Why The Sanctity Of The Judiciary Must Be Respected -By Paul Kalu Mgbesi

President Muhammadu Buhari is out in London, and the old soldier in him has not deserted him. He has literally turned a foreign visit into a theatre of war and alarums of wars. With pepper-hot words and gestures to match, he is railing against ‘’the murder of the naira’’, as he was quoted by the BBC radio. The naira is one of the symbols of our state.

However, as the president is abroad fortifying the naira, even if verbally, his APC party men and other hirelings at home, are riotously decimating the Nigerian estate and state, especially its most innocent arm, the Supreme Court. They act in the forged and arrogant conscience that they are sacrificing the nation to the false god of party supremacy. If however, the Nigerian state is finally sacrificed as they plot, it is certain President Buhari’s pet worry, the naira, will be fit for a funeral bonfire. That is the naira would have been as worthless as sawdust, thanks to APC and agents.

Now the latest verbal-firebomb siege against the Nigerian state is orchestrated and commanded by the APC Chairman, Chief John Oyegun. To support him is a phalanx of storm-troopers apparently captained by Professor Itse Sagay, and other characters. And it is all in the matter of the rulings of the Supreme Court in the matter of Akwa Ibom, Abia, Rivers, gubernatorial contests etc. For Oyegun, what pains, is not that the APC lost the states and peoples of the South-South and Abia. The real matter he confesses is that they have lost the riches and resources of these states to the PDP. That is for Oyegun and understandably APC, whose mouthpiece he is, the South-South has meaning, not as a people, not as other states, but as a provincial revenue basin and backwater, for metropolitan players and taskmasters. In his mournful words: ‘’we have lost very important resource-rich states to the PDP. No matter how crude oil prices have fallen, it is still the most important revenue earner for the country.’’ 04-02-16 This Day. This is Oyegun’s ‘’Political Bull of Demarcation’’, for which like Germany, Oyegun and APC mourn they have been cheated off their dues. So for Oyegun and his APC peoples, politics is in funds-flow spreadsheets, derivable off the provinces, to service the capital, and not of peoples’ welfare.

Now, it is this attitude that we have lost our living space, lebensraum, and attendant resources that drives the reaction of APC.

So the price of our freedom must be in eternal vigilance.

It is in this light of lebensraum, of lost territories, that the studied siege on and against the innocence of the judiciary and especially the Supreme Court, has to be articulated and understood.

So when Oyegun claims ‘’he is shocked’’, ThisDay, 04-12-16, over a Supreme Court judgement, we have to understand that, as the moral equivalent of the secret preparation of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Fuhrer. That is the show and dramatization of shock is a sleight of hand, an old hat to psychologically bewitch and prepare the populace for their next surprise hits. And that is that the South-South and Abia states must be recovered and held as indentured, sharecropper states, by might and by power, even if democracy has to go to hell.

Now let us recall that one former Baba-dictator, timeously fired a blunderbuss against the legislature. As it is, even the blind may now begin to see the pattern. The Nazi-style blitzkrieg is all part of the scheme to set in a crisis of legitimacy and innocence against the judiciary and the legislature. And next, decimate or at least neuter them. Logically, it then follows that only the executive is well and alive, and therefore will be conceded all powers or self-grab same.

That is to say a dictatorship would have emerged by default. You wake up and rather than have a democracy with its famous and freely thriving three arms, you have only a Fuhrer or Sheriff in total or medieval-style control, thanks to APC.

But the most troubling aspect of this is in the role by our academics, as represented by the professor of law, Mr. Itse Sagay. Sagay, despite his feints has not succeeded in hiding the sore of his partisanship in these matter. In a 23-01-16 New Telegraph interview he almost openly handed the Supreme Court judges his pro-forma judgment on the matter. Of course records reveal that Sagay is heading a government agency, with all the rights and accoutrements thrown in.

However to profess, to be a professor, is to investigate thoughtfully and thoroughly, and then to come to a conclusion. So, to profess you need patience to plod through all substantive and significant materials, the so called ‘literature review’, on the issue. That is you can’t profess before a literature review or on executive summaries as it were, or as in this case mere rulings. And to preempt oneself with executive-summary-led opinion is to show the inability, which Aristotle warned against, to suspend disbelief, till one has the full remit in his purview. To profess and be worthy of Harvard quality professorship even if you are Nigerian, you needed to sit down, stay out of klieg lights, swallow boredom and study the gamut of issues in contention. And in this issue it must include the full judgement. Anything less is to betray scholarship which is the worst sin known to man as a sentient being.

So when Sagay declaims: “[the ruling] is very strange. We will wait for them to give their reasons and see how that magic occurred…. It is very unprecedented.’’ And goes on to conclude: ‘’we will see when they give their full judgments, that is it for now”, issues arise.

– Mgbesi wrote in from Lagos.