By Chidi Odinkalu
Joyce Banda, Malawi’s fourth (and first female) president, was in Nigeria earlier this month as guest of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Anambra State in South-East Nigeria, where she spoke at the 12th annual lecture in memory of the man after whom the university is named. It was also the 119th birthday of Nnamdi Benjamin Azikiwe, Nigeria’s founding president, and the month of the 26th anniversary of the death in 1997 of Malawi’s founding president.
At the lecture, Joyce Banda described Malawi’s judiciary as “award-winning” and many Nigerians in the audience, embarrassed by the contrast with theirs which wallows in infamy, broke out in spontaneous acclamation. The story of how Malawi’s judges became “award-winning” should be of interest to Nigerians.
