In Nigeria, A Judge Is Not Above Or Beyond Investigation

 By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged…. Bible, Matthew 7:1-2 (NKJV)

In the first six months of 1986, Nigeria’s Supreme Court delivered two judgments with far reaching consequences for the lives and careers of two senior judges of the High Court. If the facts were to recur today, 40 years later, neither of these cases would come to trial. This fact says a lot about how the standards of judicial conduct and ethics as well as accountability for both have evolved – for worse – over the intervening period.

*Odinkalu

Donald Ikomi was a judge and Chairman of the Armed Robbery and Firearms Tribunal of Bendel State when – together with his cook, Reuben Udoh, and one Martins Ekezoka – he was arraigned in December 1985 on a charge of murder.

That Mischievous ‘Don’t Vote, Go To Jail’ Bill!

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Nigerian politicians are a funny lot who have perfected the inelegant art of majoring in minor things, which explains why, at a time like this when the country is at a socio-economic and political crossroads, the House of Representatives is going around chasing rats while the house – Nigeria – is on fire.

Their puerile antics reminds me of the July 13, 2000 book, This House Has Fallen: Midnight in Nigeria, by Karl Maier which chronicled the problems threatening Nigeria’s existence. “We… ignore Nigeria at our peril,” Maier, a London Independent correspondent stationed in Africa for more than a decade, admonished the world. Sadly, 25 years thence, those problems are not only still prevalent but have, indeed, become metastatic cancer.