Restructuring, constitution amendment won’t solve Nigeria’s problems – Odinkalu

A former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof Chidi Odinkalu, shares his thoughts with AYOOLA OLASUPO, on the recurring rights abuse and the need for judicial independence in the country

REcently, you said that judicial appointments have become strong networks for corruption in Nigeria. Why did you say so?

This does not require a lot of elaboration. Judicial appointments have become a racket in self-dealing entirely unrelated to any rational criterion for being a judge. Now, senior leaders in the judiciary claim an entitlement to plant their children or their intimate partners as inheritors on the bench. The outgoing Chief Justice, Olukayode Ariwoola, and the current President of the Court of Appeal, Monica Dongban-Mensem, embody this tendency to an extent that stinks.

Olukayode Ariwoola in a mere two years as Chief Justice has advanced his son and his daughter-in-law to the bench. The President of the Court of Appeal got her daughter appointed judge of the Plateau High Court in January 2021; her son-in-law, the husband of that daughter appointed to the Court of Appeal in October 2023, and then the same daughter is now being moved from Plateau State to the Abuja High Court in another round of appointments. In the latest round of nominations to fill 12 vacancies in the High Court of the FCT, at least seven of those nominated are children or wives (or both) of senior judicial officers or politicians.

You could see again on the face of the most recent appointments that the Chief Justice, the President of the Court of Appeal, and the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court were manifestly involved in a network of quid pro quos. As I said, this makes judicial appointments hostage to factors that should not be reckoned with in that process. I could also add that when the only reason for appointing a person to the Bench is that their father, mother, boyfriend, or sugar daddy was or is a senior judicial figure. This is what I call the twin evils of ‘filialisation and genitalisation’ of the judicial office in Nigeria.

Why has human rights abuse been a major problem in the country? For instance, it was learnt that a law enforcement agency allegedly whisked away a journalist with FIJ recently without a warrant of arrest.

The abduction of the colleague with the FIJ, Mr Danaiel Ojukwu, was, I believe, the ninth of such instances in recent times under the present administration. Since his case, we have also had the abduction by men of the Nigeria Police on or about 22nd May of Madu Onuorah, the publisher of Global Upfront. These things have become too rampant. It is even worse that these are happening under the watch of people who claim to have fought in the trenches for democracy in Nigeria. I cannot understand how they can look at themselves in the mirror while these things happen. These are even worse than how things happened under the military.

At least then, they told you that they were acting under Decree No. 2. Now, police or the army show up in these vehicular convoys or helicopters and just abduct people with no information as to why, where to, or wherefore. They take their time, keep the person for as long as they wish with no access to family lawyers or medics, and then decide if they release the person at all. As we speak, there is this story of a lawyer from Ebonyi State, Mr Awoke, who vanished by the SSS on his way to do a case in Abuja in 2021. He was whisked away by security agents. The courts have also abdicated their duty to supervise this kind of abuse because of factors many of the courts are not ‘filialised’.

Was that not an infringement on his rights?

Of course, it is. The constitution is very clear in what it permits the state to do in such circumstances. There is no right or power in the state to arrest anyone without letting the person know why. In any case, the state must arraign the person within 48 hours if it fails to let him go on bail, or secure the proper judicial authorisation for their continued incarceration. In a country with the kind of insecurity challenges we now have, the real issue is much more than just whether or not this is a violation of personal rights. When the state resorts to operating like the same bandits and terrorists that it should be brought to account, every one of us should be worried. This course of conduct socialises an already dreadful insecurity situation on a scale that is unthinkable.

Sometimes ago, you said Nigerian political leaders were looking at socio-political symptoms of Nigeria rather than the real underlying illness. Can you throw more light on this?

You may wish to go back to the context of what I said. Nigeria’s problems are structural. They are caused by questions of integration among the diverse populations of Nigeria into the state; legitimacy of the government and its institutions; and the policy priorities we have chosen. For instance, there is no rational reason why Nigeria should be importing petrol while ensuring that the refineries which we have built at colossal costs are not functioning. Instead, Nigeria’s elite has made a policy choice that it is more profitable for them to ensure that the local refineries do not work so that they can make all the money they possibly can from short-changing the country.

Now, we then get into all manner of silly sovereign twists about petroleum subsidy and all that and people take that seriously. The reality is that as long as you are importing petrol in a country like Nigeria with a fragile foreign exchange context, you will never be able to fully leave market forces to calibrate the cost. So, given how central petrol is to public sentiment and regime security, there will always be a difference between the actual landing cost and what people can afford and that difference will be borne by the government. That is what you call a subsidy. As long as the country continues to mostly import its petrol needs, anyone who tells you they are eliminating “subsidy” lies.

Again, we can look at conflict in different parts of the country. We are a people without one shared national hero. All our national heroes are parochial, and we are so unsure of ourselves that we don’t make them the subject of learning among our children in school. National integration is not a serious matter for our national leadership. Instead, we try to band-aid the issue with either military deployments to shoot people who are asking questions that must be asked by involved citizens (even if they are awkward) or else we shut down dialogue altogether and criminalise it. So, yes, as a country, we are obsessed with symptoms and don’t care about the causes or the disease.

What can you say about all the economic reforms introduced by President Bola Tinubu since the beginning of his administration?

