By Muiz Banire SAN

There is a Yoruba aphorism that says: Ida n ba ile ara e je, o ni oun n ba ako je. This literally translates to mean that the sword is destroying its own home but claims it is destroying the scabbard. It is a witty presentation of a case of an ingrate or a fool who thinks that by demonizing or bad-mouthing his benefactor he is making himself the darling of the listeners of his perennial complaints. There is no circumstantial relevance for this proverb than the short-sighted act of many lawyers in Nigeria today who think that it is better to disobey a court order than for their client to lose some temporary advantage. Such lawyers choose the option of destroying the integrity of the court of law whenever there is an order or judgment of the court against them.

Whereas, by Section 287 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), it is the duty of all persons and authorities to enforce the order or judgment of a court of law. What we have found is a situation where lawyers encourage litigants to act in disobedience of court order without taking cognizance of the fact that they themselves or their clients could be victims of such acts one day. These are the kinds of people that you will find to be so vociferous when such an act is perpetrated against them, forgetting that at one time or the other they had been proponents of such ignominious acts before. You find court orders being recklessly violated and disobeyed by ordinary citizens. It is done with the confidence that there are lawyers who will assist them in devising an ingenious way of bypassing the law. And you find lawyers arguing in court why a positive and valid order of court need not be obeyed by them or their clients, in most cases because they had filed an appeal, no matter how frivolous.

While it is an immutable statement of law that orders of court remain valid and binding until set aside, these members of the legal profession, and in many cases members of the Inner Bar, choose to violate the sanctity of court orders and judgments by dismantling the pedestal upon which their membership of the legal profession is erected. It is like a man digging the soil beneath the foundation of his own house while still inside the house. The Yoruba say a fence is dilapidating but the fool is claiming that it will not fall. Who is courageous enough to sleep under a falling structure? It seems lawyers in Nigeria have rather chosen to sleep comfortably under a falling structure, thereby proving the analogy of the sword and the scabbard.

Another scary development is one in which many senior lawyers descend on the judiciary in the media whenever a judgment does not favour them. You hear all manner of toilet adjectives and gutter language being heaped on a judge simply because his decision does not favour the fancy of the person or group of persons. Because of the persistence of this kind of practice, journalists have found it their pastime to analyze judgments of the court of law in which vocation they have no skill, knowledge or understanding to make a rational choice. Just exercising the right to freedom of expression has been construed to mean a licence to constitute themselves to higher justices with the mandate to sit on appeal on decisions of a court, the Supreme Court inclusive. You hear all manner of banalities from lawyers who are supposed to know better.

You wake up to listen to ignominious condemnation from lawyers describing judges and their judgments in derogatory terms. They do this as if they had no right of appeal in cases of decisions by the High Court or the Court of Appeal, whereas no one can abrogate such right until the beneficiary of the right decides not to exercise it. While it is conceded that members of the public have a right to criticize decisions of courts, such ought to be done with high level of respect for the institution as once we succeed in destroying the judiciary and the people lose confidence in the institution, all that we are left with is anarchy and resort to self-help. In such a situation, no one is immune from being a victim. We ought to have learnt from cases of the high and mighty, the untouchable government officials of a particular era who wielded all powers of state and failed to recognize the sanctity of court orders and judgments. At such heights of dominance and recognition, such officials of state trampled on the judiciary and its judgments, as if the two were slaves that were worthy of no respect.

When such officials now leave the office in which they had been considered to be demi-gods and potentates at a time, it is the same court of law that they turn to for protection of their rights, which are in turn being abused by the new powers that be. Examples are in legion of such disgraceful developments in Nigeria, the latest being the case of Godwin Emefiele, the disgraced governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who, until the last minute of his bubbling and bumbling arrogance, believed that he shall forever remain relevant and in power. He chose to disobey court orders with impunity. He was the Kaabiyesi that could not be queried by any court of law in the land. He enjoyed power so much that he became so drunk and started sleeping in the cesspool of lawlessness. He was aided by persons and authorities who were afflicted by the same tsetse fly of hubris. His lawyers then continued to egg him on forgetting that one day he shall leave that office. It is the office that survives the appointee, so says a Yoruba proverb. The same office is today occupied by another person who ought to learn from the downfall and experience of his predecessor.

