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@DemolaRewaju has just made my morning, that didn't start well, worse by making me watch a harrowing 7 mins video of the exchange between the Senate Minority Leader @SenatorAbaribe and the CJN. I will give you 7 minutes to watch for yourself. via @YouTube
Rather than look at it from the solitary perspective of President Buhari appointing his ilk to the highest court of the land - which is undeniable - I wish to use this exchange to highlight the peril of using Seniority as a sole determinant for appointment to such a key office.
It is now a fact of life in Nigeria that everything is viewed from the prism of religion &/or ethnicity &/or political party affiliation. But notwithstaning your side of the divide, I am confident that, putting it mildly, we can all agree that the CJN did not inspire confidence.
What transpired in that 7-mins video is only illustrative of the depth to which the Nigerian Judiciary has progressively fallen. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not just about President Buhari, but the fault of successive govts before him, and our docility as a people.
Having established that premise, let me now share with you my suggestion on one simple thing that can be done to revive the Nigerian judiciary. Before then I will demonstrate that the seniority criterium has done more harm than good. Of course, this may be a long read.
The Supreme Court of Nig and the office of the CJN are established in Sec 230 CFRN 1999. The court, together with the judicial arm of Govt, is headed by the CJN. As per Sec 231 CFRN the ONLY qualifiction for apppointment as CJN is that the person is a lawyer with 15 years PQE.
In practice, apart from a few isolated cases, the CJN has always been the most senior Justice of the Supreme Court. A requirement based on tradition and not the CFRN or the Supreme Court Act. The only time seniority matters is in the appointment of an Acting CJN.
I am mindful of the fact that a tree cannot make a forest. But the result of sacrificing merit [in the appointment of a CJN] on the altar of seniority is the gradual erosion of the standard of the judicial arm of Govt. And that video will go down in infamy as indicative of this.
As I have argued elsewhere, the person who determines the CJN is not the President or the NJC but the State Governor who made that obscure appointment of a Magistrate or Judge some decades ago. That cannot be right.
I am not aware of any other arm of govt, or a Ministry, Dept or Agency where the ONLY requirement for you to be appointed as the head is that you are the most senior. Look at the Police for e.g., I am not saying that the appointments have been right, but the principle is there.
In truth once someone is appointed to the Supreme Court, it is easy to determine whether s/he can become the CJN or not. How many of us can give our best in an organisation where it is certain from day one that there is an extent to which you can rise, however hard you work?
Just by way of illustration, one can safely predict the next CJN (barring another Onnoghen-esqe episode) by the time the tenure of the current CJN expires on 31st December 2023. And it is not the current Nos 2, 3 and 4. It is also possible to predict the CJN after the next.
I am confident that a system whereby the President or Governor can appoint any Justice or Judge to head the judiciary, or even a practicing lawyer [but the best] will eliminate the current lethargy that crept in and took over the system. The current system breeds mediocrity.
I have tried, albeit unsuccessfully to link the current practice to the incidence of inconsistencies in the judgments of the SC and the reluctance of the Justices to disagree/dissent with one another except in very rare circumstances. Deep down, I strongly believe theres a link.
But what I can prove is that the best lawyers in Nigeria are reluctant to become Judges for the very reason that there is a glass ceiling called seniority and no one is willing to be subjugated to persons of demonstrably inferior intellect for the rest of one's professional life.
This is where I would once again express my disappointment with the current Vice President who was best placed to facilitate fundamental judicial reforms in Nigeria but who now has to be best remembered for blowing the opportunity.
A country that produced the likes of Adetokunbo Ademola; Teslim Elias; Atanda Fatai Williams; Ayo Gabriel Irikefe; Muhammed Bello, etc as CJN and even exported to other African countries should embark on some soul searching to determine how it fell to the standard in that video.
