STAR OPINION: The Jungle Next Time [Sam Omatseye, The Nation]

[Mobolaji ALUKO]

 

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THE NATION
May 3l, 2010

 

 

The Jungle next time

By Sam Omatseye
 
A man like Shakespeare should not be allowed to live in Nigeria. Neither should Jesus Christ. Of all, they should not be allowed into Osun and Ekiti States. Jesus would have first poured woe unto the lawyers, and Shakespeare would have proclaimed to those bearing guns and machetes, "the first thing we do, let us kill the lawyers." The first to go would have been the judges.

 

That was what came to mind after the kangaroo verdict on Osun governor polls. I was still grieving over the Ekiti misadventure, and then came the other bang. I thought to myself on Saturday night after chewing the developments, now that we have injustice, what are we going to do with it? Or now that injustice has us, what is it going to do with us?

 

They use the law, and they corrupt it, and we say those trusted with our law are professionals. Are they professionals or harlots of the trade? Are they for the trade or trading as professionals for the dirty prize? As the poet Lord Byron wrote, there is always a market for impostors. Stories always go around about the bribery of judges, and we Nigerians are not itching ears any more. We know they happen and most of our judges are on the take.

 

The question is, why are we going to them for justice? Why not bear arms, and seize justice the way those in office bore arms and seized elections? We won’t do that. We won’t because it will be a call to anarchy, and we don’t want that. That is the weakness or the moral principle the rogues of election and justice are taking advantage of. That is the great alliance of the day: the rogue politician and the judge. This is Nigeria’s axis of evil, the duo of destruction, the whores of Nigerian Babylon. They believe that some people in the country believe in the "course of justice," in taking the matter to the logical conclusion. They don’t believe in logic except that of thieves.

 

But such people as Governor Oyinlola of Osun State and Segun Oni of Ekiti State do not believe in such ideas, or what Achebe called "niceties and delicate refinements that belong elsewhere."

 

When the Ekiti verdict reeled out its woes of logic, I pondered and my pen froze, or was it my fingers on the keyboard that froze? What tack was I going to take on the matter? What has one not written about our judges, their reckless turpitude and celebration of harebrained reasoning? In my One Week column on Sunday, I described Oni, with his phony Awo cap, as Macbeth sitting on Banquo’s throne, in Shakespeare’s famous play when the ghost appeared. And Macbeth screamed madly, "avaunt and quit my sight, let the earth hide thee, thy bone is marrowless and thy blood is cold…" Shakespeare wrote about a saner society in spite of its peevishness. Macbeth, at least, saw the ghost of the legitimate owner of the throne, and had the conscience worry him by its appearance.

 

Today, Oni and Oyinlola are too blind to see any ghosts. Justice is far too gone. We live in a society of the dying of the senses, all the senses. The sense of sight is gone, hence we cannot show horror at the deaths from elections and on the roads. We see and look away. We don’t have the sense of smell, a society of stench is increasingly normal in a world squeamish about the environment. The sense of touch has gone, too, as the barrage of kidnappings testify. So, if the preliminary sense of sight is gone, how can the inner sense see? How can Oyinlola and Oni see the horror of injustice like Macbeth did?

 

I told somebody the other day that the university campuses would have collapsed with rage 20 years ago if the National Assembly members were asking for N42 million per person when many citizens died over inability to buy N500 medication. Today is different. Anything goes. Anything goes as justice.

 

In Osun State, it was done with timely insolence. They did it on the eve of the so-called democracy day. Look at the verdict. Rauf Aregbesola did something they did not anticipate. He brought forensic. That rattled Justice Naron and company, and they would not admit them. They were caught doing what many knew but did not expect to come to the public light: judges and the respondents, that is those from the camp of Oyinlola, were talking to each other. It was a scandal that would have destroyed many judicial careers in civilised communities and outrage on the streets. Nothing happened here. Rather, they moved to better and bigger things.

 

They changed the judges, and these one wanted to play wiser. They admitted the evidence and gave the Oyinlola people the opportunity to present often laughable forensic counter-play. The judges followed the rites. They admitted everything, and at the end, when the verdict came, they did worse than the Narons. They looked at the evidence but they did not see it. Another deadness of the senses. What do you make of the mountain of evidence, of the fowl feet and cotton buds that replaced the fingerprints? What do you make of the variance between the number of people on voters’ register and the actual vote counted? What of the time voters spent at the voting station and the number of people who reportedly voted? It would amount in most of them to mean that some people voted in seconds.

 

In the case of Osun, the judges said, it was not proved beyond all reasonable doubts. They claimed that the prosecution did not bring victims of electoral violence, and the witnesses they brought were not adequate. In the case of Ekiti, it was the same story. Evidence piled on evidence. We saw that last year. We knew what we saw, at Ido-Osi and other places. We saw impunity at every level, and yet the judges said we were no longer supposed to believe the evidence of our eyes as well as our senses of hearing and touch.

 

That is the story of Nigeria. Everything real is unreal and everything unreal is real. This counters the concept of justice as blindfolded. The picture which many lawyers are taught is that the face of justice is blindfolded, and it is not persuaded by any party on the basis of any mysterious interest whether pecuniary, primordial or familial. It says, "Where there is a law, there is a remedy."

 

Here justice is not blindfolded. Rather it is blind. It is blind, like all the other senses. It is blind to facts and their consequences. Shakespeare noted in Romeo and Juliet that love is blind and when it is blind that is when it sees well. It focuses on the inside. Our justice is blind and in its blindness it sees nothing fair or just. Where there is a Nigerian law, it sees remedy for the rich and powerful, and the mightily corrupt.

 

When correction lies in the hand of the corrupt, to whom shall we appeal? This is the juncture of Nigerian political justice right now. Nzeribe once said that no one should allow himself to be out-rigged.

 

The consequence for 2011 is clear. Obasanjo had inaugurated the era of do-or-die politics. The message was understood by him alone. Now that the unholy alliance between politicians and judiciary for injustice has cemented, others now could take a cue. I just pity us when it operates full throttle. The real perpetrators will flee but small men and women will be the victims. When the people don’t show anger at the impositions of the wrong leaders and civil society groups are money grabbing, even the good will lose conviction and goodwill, and Machiavelli will take over.

 

Intellectuals are complicit. No one debates. No ferment of ideational rage in the land. No temper for logic. A verdict comes out and we don’t look at the merits. We just let them go.

 

We only inaugurate the jungle next time.

 

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