Let me ask you: are you better off today than you were on May 29, 2023? Mind you, it is the same party that has been in power since 2015. The manifesto of the APC in 2023 contained in actuality only two items: one was that it was the turn of Bola Tinubu. The other was that he would continue the policies of Muhammadu Buhari. That is all they promised. In terms of policies, he adlibbed into his inauguration address the end of petroleum subsidy. Then he said he was floating the naira.

They have walked back both policies without telling Nigerians that he has. They have tried to defend the naira, but it is clear that the resources are not there. So, they are resorting to beating up the Bureau the Change operators. But in reality, these are issues of demand, supply, productivity, and diversification. The demand for forex far outstrips the supply.

The supply is short because the country is not producing enough to earn forex. But how can we produce when the government is busy administering public holidays? Remember that for the last Eid, Nigeria began the holiday one day before Saudi Arabia and even added one more day to the bargain on top of the two days officially proclaimed. In the end, one full week was lost celebrating the Eid. We are ending petroleum subsidy but funding Hajj subsidy to the tune of N90bn. So, in summary, the major economic policies have been walked back.

From fuel subsidy removal to floating of the currency, increase in the interest rate to the hike in electricity tariff, how will you describe the approach employed by the Tinubu administration towards revamping the economy amid the current hardships experienced by average Nigerians in recent times?

Now the interest rate is nearly 27 per cent. Who will do business with that? They were not thought through and were uncoordinated. The government has reversed itself on most issues, the most recent being the cyber-security charge. The policy outcomes are predictably dreadful for ordinary citizens. I wish I could say something positive about the policy choices that the government has made but I cannot find the positive thing and they cannot either. Did you see Osita Okechukwu the other day when Charles Aniagolu asked him a similar question on Arise TV? He stuttered his way into perdition because there was nothing positive to say, and he was a party man. Every Nigerian feels the answer.

A year into Tinubu’s administration, how will you rate his performance so far?

We were told that Tinubu was prepared and had an eye for talent. Well, on this evidence all that is history. This Tinubu administration is uncoordinated, unprepared, and doing very abysmal. The major reason is that the government’s overriding goals are political not performance. The cabinet mostly reflects that and with an incapable cabinet, you cannot perform. So, what they have focused on is state capture which is antithetical to sensible governance.

This is all because of the legitimacy deficits at the foundation of the administration’s claim of a mandate to rule. So, burdened by that legitimacy deficit, they have found themselves unable to embrace a theory of change founded on credible performance. To be fair, Tinubu as a candidate was of the view that you could burglarise a mandate, grab it, and run away with it. Having done the first, and the second, he finds himself increasingly hobbled in being able to run with it.

Do you think the two major oppositions Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi would have performed better in the area of handling the economy if any of them had emerged as the president?

We have someone who is doing terribly, and you are asking me if the people who were denied the opportunity to show what they can do could have done better. Do you think that trying to turn me into a Babalawo is the answer to the fact that the person who grabbed it is unable to run with it?

Amendment of the constitution has been a bone of contention for years now. Don’t you think it’s high time the Federal Government heeded the call?

To heed what call, please? In my books, politicians make Nigerians fixate on amending the constitution like it cures anything. Nigeria’s problem is not words on any piece of paper; not at all. You can see what happened with the Electoral Act of 2022. It was supposed to be the country’s answer to a perfect election. No? In the hands of a crooked Independent National Electoral Commission leadership and judiciary, they tore up the law and produced perhaps the worst election in the country’s history. There is no flaw in Nigeria’s Constitution deep enough that good leadership cannot cure. But there is no amendment so adequate that Nigeria’s crooked institutions and leadership will not rubbish or dispense with. I think we are looking for the wrong kind of solutions in the wrong kind of places.

Will the amendment to some sections of the constitution pave the way for the restructuring we are talking about?

What exactly is restructuring? I have given you my inclination already. I think we are looking for magic fixes of the wrong kind. As Chinua Achebe said, the problem with Nigeria is leadership.

How can the judiciary be reformed to be more effective?

We need to sit down to discuss this. Judges cannot plant their intimate partners children and families on the bench without the consent or partnership of the politicians. So, ending the joint enterprise between the senior judges and the politicians will go a long way but the incentives do not exist at the moment for achieving that. If anything, the incentives are in the opposite direction. You see, the politicians consent to this because they believe it helps them in elections when they can get their favourite judges to make them winners of elections in which they lost.

That has been going on in this country for a long time. In the 2003 election, in Anambra State, two Justices of Appeal, who were bribed by politicians, were fired. The partnership and these crimes will be contained. So, in the absence of the right scheme of incentives, the next best thing will be institutional safeguards under the right leadership.

Some are suggesting that decentralisation of the Supreme Court will ease it from being overburdened. Do you believe that we should have more than one Supreme Court?

That is nonsensical. It is another of those characteristic ‘Nigerianisms’ of defaulting to symptoms. We have a fixation as Nigerians with the nativisation of every issue. If it is a court in each geo-political zone, then why should you call it Supreme? And if the colour of the law differs according to post-code, what kind of law is it? So, you have Yoruba supreme law which will be different from another supreme law; which will differ from Ezza supreme law; Kanuri or Shua supreme law. And then there will be the supreme law of the Hausa or the Fulbe or the Igbo or the Efik or Bini, or the Jukun. The idea is bonkers!