Why did Tanko spit on the grave of Jeremy Bentham? -By Festus Adedayo

The problem with Nigeria’s judicial system is that there is always this attempt at belittling the impact of jurisprudence, the philosophy of law, on the legal system. This is why there is so much law in the Nigerian judicial system but little justice in the land. While jurisprudence hankers after law as it ought to be, with proponents like John Austin of the school of analytical jurisprudence, the bulk of the Nigerian legal system is devoted to law as it is. The truth, however, is that there is no way the judicial system and pronouncements will be in tandem with natural justice and there will be chaos of the kind that emanated last week in the Supreme Court’s pronouncement on the Imo State gubernatorial election.

Legal juggernauts have spoken for and against the judgment. One major reason why the judiciary is feared and disdained is its tendency to pronounce on a matter from both ends of the stick with sufficient legal establishment of why it did so. However, if the principle of natural justice undergirds such pronouncement, the judiciary won’t suffer widespread societal disdain as it does at the moment.

In the Imo matter, it becomes difficult for anyone with a jurisprudential mind to agree with the judgment of the apex court removing Emeka Ihedioha of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as governor and replacing him with Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressives Congress (APC). Yes, I am aware that upon their activation by the Supreme Court, the votes in 388 polling units earlier voided by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), had to be passed on to a candidate and since there was no AA and APGA parties in contention and Uzodinma was the most available recipient legally, he had to be awarded the votes but jurisprudence would frown at this daylight robbery. This is because, in the face of jurisprudence, in the presence of natural justice, you cannot put something on nothing.

According to the March 9, 2019 election results released by INEC, Ihedioha polled a total of 273,404 votes; Uche Nwosu (AA) 190,364 votes, Ifeanyi Ararume (APGA) 114,676, while Uzodinma (APC) got 96,458 votes. Were all the votes in 388 polling units voided by INEC and resuscitated by the Supreme Court, solely cast for Uzodinma? How can Uzodinma, who came fourth in the election, now be made to be the first, rather than the two candidates before him, even if Ihedioha would cannot get the votes? There is no way jurisprudence would abet this desecration of natural justice.

Jeremy Bentham is known the world over as the Father of Jurisprudence. Technicalities, which could be termed the law as it is, must have won Uzodinma ‘victory’ under the Supreme Court of Justice Ibrahim Tanko, the Chief Justice of Nigeria. With a judicial system that is mindful of law as the pronouncement of the sovereign, a re-run of the election should have been the judgment.

Which also takes me to Father Ejike Mbaka, the spiritual consultant who was apparently used to spiritually legitimize the spit on Jeremy Bentham. What people don’t know is that the Mbakas only flourish in a failed state where people thirst for spiritual rendition of a purely physical matter. Mbaka is a sore on the Nigerian foot which points to a diseased inner member.