By Emmanuel Onwubiko
The universal symbol of justice is the statue of a very beautiful but blindfolded beauty queen wielding a sharp sword with which justice is dispensed to all irrespective of class, status or race.
The universal symbol of justice is the statue of a very beautiful but blindfolded beauty queen wielding a sharp sword with which justice is dispensed to all irrespective of class, status or race.
There is also a universal unanimity that justice must be
dispensed with timeliness since justice delayed is said to be justice denied.
In Nigeria however criminal and civil justice is slower than a
typical snail because of a number of reasons ranging from prosecutorial
bureaucratic bottlenecks created by professional incompetence of the police
which coordinates much of the prosecution of criminal cases and several other
extenuating factors including but certainly unlimited to outright corruption
and compromise on the part of the presiding judges.
Judicial corruption is therefore a hydra-headed monster that has
unleashed unwarranted delay in the dispensation of justice especially to the
poor and disadvantaged litigants.
Miss Cynthia Osokogu and the four undergraduates of University of Port Harcourt
(ALUU4) murdered by the villagers in Aluu ikwerre in
Rivers State on trumped up charges of theft have come to symbolize the most
abominable kind of delayed justice because these two cases have lingered for
almost four years without the killers being punished for these gruesome acts of
criminal depravity.
Miss Cynthia’s case is pathetic because she was lured into
her untimely but primitive death by her would-be business associates whom she
encountered via the social media of Facebook.