NIGERIA JUDICIARY: MOST NEEDED MOST NEGLECTED

There is one serious route not yet travelled by Nigeria in her quest for viable elections. It is the way of an enabled, enhanced and encouraged judiciary. Our attempts at any judicial reform have remained at the level of abstraction and total unseriousness. The judiciary – the youngest partner in the trinity of government – is the arm of government from which much is expected but to which very little is given. It is the arm of government that is shut out of the budgetary process and yet, it is the arm we expect to perform the magic of keeping society safe and crime-free. With its stoic lack of representation in the budgetary process,

the judiciary has, over time, learnt to accept whatever fate befalls it with equanimity. Year after year, the two other branches of government – the Legislature and the Executive – appropriate to themselves more than they can ever need, thus leaving the judiciary with crumbs.

Whereas, it is the judiciary that really needs the money, it has had to accept whatever it is given and in turn, it has had to do the little it could and society has remained the worse for it.

There is no other aspect of our lives that has been as over-criminalized and over-regulated as our elections. Even without the elections and the electoral cases, our courts   are already over-stretched, having to try 21st century cases under conditions worse than those of the 18th  century – conditions of antiquity and gross inadequacy, where up till now, in most of our courts, judgements and proceedings are recorded in long-hand.

In essence, while the caseload and the prison population have grown in geometric proportion, the available facilities have remained static. As happens in the halls of residence, so-called, in our tertiary institutions, 50 people have had to be clamped into spaces originally reserved for five, with the attendant health hazards that go with such clumsy arrangements.

All this has resulted in the over-bloated cases of awaiting trial in which most suspects have had to spend, in detention, much longer time than the terms of imprisonment prescribed for their original offences. We search, but in vain, ways and means of decongesting our courts. Yet, we are happy when we allocate virtually nothing to the judiciary in our annual appropriations.

To the already over-stretched judiciary, we must add the election tribunals that flood our courts every election year. Whereas the cases at the tribunals should be expeditiously handled so that only actual winners get sworn into office, things are so tardy that many tribunal cases outlive the tenure of office of those applying for their review.

Lately, judicial officers have started crying out that our judges are so few that they are unable to handle election cases with the desired speed. There is the view that if we were to put all other cases on hold after the general elections, all the judges in the country would still be unable to cope with the caseloads emanating from the election tribunals.

Some believe, and perhaps rightly so, that this country goes nowhere until we determine to punish electoral offenders commensurately. The thinking here is that it is folly to be wise where ignorance is bliss. And not until we begin to punish those who commit atrocities during elections, any talk of electoral reforms comes to naught. Adherents to this view call for the immediate establishment of electoral offences tribunals.

Again, this type of thinking probably informed the action of our legislators when in the Electoral Act 2010 (as variously amended), they attempted to make criminals of everybody, wherein every step taken on every election is criminalised. The table of electoral offences, usually conspicuously displayed in every polling unit, criminalises every step we take and most of them are never enforced because they are simply unenforceable.

In the face of our over-congested court system aggravated by inadequately equipped election tribunals, how feasible and how reasonable would it be, at this time, to put another layer of tribunal on our already confused system? One is reminded of the case of that lad who killed a small rat but had no fire to roast it; meanwhile, he is shouting that the big rat must not be allowed to escape! Effort dissipated on laws that are unenforceable is like time spent sleeping with a barren woman.

A cursory look at the table of electoral offences suggests that if we were to aim at prosecuting the cases therein, the Nigeria police plus the judges and court personnel, as currently constituted, would be grossly inadequate. But there is good news: With time, most of these offences will disappear on their own.

For instance, the idea of cash for vote is despicable. Yet, you get to the polling unit and find virtually everybody hawking his vote openly. You are outlawing the idea of financial inducement to security and election personnel and you know very well that none of the contending political parties goes into an election without robust budgetary outlays for security and electoral personnel. After all, it is an open secret that to these personnel, election season is a time of harvest.

They fight and sometimes offer bribes to be put on such schedules. Here, everybody is guilty as charged but we are consoled that in a properly prosecuted war against corruption and indiscipline, all the vices will perish. There is hope.

Sometime soon, ballot box snatchers and ballot stuffers will be out of business. By the time electronic voting comes on stream, there will be no ballot boxes to snatch and no ballots to stuff. In the change to come, gun runners will also be out of business. With everyone on his own, they will find no crowd to shoot at.

Whichever way we go, there is no alternative to the proper and adequate funding of the Judiciary. A nation on the move is a nation that has 21st century facilities in its 21st century criminal justice system. This is one area where mere lip service has no place.