“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts” – Mahatma Gandhi
If you think that Nigeria’s democracy is on the right course, there is bad news from the apex court verdict on the epic legal tussle between Senate President Ahmed Lawan and Bashir Machina. It has sacked a true believer of democracy, who observes democratic decorum, and the same tribunal simultaneously honoured the rebels of democracy, whose ‘stolen victory’ will continue to be a referential and quintessential taboo in judicial perspective and history.
While Machina believes in democracy and the ideals it stands for, the gang of the party elements and their political emperors demonstrate that they are not only having the APC and some jurists in their pockets, but they also show that they are the rightful owners of democracy and justice. After Lawan had earlier resigned to fate as a result of two court rulings legitimising Machina as the candidate for Yobe North Senatorial contest, the party gorrilla fighters mobilised themselves and ambushed the supremacy of the judiciary and inflicted it with injuries associated with indecency.
Engage in brooding analyses and in-depth reflection to evaluate the very system that promotes fallacies as realities. The politically inspired ruling pronounced recently by the Supreme Court judges is an assault on the conscience, desecrating the integrity of the court. There is nothing glarinly dangerous to the society than the corruption of the judiciary and the sleepy conscience of some judges. We are entitled to having sound and impeccable judges, whose extreme fear is the mother of morality to make the judiciary the bulwark of the oppressed. We are not yearning for politicians who cannot make democracy to be democratic; who are politically impaired and parochial to liberate the legal sector from the contamination of dirty politics.
While hopes are descending to the lowest ebb, fears are ascending to greater heights. We have now reached a dangerous point where justice does not have a noble purpose and a defender, a point where injustice is seen as a blessing and not a curse! We are living in an era when judges can make arbitrary decisions not independently of blowing political winds. We are experiencing a despicable drama in which the greatest want of some judges and politicians is the want of their stomach facility. We are endangered by the unscrupulous judges and politicians who cannot dismiss the fear of calling sin of injustice by its proper name. They have refused to listen and allow the loud voice of conscience to be engraved in their hearts so that the Machinas will articulate strong faith in democracy and give themselves a good name.
It is a dangerous signal that 24 years into democracy, the political elite and the judges of the Supreme Court can circumvent what rightly belongs to equity. Fairness is a delicate and sacred organism that must not be tampered with in spite of challenging oddities. Those who want to steal justice to destroy individuals’ opportunities, through fraudulent means, are actually planting the seeds of their very destruction. Those behind the safeguarding of pseudo justice in favour of Ahmed Lawan did so at the expense of democracy not Machina. They did it deliberately to purge themselves of the rule of conscience. They only see what they want to see and not see what the conscience is supposed to see and judge fairly. They have infringed the system with virus full of inequalities and discrimination. And it will take time before the fatal wound will be healed.
The ruling, obnoxiously, ridicules the omnipotence of the judiciary. It shows it as the extension worker of the party executive or government party. It will go down in history as a judicial felony orchestrated by the Supreme Court. Justice is the best friend of the oppressed and not political manipulators. Honour is accurately tested when honourable men are in a dilemma. It is despising to have a new school of thought that it is more honourable to cheat the conscience and steal justice in the court. Big men will rather die in dishonour to get honor!! The judiciary has lost its democratic value and instrumentality in this case.
The case of Ahmed Lawan and Bashir Machina was as simple as teaching a primary one pupil one plus one equals two. But the APC leadership acted a very foul play. It calculated one plus one to be three in its arithmetic sheet while other sheets displayed two. Ahmed did not participate in the Yobe North senatorial primary on May 28, 2022. His political science induced him to be a political gambler in the gambling game for the position of the president and woefully collapsed on June 8, 2022. Thereafter, he got political fractures.
The best treatment he deserved for his political surgery plus recovery was conducting a child’s play primary on June 9, 2022, for the Yobe North to save him an impending political doom. But there was no INEC to monitor it for authentication and reliability. This was a breach of the Electoral Act 2022 which Lawan himself accented as the king of lawmakers. Consequently, the INEC invalidated it outrightly for its scandalous execution.
We have just witnessed a miscarriage of justice and will not like to see its ugly reoccurrence. This blind justice will continue to be remembered as blatant, bloated and perplexing in the conscience. It will continue to remind us the fraternity of mixed democratic elements who subverted the popular will of justice and fairness. The late Martin Luther King Jr postulates that cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? Indeed, the court of conscience will not cease asking, is this judgement right?
Bashir Machina deserves accolades for his steadfastness in the wake of political intimidation and persecution. He is so resolute that he can smile in trouble, he can gather strength from distress and grow brave and fame by the reflection of not losing a legal fight, but winning a moral strength. He not only stands good for himself but also for something, and that is democracy.
The verdict of the apex court leaves much to be desired because it is grossly questionable and full of flaws. What is certain is that the judgment of the court of conscience will be sharply tormenting to those who conspired to observe the funeral of justice.
Abdullahi writes from Ringim, Jigawa state via aaringim68@gmail.com