Only a self-declared imbecile will believe that Honourable Chief Justice Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed, a PhD in law, who has been a Judge for over 40 years and has served in the Supreme Court for more than twelve years, hitherto will not know the meaning of technicality when applied in law. Conversely, only a quack doctor who has diagnosed Chief Justice Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed as demented will believe that he does not know the meaning of legal technicality after all the years he has spent in the judiciary. Having said that, I wish to inform you that I have not had any personal contact with Chief Justice Tanko Mohammed to discuss his performance in the Senate hearing that preceded his confirmation. It is for that reason I expressed myself as you have quoted, ''Justice Tanko Mohammed seemed decided to Nollywood Abaribe and his cohorts…" The word 'seemed' would not have been deployed if I was 100% certain that he was playing to the gallery. In the Nigeria theatre house called National Assembly, the confirmed Chief Justice was "driving aeroplane" where in 2013, Professor Chinedu Ositadinma Ndubisi Nebo was driving demons and witches. At the Senate hearing for his confirmation as Minister of Power, on Wednesday, 23 January 2013, the learned Professor of Electricity while answering to the question of what he would do to end epileptic power supply to Nigerians said, "If the President deploys me in the power sector, I believe that given my performance at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, UNN, where as a Chancellor, I drove out the witches and demons, God will also give me power to drive out demons in the Power Sector." The Professor of electricity was not ridiculed for blaming darkness in Nigeria on witches and demons by our technically handicapped Nigerian intellectuals. The question in the main issue is : Was the case of Adeleke vs Oyetola at the Supreme Court resolved on technical legality? The answer is resounding no.
I share your concern for the negative political and economic situation in Nigeria. The slide into political and economic backwardness would have been halted and reversed if the third arm of the government, the judiciary, has played its noble role of dispensing justice according to the law and the constitution. When judges decide to share looted public funds, approved for socio-economic welfare of Nigerians with the looters, Nigeria can never develop positively. Instead of that irrelevant question about legal technicality why did Abaribe not ask Chief Justice Tanko Muhammed about corruption cases that have been pending in courts since 2007 without conclusions? Why are Nigerian Judges prohibiting the arrest, detention, interrogation and prosecution of treasury looters by granting looters interim, interlocutory and perpetual injunctions against investigating agencies. The judiciary in Nigeria is the last hope of the looters and by implication it is the cemetery of ordinary Nigeria's masses.
S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Ezinwanyi Adam <eziimark@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 22 juli 2019 06:31
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Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A "Technically" Incompetent Chief Justice of Nigeria
Skickat: den 22 juli 2019 06:31
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Ämne: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A "Technically" Incompetent Chief Justice of Nigeria
"With that knowledge in mind Justice Tanko Muhammed seemed decided to Nollywood Abaribe and his cohorts by talking about technicality of objects and not technicality in law" S. Kadiri
I would like to know if the above statement was Hon. Justice Tanko Muhammed's reason or simply your own understanding of his overall performance at the Senate. So, which is it?
Although the followership is expected to play a complementary role in supporting the state structure, it is the basic responsibility of the leadership to ensure that every system of governance works. No matter what or how it had been in the past administrations, the present administration has present, pressing and urgent responsibilities to set the tone of state administration right in the interest of the suffering masses. Isn't that what they offered to do?
I mean... nothing is simply working in today's Nigeria. As Nigeria is today, it is educationally, economically, politically, national security wise and even the exchange rate of Naira to Dollar wise worse than it has ever been.
We are tired of the usual platitudes and semantics of government functionaries. Nigerians require solutions to their problems, a structural reawakening, a refocusing of the activities of the state in the direction of national interest, that is the interest of the generality of the citizenry. Nothing less, but we need much more.
I hope everything good comes...
