The Judiciary and the “I’m not a lawyer” phenomenon – By Kehinde Yusuf
*Photo: Prof Kehinde Yusuf *
In recent times, the Nigerian judiciary has been “bloodied but unbowed”. Could John Milton have imagined that this phrase in his famous poem “Paradise Lost” would have been so timeless in the sharpness of its imagery and the range of its rhetorical force? And could the forebears of today’s judiciary have imagined that much of the blood streaming from the judiciary’s head would be from strikes from the bar – their kith and kin?
Some lawyers seem to perceive it as a badge of honour to demean the judiciary. But have these lawyers been sufficiently reflective? If they have, they would have known that as the Yoruba saying goes, “Tí a bá ta ará ilé ẹni lọ́pọ̀, a kò lè rí i rà ní ọ̀wọ́n mọ́.” (‘If you sell your kin cheaply, you may not be able to buy them back dearly.’) An equivalent of this proverb was rendered as follows in 2019 by the former Australian Prime Minister, Paul Keating: “if you pawn the crown it is incapable of being redeemed at the same value.”
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, described in a 6 November, 2023 interview in BusinessDay as “a Nigerian human rights activist, lawyer, professor and writer [and] the former Chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission” remarked as follows about the Supreme Court: “The court should be the last hope of the common man, I would agree with you. Are the Nigerian courts today the last hope of the common man? No sir. … It is no longer buying and selling of court judgement; it is that people are now planting their families in corrupt relationships with the judiciary system to make sure that down the road you cannot even get any idea of justice.”
According to a BusinessDay report of 18 November, 2023, Olumide Akpata, a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) magnified the denigrating views of Odinkalu at a meeting of the International Bar Association (IBA) when he said as follows: “there is a deliberate attempt by the political class to capture the judiciary and it has serious consequences for the rule of law in Nigeria. … Just like Chidi Odinkalu pointed out to us, a good Judge can only emerge through that process by luck. Their [judges’] kids want to go to Cambridge, Harvard, but they can’t afford it, but I want to assure you that their kids are in Oxford. Your guess is as good as mine: How did those kids get there?”
In the case of specific judgements, especially on the electoral status of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, the condemnation of the judiciary has been quite strident. In a 3 March, 2023 edition of the TVC News programme “Journalists Hangout” (rebroadcast on 24 December, 2023), ace-commentator, Babajide Kolade-Otitoju who is not a lawyer, but a historian, noted that it had been decided at the Supreme Court that “you do not have to win the FCT to be elected. If you score the mandatory 25% in 24 states, even if you didn’t score 25% in the FCT, you’re good to go. But some people in this season think that they can simply hoodwink or lie to Nigerians. They are now making it look like no President can be validly elected until [they have] won Abuja or until [they have] recorded 25% in Abuja, in the FCT … It is ignorance peddling and it’s a shameful, a very shameful level of ignorance peddling, because the idiocy in the argument is does it mean that … if you won election in 36 states but failed woefully in FCT would anybody be able to validly say you are not qualified to be validly elected just because you didn’t win a very small portion of our country?” This position accords with the views of a range of well-respected lawyers and that of both the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC) and the Supreme Court.
In the lead judgement of the PEPC on 6 September, 2023, it is noted as follows: “the futility of and hollowness in the argument of the petitioners that the votes of the voters in the FCT, Abuja, have more weight than other voters in the country to the extent [that] their votes purportedly have a veto effect on other votes is rendered bare.”
This position is supported by a range of ranking lawyers such as elder statesman, Robert Clarke, SAN. However, as bare as the point appeared to be, some senior lawyers seemed not to see it. So, even after the judgement, one of them, Mr. James Ezike in an Arise TV interview of 7 September, 2023, poohpoohed the PEPC judgement as “computer judgement” and insisted that it was mandatory for a presidential candidate to win 25% of the votes in the FCT, Abuja to be validly declared a winner.
Specifically, he said: “The weakest point in that judgement is their finding of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). That is very embarrassing because they were so sure of what they were saying, and they said [about] the Federal Territory, there is a provision in the constitution, that is a general provision in the constitution that says they should be treated as a state. If Abuja were a state, then Abuja should have its House of Assembly, but it doesn’t. It should have three senators, but it has only one.” He then opined that because the quality of the Justices on the Supreme Court had declined, it was not advisable for Peter Obi to appeal the PEPC judgement, because he could not hope to get justice. Eventually, the Supreme Court upheld the judgement of the PEPC.
