang Obi Odu v Donald Duke of Cross River State in respect of Cross River State governorship election involved 2340 respondents. These controversial cases occasioned by long delays in delivering judgement constitute a clog in the democratic process, as most of the parties to the dispute were almost serving out their terms.
The Conundrum in Rivers State has once again brought to the fore issues bordering on the independence of the judiciary as it seems teleguided and remotely controlled by outside forces. In a recent survey, the judiciary was ranked as one of the most corrupt institutions in the country with bribery being the most prevalent. Justice Kayode Eso was so miffed and irked by the situation and posited that ‘the judiciary as the last hope of the common man has been ridiculed courtesy of some atrocious actions by some judges who rather than discharge their responsibilities have resorted to playing politics with the profession’.
Geoffrey Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, stated: “If gold rusts what will iron do? For if a priest be foul in whom we trust, no wonder that a common man should rust”. This captures the state of affairs in the Judiciary. Justice Mohammed Akanbi had echoed in frustration that funding the judiciary by the executive has been one of the intractable problems facing the judiciary and wondered how an institution in distress and dire need can give hope to the citizenry.
With conflicting decisions from courts of coordinate and concurrent jurisdictions being played like a ping pong game, the judiciary seems battered, subdued, and helpless and presents itself unwittingly as the weakest arm in a very pitiable manner. Meanwhile, it ought to be the most powerful arm with the enormous power of presiding over corrupt public officers and jailing them when found wanting.
The weakness of the judiciary may also be self-inflicted. Whatever the case, the judiciary being the lifeblood of the constitution, the bastion of hope of the citizens, and the custodian of our values and norms should be audacious and bold enough to exercise judicial power and authority without fear or favour to anyone—the very reason lady justice’s eyes are blindfolded. The independence of the judiciary is therefore a sine qua non to good governance and democratic tenets. Luckily, the victory recorded way back as 2014 when the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court upheld the financial independence of the judiciary is still subsisting. Is it being implemented? The National Judicial Commission must rise to the occasion as it has done in times past to punish corrupt judicial officers.
Edet, a legal scholar, is Acting Vice Chancellor, Arthur Jarvis University, Calabar
