Onnoghen and NJC’s complex habits

The National Judicial Council (NJC) may be living on old glory.
But they are unlikely to know that they are no longer viewed with
the reverence of years past, when they were doted on by nearly
everyone, and their every word was regarded with a solemnity that
was at once noble and distant. Before the NJC became immersed in
avoidable controversies, Nigerians had embraced the culture of
tiptoeing around the eminent jurists, scared of rousing their
anger. Today, the situation is different, and the jurists
themselves may not even know it.

To cap what may amount to many months of difficult judicial
diminution, the NJC on Monday issued a statement signed by its
spokesman, Soji Oye, indicating that the council took note of the
president’s acceptance of the resignation of the former Chief
Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, after many months of
uncertainty, and thanked him for doing so. Said the NJC: “The NJC
held an emergency meeting today (Monday) to take formal note of the
acceptance of the voluntary retirement of Hon. Mr. Justice W. S. N.
Onnoghen as Chief Justice of Nigeria by President Muhammadu Buhari.
The President’s acceptance of the retirement is in line with
Council’s recommendation to the President on 3rd April, 2019.
Council at the end of its deliberations thanked the President for
the acceptance which was in the best interest of Nigeria.”

The NJC is of course at liberty to endorse anyone’s resignation,
no matter how controversial or, as in the case of Justice Onnoghen,
unwholesome. And as the NJC statement said, a fact also reiterated
by the presidency, it is true that the NJC had advocated the
compulsory retirement of the former chief justice. But because the
presidency was breathing threats and imprecate on Justice Onnoghen
in those intransigent days, there were indications that the
presidency was ready to meet the former CJN’s stubbornness with a
vicious corruption trial of their own. They simply disregarded due
process and rode roughshod over the beleaguered jurist.

Even then, the former CJN, who seemed curiously confident that
he could best the government on points of law, was still willing to
face up to the presidency’s threats, and was in addition willing to
meet them and joust with them in the courts, whether the courts
were rigged or not, or whether or not the presiding judges could
call their souls their own. It was at that point, when things
seemed to drag on interminably, and the regularisation of the
appointment of the Acting Chief Justice of Nigeria, Ibrahim
Muhammad, seemed threatened, that the NJC cut the Gordian knot and
asked the government to compulsorily retire Justice Onnoghen.
Sensing that all was lost, and with the Court of Appeal developing
cold feet over the myriad of cases brought before them by the
former CJN hoping to secure some exculpatory reliefs, and knowing
for sure that he could not hope to get justice anywhere and
anymore, Justice Onnoghen threw in the towel. He knew that at that
point things could only get nastier.

The politics behind the presidency relenting over the Onnoghen
retirement has not been revealed. Perhaps it is complicated.
Perhaps a lot of begging went into the affair to bring it to that
ignoble end. Perhaps Justice Onnoghen’s hand was not as
strengthened as he and his sympathisers made everyone to believe.
Whatever the case, the former CJN retired, the presidency took
about two months to make up its mind whether to accept the
resignation — a speed unlikely to be connected with the customary
gridlock afflicting the government — and the NJC has curiously
appreciated the government for burying the hatchet. If this outcome
had been etched on an artist’s canvas or portrayed in a novel, it
would have been condemned as surreal. But it is real. The NJC is
grateful that the presidency took its counsel. Not since the Ayo
Salami affair, when the same NJC let its imagination get entangled
in boyish fantasies, has the judiciary postured so
outlandishly.

The presidency finally relented, just as it is true that the NJC
charted a curious way out of the Onnoghen ordeal. But it would have
been far better if the NJC had not felt prompted by unknown motives
to claim the questionable glory for resolving that judicial and
ethical labyrinth and in the same breath extending their gratitude
to the presidency. There was nothing to thank the president for. If
the retirement of Justice Onnoghen had not been accepted, and the
case had dragged on in the courts, it is difficult to see even a
conniving Senate ignore the brutal judicial and administrative
realities of the day to endorse the appointment of Justice Ibrahim
Muhammad. The presidency simply bowed to reality, convinced it
could go no further without drawing more flak and fouling the
judiciary. The NJC should have kept a dignified silence in a case
that unfolded bizarrely before the whole world.

Culled from TheNation

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