Who Will Tell The Chief Justice?

By Chidi Odinkalu

Nigeria’s Supreme Court held a special session on 27 November 2023 to formally usher in a new legal year. It provides an occasion for a retrospective on the performance of Nigeria’s judiciary by its leaders in a season of unprecedented levels of public angst over the political weaponisation of judges and a set piece moment to compare notes on the dysfunctions that afflict the judicial system. The outcome was interesting to the point of anti-climactic.

*CJN Olukayode Ariwoola

On that occasion, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Olukayode Ariwoola, also administered the oath on 57 new entrants into the coven of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN). One of the new SANs was born in 1981. Two years later, in 1983, his dad, a lawyer, began proceedings against Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Ltd, a multinational company in the hydrocarbons sector, in Warri. At the time, Warri was part of Bendel State, which was created by the military a mere seven years earlier in 1976.

Nigeria: A Captured Temple Of Justice

 By Chidi Odinkalu

In July 2023, the Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, presided over a meeting of the National Judicial Council, NJC, to appoint his own son a judge of the Federal High Court. On October 4, as his father presided over the swearing in of his own son, it fell to the Old Students Association of Ikolaba Grammar School, which the new judge attended for his secondary education, to defend his appointment with the cringe-inducing statement that “contrary to claims in some quarters, Ariwoola Jr.’s appointment as a judge was not on the influence of his father, who is the CJN”. They lacked the standing to say this, of course, because they could not possibly know how he was appointed.

 In June 2023, the NJC convened to approve the elevation of the President of the Court of Appeal’s son-in-law. This individual has previously been appointed as a judge of the National Industrial Court of Nigerian, NICN, a mere six years earlier in 2017.