An Itinerant Jurist, An Unfinished Honeymoon And A Judicial Transaction

 By Chidi Odinkalu

Supreme Courts are places where lawyers and judges regularly encounter one another. On 17 November 2023, one of such encounters occurred, not in the regular halls of Nigeria’s Supreme Court in Abuja but in its Mosque.

There, Abdulaziz Waziri, a Justice of Appeal wedded Zaynab Bashir, a Judge of Nigeria’s National Industrial Court. The wedding reception followed thereafter at a well-appointed venue in up-market Maitama, in Abuja.

Justice Waziri has been nothing if not busy this season. For his duty station in this election petition appeal season, Justice Waziri was stationed in Jos, Plateau State, where the Justices of Appeal, in the state from which the President of the Court of Appeal hails, have been busy re-writing the results of the elections, taking seats from one party and generously handing them to another party on the bases of jurisprudence that can most charitably be described as extraordinarily specious. 

Bulkachuwa: Red Rag To A Bull

By Banji Ojewale

We are not in Spain. But there, it is claimed that bulls are enraged when red flags flutter before them.   The matador, the man who fights and kills a bull in a sport, gets the beast into the game by waving the red cloth. The indifferent, motionless animal only charges at his opponent when it sights his muleta, the stick with a crimson swathe employed in the final third of the bullfight…We know what follows:  savagery, slaughter and sanguinary cheers from the spectators.

*Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa 

In Nigeria, we appear to be in for a bullfight over the Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa affair. She is the President of the Appeal Court, who has been asked to head the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal looking into the suit of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and its Presidential Candidate, Atiku Abubakar. They are challenging the victory of Muhammadu Buhari in the poll of February 2019.