Ezinwanyi
On Sun, 21 Jul 2019, 20:43 Salimonu Kadiri, <ogunlakaiye@hotmail.com> wrote:
--Sequel to the appearance of Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed in the Nigerian Senate for screening for confirmation as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, the most talented and discoverer of English Language in Nigeria, Professor Farooq A. Kperogi, deduced from the Senate screening that Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed does not know the meaning of 'technicality' in law. Blaming the purported inability of Chief Justice Mohammed to know the legal meaning of 'technicality' on Buhari, the most talented discoverer of English language in Nigeria lectured readers thus, ''The law of attraction says like attracts like, which explains why Muhammadu Buhari is a magnet for mediocrities. Almost all his appointees are, like him, underwhelmingly, intellectually incurious rubes. Justice Tanko is the latest instantiation of Buhari's passion for attracting and elevating people who mirror his own well-known incompetence witlessness.'' Readers of the above are made to believe that the judicial career of Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed began in 2015 when Buhari became President of Nigeria and has now appointed the former as Chief Justice of Nigeria. However, Farooq soon contradicted himself that Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed is a PhD holder in law and had served as a judge for nearly 40 years of which more than the last 12 years was at the Supreme Court. Evidently, Buhari has played no role in the career of Justice Mohammed whose elevation to the substantive Chief Justice of Nigeria was recommended by the National Judicial Council (NJC) to President Buhari who forwarded the name of Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed to the Senate for approval as instructed by the 1999 Constitution. Screening of Justice Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed was turned into a theatre by the PDP opposition where yet to be confirmed Chief Justice was being indirectly asked to review a Supreme Court's Judgment on a political case.
The PDP Senate Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe had asked Tanko if he thought it made legal and moral sense to pervert the merit of cases on mere technicality in view of the 2018 case of Akeredolu vs Abraham in which Abaribe claimed that the Supreme Court had said, technicality in the administration of justice shuts out justice …..' It is therefore better to have a case heard and determined on its merit than to leave the court with the shield of victory obtained on mere technicality.'' Abaribe asserted thereafter, this year, that the Supreme Court ruled against PDP's Gubernatorial candidate in Osun State on frivolous technicality. The case of Olusegun Abraham vs Rotimi Akeredolu was not the same as Nurudeen Ademola Adeleke vs Adegboyega Isiaka Oyetola. With that knowledge in mind Justice Tanko Muhammed seemed decided to Nollywood Abaribe and his cohorts by talking about technicality of objects and not technicality in law. Segun Abraham, APC, had filed a case in the High Court against the emergence of Rotimi Akeredolu, APC, as the gubernatorial candidate for the November 2016 governorship election in Ondo State. At the High Court, Rotimi Akerdolu's counsel opined that the case was filed after the days required by law and it should be thrown out. The High Court decided on the contrary whereby Akeredolu appealed against the decision to the Court of Appeal. It was actually the Court of Appeal that ruled that it is better to have a case heard and determined on its merit than to leave the court with the shield of victory obtained on mere technicality when it decided against Akeredolu, and not the Supreme Court. Rotimi Akeredolu appealed to the Supreme Court which finally struck off Segun Abraham's case against Rotimi Akeredolu for lacking competence since it was filed 28 days after the cause of action instead of 14 days as stipulated by law. There was nothing technical in the Supreme Court ruling in the case between Abraham vs Akeredolu but the sake of political theatre Abaribe extrapolated Appeal Court's statement on the Supreme Court.