Unfortunately, we havedifferent kind of creatures who fail to learn from what happened to people who preceded them in office or power. Omuti gbagbe ise is an aphorism the Yoruba use to describe a drunk that momentarily forgets his poverty, boasting of his unlimited wealth and influence. When the spell of inebriation frees his brain and reality dawns on him, he finds himself in his desolate and destitute state of powerlessness and irrelevance. Remember the case of the super cop, Abba Kyari. Remember so many men of yesterday’s relevance that have fallen from their Don Quixote horse. The Yoruba calls the horse esin abomu which figuratively means the horse of hubris and recklessness that inflicts its rider with a deep nose wound at the end. The wound on the nose is always prominent, painful and difficult to heal.

At the apogee of their relevance, they treated with impunity the judiciary and its orders that sought to control their recklessness. They disobeyed court orders without realizing that they would need same one day. That is why it is not good to sow seeds of lawlessness. We shall all reap its consequence. A judge’s pronouncement is protected both constitutionally and statutorily. It enjoys sanctity and respect until it is set aside no matter how unsound it may sound to you. It is not within the remit of a citizen, whether learned or otherwise, to condemn a judicial decision and heap invectives on the judge. That is not to say that a judge’s decision cannot be criticized but it must be done with reverence to the institution upon which pedestal the judge is making decisions. The judge’s decision is not final except in the case of the Supreme Court.

It is this reckless and lawless practice of excoriating the judiciary on the television, radio and other media of communication that has led to citizens holding the judiciary in contempt. It is this disgraceful act of seeking public approbation by dis-approbating the judiciary that has led to impunity we witness in public space where people disobey court orders with reckless abandon.

You find a journalist who has no training in legal interpretation of the law or document applying what he considers to be logic and thereby denigrates the judiciary in most scurrilous of language, wagging his tongue like a rabid dog.

No one, in any sane society, destroys an institution like the judiciary and believes that it is doing a great job.

When lawyers desecrate the Bench, where will the Bar turn to for adjudication of cases? How do we sustain ourselves in business when we have made an average litigant to lose confidence in the judiciary. We do not lose cases anymore except to describe the judge in unprintable terms and ascribe the cause of losing the case to corruption on the Bench. In many cases, there is no reason to make such accusations but you find lawyers believing that in order to sustain their reputation before their clients, the best is to demonize the judge. It is nothing but the case of a sword destroying its own home thinking it is injuring and inflicting anger on the scabbard.

By the time the scabbard is worn and torn, there will be nothing to protect the sword from rust. It is this scenario that led to recent impudence by which a section of our politicians and their followers think that the judiciary can be intimidated into giving them a favourable judgment. Cases are decided on hard facts and law, for God’s sake. Where your case is bad, no judge, worth his salt, shall award you judgment to suit your ego. No amount of intimidation and condemnation will alter the law in your favour. The earlier lawyers realize this and refrain from instigating their clients to disobey court orders or tarnish the image of judges, the better for all and the system.

The judiciary is still the last hope of the common man no matter its imperfections. Where you disagree with a court order or judgment, which is your constitutional right to so do, then proceed on appeal without having to sound sanctimonious or feign victimhood of a corrupt system. The judge has done his own and you have a right to appeal. Go on appeal and strengthen your case.

Other countries we praise for their judicial achievements do not have their citizens excoriating their judiciary the way we do. They do not desecrate their institutions the way we do. We have forgotten that when you sell your relatives cheap, no one will price them as precious. It is the same way we describe Nigeria, as if it was a zoo unfit for human habitation whereas foreigners have found it a place of wealth and prosperity. Nigerians commit all manner of atrocities abroad only to find excuse in the inadequacies of the country to justify their lawlessness.

Foreigners then look at us and treat us they way we have presented ourselves. Many Nigerians in order to gain rights of asylum abroad, describe our beautiful customs and traditions in the vilest language forgetting that the only manual that many foreigners would read about our customs and heritage is the narrative we give about ourselves. While doing it, we act like the proverbial sword that destroys its own home believing it is injuring and venting anger on the scabbard. I must not be misconstrued from all the above to be saying that our judiciary is perfect. There are certainly still cases of imperfections, ignorance and corruption of some few judges that needs to be urgently addressed.

However, we cannot afford to continue to defaecate and urinate in the pool of water required for our survival and thirst. The contemporary case of lawyers is best summed in the Yoruba proverb of ‘Epa n pa ara e , o ni oun pa aja, ojo aja ba ku lepa o ku’ which means that a dog tick kills itself, it claims to be killing the dog. The day the dog dies, epa too will die. We definitely need protection from ourselves.