By  Dan Amor

For those conversant with the politics, intrigues, subterfuge and roadblocks that characterized the emergence and final confirmation of His Lordship, Hon. Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen as substantive Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), the current attempt by fifth columnists and political jobbers to blackmail or even cast a smear on his image cannot be surprising. As if the avoidable drama of his appointment and confirmation has not brought enough shame to the country, these ubiquitous interests who felt they lost out when the Senate cleared Onnoghen  to be sworn in as the Chief Justice of Nigeria against their wishes, have refused to give up. They now masquerade behind willing characters to undertake a campaign to impugn the hard-earned reputation of  Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen as the early signs indicate that he cannot be bent.

Since his confirmation in March this year, the feeling among Nigerians is that a round peg has been put in a round hole. Recently, however, a few ready-to-be-hired individuals have rendered themselves to be used to undertake a campaign that throws mud at the person of the Chief Justice of Nigeria and discredits the institution he heads. As always, the penchant of politicians for using the media to pull down our revered institutions that are not sympathetic to their narrow prejudices is once more at play.

Needless to say, this is taking a monumentally destructive toll on the judiciary. If, indeed, it is not a virulent media blitz of his carefully taken steps to reposition the Judiciary, it would be a calculated lampoon on his reform agenda or a sweeping denunciation of his attempt to sanitize the much abused adjudicatory system or a violent muckraking of judicial officers under his watch.

It is common knowledge that in the fine tradition of the Judiciary, it hardly talks back when attacked; yet that should not be a reason for, as they say, every Tom, Dick and Harry to seize every slight opportunity to insult this respected institution or the respected head of that institution, in this case, the Chief Justice of Nigeria.

In a fusillade of venomous attacks laced with plain lies, sarcasm and dry humour, these people are unrelenting in their plan to bring Nigeria’s Judiciary to the gutter through their dislike for the person of the CJN. Like a scripted drama, one of them, Livingstone Wechie, appeared on the Africa Independent Television, AIT Focus Nigeria programme on Tuesday August 29 to drive home their nefarious agenda. Mr. Wechie, who claimed to represent a body that goes by the name, “The Integrity Group”, openly called for the resignation of the CJN. His grouse was that the CJN had honoured the invitation of the Rivers State Governor, His Excellency, Barrister Nyesom E. Wike, to flag off the construction of judges quarters in the state. Honouring that invitation and performing that important duty of laying the foundation of houses for Judicial Officers, in the understanding of Wechie, is evidence that the CJN had compromised and should therefore resign from office. How infantile!

Wechie, while admitting that “ the provision of residential accommodation for justices is a very welcome development, and while also calling on every government in Nigeria to follow the footsteps of Governor Wike as this will “discourage mendacity in the judiciary”, at the same time quipped that the said project which the CJN did flag off “was not captured in any accessible or available budget of Rivers State”. Is this all that is required for the Chief Justice of Nigeria to resign?

This is taking activism to not just a sheer pedestrian rabble but to a ridiculous and questionable dimension. For instance, every well informed Nigerian knows that the Cross River State governor His Excellency Prof. Ben Ayade, is the first governor in the current Buhari administration to have attracted President Muhammadu Buhari to a state to flag-off the governor’s two signature projects, the 260 kilometre Calabar-Ikom-Obudu digital highway and the new Calabar Port channelization project in 2016. 

These laudable projects were not actually captured by the Cross River State government budget as at the time the President performed the ground-breaking  ceremony. Does this mean that any sane Nigerian activist from Cross River State would suddenly go on air to call for the President’s resignation or his impeachment by the Senate because the projects which he performed the groundbreaking of were not captured in the state budget? President Buhari had honoured the invitation of Governor Ayade and consequently performed the groundbreaking ceremony with so much fanfare only to discover later that there was no approved Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) or a budget for the project which the governor had designated as one of his signature projects. I cannot recall anyone asking the president to resign on account of his not investigating the circumstances surrounding the superhighway before giving it a presidential stamp of approval through the groundbreaking ceremony.

As an indigene of Rivers State, Wechie can be pardoned for taking and changing sides intermittently as he deems fit. However, to drag the name of the high office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria into the local politics of Rivers State is the height of irresponsibility. To say that the Hon. Chief Justice of Nigeria ought to have studied the budgets of states and determined what would have been appropriated for a particular project before honoring an invitation to perform the groundbreaking ceremony of a project like the one in Rivers State is like asking him to carry out oversight functions outside his constitutional mandate.

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It may, therefore, be necessary to remind Wechie and those beating the drums and wafting odium for him that Hon. Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen has an agenda which is already in the public domain, to reform the nation’s judiciary which stagnated for decades even as other arms of government progressed. 

Though unnamed entrenched interests delayed his confirmation despite his qualifications and steering leadership qualities and constitutional provisions, Hon. Justice Walter Onnoghen should now be left to do his work.

Using the Wechies of this world to blackmail the occupant of the exalted office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria will further open the country to ridicule in the comity of democratic nations of the world. The Supreme Court is undoubtedly the nation’s most powerful legal arena, the court in which the meaning of the laws of the land is finally decided. It is, indeed, apposite to warn that we should not play politics with our Judiciary, for therein lies our only redemption as the safety valve or sole arbiter to the common man.

Amor writes from Abuja.

 

 

 

 

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