The case of Adeleke vs Oyetola, although political, it was not related to that of Abraham vs Akeredolu. Osun gubernatorial election was held on 22 September 2018. The results for the two main parties as declared by INEC showed that Nuredeen Ademola Adeleke, PDP, won 254, 698 votes, while Isiaka Adegboyega Oyetola, APC, won 254,345 votes. Victory margin was 354 votes. However, 3,498 votes were cancelled in seven polling units and the INEC declared the election inconclusive pending a supplementary election on 27 September 2018. That was not the first, second, or third time, election had been declared inconclusive by INEC in Nigeria and supplementary elections had been held to get a winner. After the supplementary elections, results declared by INEC showed that the APC won 255,505 votes while PDP won 255,023 votes. Isiaka Adegboyega Oyetola of the APC was declared Governor elect of Osun State. Displeased with the result, the PDP candidate, Adeleke challenged the result at the election tribunal consisting of a three-member panel. The election petition tribunal nullified the election of Oyetola and declared, instead, Adeleke elected on the ground that the supplementary elections of September 27, 2018 was illegal. One member of the three-man panel dissented to the tribunal judgment. Oyetola appealed to the Appeal Court where a five-member panel heard the appeal. In a majority decision of four to one, the Appeal Court ruled that the supplementary election of 27 September 2018 was legal and noticed that the judge who issued the majority decision at the tribunal, Peter Obiorah, was absent on 6 February 2019 when the issue of supplementary election was tabled before the tribunal, and could not have viewed the issue squarely. Therefore, the Appeal Court ruled that Oyetola was dully elected as Osun State Governor. Adeleke appealed to the Supreme Court and a 7-member panel led by Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour heard the case. In a five to two decision, the Supreme Court declared the 27 September rerun election legal. Citing several legal precedents, Justice Bode Rhodes-Vivour said that failure of Justice Obiorah to sit on 6 February 2019 rendered the proceedings of that day a nullity and the entire judgment a nullity. The majority decision noted that despite the fact that Justice Peter Obiorah was not on seat in the Court on 6 February 2019, he copiously copied in his lead judgment the proceedings of that day in his judgment. That was judicial hearsay and a fundamental legal error. From the aforesaid accounts, Farooq A. Kperogi must either be extremely dishonest or mere advertising his expertise in pettifoggery when he wrote, "The Supreme Court ruled against Adeleke just because one of the (three) panellists on the election tribunal that had restored Adeleke's stolen mandate was absent for one day out of the 180 days the election tribunal tried the petition." Adeleke had participated in the supplementary elections of 27 September 2018 and when the outcome did not favour him he approached the tribunal to declare it illegal. For reasons best known to the lead judge of the tribunal, Justice Peter Obiorah, he was absent when the legality of the rerun elections was argued in court, yet it was the illegality of the rerun election that his lead judgment was based. There was no legal merit in the request of Adeleke to the Court to declare rerun elections illegal and the judgment was not as a consequence of legal technicality. It is sad when misinformation becomes the basis for reinforcing false opinions.
The hypocrites talking about legal technicalities now, where were they when the DSS raided the houses of some judges including two Supreme Court Justices on 7 October 2016 and huge sums of bunkered national and international currencies were recovered? In Justice Sylvester Ngwuta of the Supreme Court's home, total sums of N38.358 million, $319,596 and £25, 915 cash were recovered. Subsequent EFCC showed that Justice Ngwuta had spent over N500 million between January and October 2016 on building a mansion, even though his salary and allowances per annum did not exceed N24 million. Justice Ngwuta wrote the NJC that the monies found in his house were earnings from the sales of rice and palm oil. Of course he failed produce evidence in support of his side trade. He was later charged in Court. Similarly, the EFCC uncovered how a Federal High Court Judge, Bayelsa Division, Justice Hyeladzira Nganjiwa had unlawfully received, between2013 and 2015, through his bank accounts $260,000 and N8.6 million from people having cases in his court. The cases were dismissed in courts on the ground that regardless of fact that any judicial officer has committed a crime, he cannot be tried in court unless he has first been disciplined and recommended for dismissal by the NJC. The Courts have conferred extra- constitutional immunity on Judicial officers even though they are not included in the constitutional provisions of those who enjoy immunity while in office. We are not talking about legal technicalities but illegal conferment of immunity from prosecution. In cases as narrated above, there was no uproar from Farooq and others. There was no uproar when Chief Justice Onnoghen was caught with bank accounts overflowing with dollars, euro and naira which were undeclared in his asset declarations and instead of sending him to jail he was honoured with N2.5 billion retirement benefits.S. Kadiri
Från: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> för Farooq A. Kperogi <farooqkperogi@gmail.com>
Skickat: den 20 juli 2019 05:24
Till: USAAfrica Dialogue <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Ämne: USA Africa Dialogue Series - A "Technically" Incompetent Chief Justice of NigeriaSaturday, July 20, 2019
A "Technically" Incompetent Chief Justice of Nigeria
By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
A trending video clip of the senate confirmation hearing of Chief Justice of Nigeria Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad which shows him betraying mortifying ignorance of the meaning of the term "technicality" aggrandizes the point I made in my April 20, 2019 column titled "Atiku's Citizenship and Buhari's Illiterate Lawyers" about Buhari's love affair with incompetence and mediocrity.
