- The former military Head of State equally stated that justice had become commodified and transactional in Nigeria, which portends danger for the nation’s stability
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo says the state of Nigeria’s democracy is troubling, noting that justices now sell judgment.
He asserted that the judiciary has become “deeply compromised”, adding that corruption among judges has turned Nigerian courts into “court of corruption rather than courts of justice”.
The ex-President expressed his concern in his new book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’, published by the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library.
Obasanjo bemoaned what he described as the “steady decline of the judiciary’s integrity”.
“The reputation of the Nigerian judiciary has steadily gone down from the four eras up till today. The rapidity of the precipitous fall, particularly in the Fourth Republic, is lamentable,” he wrote.
The former military Head of State equally stated that justice had become commodified and transactional in Nigeria, which portends danger for the nation’s stability.
“The great fear of most well-meaning Nigerians and good friends of Nigeria is that where ‘justice’ is only available to the highest bidder, despair, anarchy, and violence would substitute justice, order, and hope.
“I went to a state in the North about ten years after I left public office. Next to the government guest house was a line of six duplex buildings.
“The governor pointed to the buildings and stated that they belonged to a judge who put them up from the money he made from being the chairman of election tribunals,” Obasanjo said.
He accused the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, of undermining the electoral process since 2015.
“No wonder politicians do not put much confidence in an election which the INEC of Professor Mahmood Yakubu polluted and grossly undermined to make a charade,” he added
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