The Nigerian judiciary and the travails of rule of law

Authors

  • Terry Andrews Odisu School of Marine Technology, Burutu, Delta State, Nigeria

Keywords:

Rule of law, Injunction, Judicial precedent, Conflicting verdicts, Rule of men

Abstract

Nigerians are increasingly losing hope and confidence in the nation’s judicial system because of the unethical conduct of some judicial rascals. Some judgements have brought embarrassment to the nation. Verdicts are no longer based on facts of law. Through indirect observation: reading newspapers, listening to news on TV, It is established that a large number of judgements delivered were based on rule of men, and status differentials instead of rule of law. It is recommended that the judiciary be urgently overhauled with a view to flushing out the bad eggs or the judicial rascals.

References

Professor Chidi Odinkalu: Supreme court verdict on rivers state governorship election is reckless, channels TV interview sunday politics, February 7th 2015.

Vanguard Newspapers, 29th January, 2013. Yakubu Yusufu jailed for 2 years with option of a fine of N750, 000 for stealing 23 billion naira from the Police Pension Fund.

PM News, January 17th, 2011. Suspects discharged and acquitted after spending 15 years in detention.

ThisDay Newspapers, March 3rd, 2016. NJC reprimanded Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia.

Vanguard Newspapers, April 5th, 2016. NJC queried Justice Mohammed Yunusa.

Premium Times, September 17th, 2015. Court injunction granted to indicted politicians to insulate them from prosecution.

Vanguard Newspapers, November 19th, 2015. NJC removed Justice Lambo Akanbi from office.

The News Chronicle, December 14th, 2015. Conflicting verdict as judicial precedent ignored in nullifying Senator Uche Ekwunife’s Election.

National Mirror, December 15th, 2012. Lawyer arrested while trying to bribe a police officer.

The Nation Newspapers, December 19th, 2015. INEC officials threatened to write their wills before coming to conduct rerun election in Rivers State.

Premium Times, December 31st, 2015. Court set a judicial precedent by upholding the election of Darius Ishaku of Taraba State on the ground that the nomination done by one political party cannot be challenged by another political party.

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Published

2016-09-18

How to Cite

Andrews Odisu, T. . (2016). The Nigerian judiciary and the travails of rule of law. Scientific Journal of Review, 5(9), 449-452. Retrieved from http://sjournals.com/index.php/sjr/article/view/92

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 9 (2016): September

Section

Law

License

Copyright (c) 2020 Terry Andrews Odisu

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.