Even the well-known former President of the NBA, Olisa Agbakoba, declared variously that it was mandatory for a winning candidate to score 25% of the votes of the FCT, Abuja. The implication of this is that the views of some non-lawyers seemed to be of higher quality than those of some lawyers, even senior lawyers, not just on 25% of Abuja votes, but on other issues related to the 2023 elections. This draws attention to the preface, “I’m not a lawyer” (IANAL) and its variants. These variants include “He is no a lawyer” and “Those of us who are not lawyers”.
Senator Dave Umahi, Honourable Minister of Works, after the PEPC judgement, noted as follows on Arise News, on 10 September, 2023: “I advise him [Peter Obi] not to go to any appeal. I am not a lawyer, but the Governor of Ebonyi State is a lawyer and he has interpreted the judgement and it has left no hope for any appeal. Those judges are spirits. They went into everything and dissected them just like getting a coconut and breaking it. You will get the water and everything and get the nut.”
Dele Momodu, said as follows in his “Pendulum” column in Thisdayonline of 13 October, 2023, prior to the Supreme Court judgement on Atiku and Obi’s appeal of the PEPC judgement: “’Fellow Nigerians, I’m not a Lawyer. But I’m surrounded by friends who are Lawyers … Many Nigerians seem to have given up on our Judiciary. … The Judiciary today can restore instant global prestige and adulation to our country. The Judges can automatically improve our economy by not kowtowing to the overbearing appurtenances of power, by not delivering technical judgements but being seen to ensure real justice. They can bring back the sinking influence and relevance of their profession.”
It is not certain whether Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu ever told Professor Osinbajo, SAN, “I am not a lawyer”, but the former Vice-President himself said something that made that a possibility. At the 11th Bola Tinubu Colloquium in Abuja on 28 March, 2019, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo said about Asiwaju: “He’s not a lawyer, as many of us know, but there are few Nigerians who have provoked so many legal controversies and constitutional challenges resulting in several landmark judicial rulings … But how about electoral reform? In 2007, when our party then the ACN was rigged out of elections in Osun, in Ekiti, in Ondo and in Edo States … he invited me to his residence at Bourdillon and he said to me, ‘The only way we can possibly reclaim the states that have been taken from us … is going through the courts.’ And he said to me that the only way is by proving that there was multiple voting. … I said to him, … Asiwaju, ‘Nobody has ever proved an electoral case, an electoral petition by forensic evidence. There’s just no history of it.’”
Professor Osinbajo noted that in spite of telling him it was unrealistic, Asiwaju insisted that he should go and look for how to get it done. Professor Osinbajo complied and eventually 63 UK policemen were contracted to carry out forensic analyses to prove multiple thumb-printing of ballot papers. In the end, Asiwaju’s visionary and unprecedented legal propositions worked and the states wrongly taken over by the PDP were returned to the ACN through the court.
As Stephen R. Williams observes, “when my non-legal colleagues preface their statements with ‘I’m not a lawyer, but…’, it’s a nice way of saying, ‘Look, I know you went to law school and all, and have spent countless years of your life practicing in this area, but I am pretty sure you’re wrong and I’m right.’ In five small words, they attempt to dispatch of a lifetime of education and experience as they champion their simple idea they assume we [lawyers] overlooked.”
By their conduct in the turbulent 2023 Nigerian electoral season, many lawyers have substantially demystified themselves. Growing up in the Yoruba society, a popular adulating expression was “Barrister, Lawyer, akọ-níwájú-adájọ́” (‘The bold lawyer before the judge.”) It was never imagined that a time would come when these mythical legal personages would become justified targets of epithets and expressions such as “frivolous”, “vexatious”, “fishing expedition”, and be subjected to heavy fines for incompetence and/or abuse of court processes.
In fact, like the “I will tell my father for you” tantrums of spoilt nursery school kids, some senior lawyers approached the Supreme Court lamenting that the PEPC Justices abused Obi and Atiku’s lawyers. Are many of our senior lawyers turning out to be legal luminaries with feet of clay? The judiciary-denigrating lawyers seem not to be aware of or appear to ignore the admonition of the Yoruba proverb, “Ẹní bá na ìka kan sí ọmọnìkejì, mẹ́sàn-án yòókù tirẹ̀ ni.” (‘If you point one finger at another person, the remaining nine are pointing at yourself.’)
These judiciary-insulting lawyers also discountenance the perversity underscored in the proverb, “Idà ń wólé ara rẹ̀, ó lóhun ń ba àkọ̀ nínú jẹ́.” (‘The sword is demolishing its own house, but thinks it is making the scabbard miserable.’)
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