I noted that, "The law of attraction says like attracts like, which explains why Muhammadu Buhari is a magnet for mediocrities. Almost all his appointees are, like him, underwhelming, intellectually incurious rubes." Justice Tanko is the latest instantiation of Buhari's passion for attracting and elevating people who mirror his own well-known incompetence and witlessness.
First, here is a brief background for people who are not clued in on the exchange that exposed the soft underbelly of the awkward, cringe-worthy ignorance of Nigeria's Chief Justice. Senate Minority Leader Enyinnaya Abaribe asked Tanko if he thought it made legal and moral sense to pervert the merit of cases before the Supreme Court on the basis of "mere technicality."
Abaribe reminded Tanko that, "In the 2018 case of Akeredolu vs Abraham, the Supreme Court said, 'technicality in the administration of justice shuts out justice.'…It is therefore better to have a case heard and determined on its merit than to leave the court with the shield of victory obtained on mere technicality."
Nevertheless, in spite of the legal precedent the Supreme Court has set regarding the primacy of legal merit of cases over their technicalities in the dispensation of justice, Abaribe pointed out, the Supreme Court this year ruled against PDP's Ademola Adeleke of Osun State not because his case lacked merit but on the basis of a frivolous technicality.
All this passed over Tanko's head. He had not the haziest idea what "technicality" meant and went off on a puzzling tangent. "Permit me, distinguished senators, to ask what a technicality is," he said. "It is something which is technical. By definition, it is something that is not usual and may sometimes defy all the norms known to a normal thing. Now, we have technicalities in our laws and this is because these laws we have inherited were from the British."
Ha! You can't make this stuff up! He continued: "Now, if something which is technical comes before the court, what we do in trial courts is to ask people who are experts in that field to come and testify. We rely on their testimony because they are experts in that field.
"Ask me anything about an aeroplane, I don't know. Ask me to drive [sic] an aeroplane, I am sure if you are a passenger and they told you that the flight is going to be driven [sic] by Honourable Justice Ibrahim Tanko, I am sure you will get out of the plane because it is something that requires technicality and if I have any technicality, my technicality will only be limited to law."
If I didn't watch the video myself, I would have dismissed the response attributed to Tanko as an ill-willed spoof intentionally designed to diminish his estimation. Although I know that spectacular ignorance and vulgar loyalty are the most crucial criteria to be considered worthy of consideration for appointment in Buhari's regime, I am still distressed both by the disconcerting know-nothingness Tanko evinced in his response to Abaribe and by the fact that he is head of Nigeria's judiciary.
Tanko isn't just any judge; he is the Chief Justice of Nigeria. He didn't just study law; he has a Ph.D. in law from one of Nigeria's finest universities— at a time when Nigeria's education supposedly still had integrity. And facility for and proficiency in language (in Nigeria's case the English language) and logical disputation are as central to the job of lawyers and judges as farming instruments are to the job of being a farmer.
If Tanko doesn't know what a "technicality" is, what does he really know? Every averagely educated person knows that in conversational English, a "technicality" is an unimportant detail, a triviality. In law, it means a procedural trifle. This legal sense of the term is now so commonplace that it has diffused to everyday discourse. Why would a judge of nearly 40 years' standing, a PhD in law, and the head of the nation's judicial branch of government not know what a technicality is?
But what is even more disquieting is that Tanko inadvertently revealed ignorance of the precedent established by the Supreme Court in which he has served for more than 12 years. Had he read the Supreme Court judgement Abaribe referenced, he would have at least encountered the word "technicality." He apparently wasn't, probably still isn't, aware that the Supreme Court had even laid a precedent that says the Court should not use procedural inanities to subvert the legal merit of cases.
It must be precisely this ignorance that led the Supreme Court to dismiss Ademola Adeleke's bid to retrieve his stolen mandate from the current governor of Osun State. The Supreme Court didn't even evaluate Adeleke's weighty, water-tight case against Oyetola; it ruled against Adeleke just because one of the panelists on the election tribunal that had restored Adeleke's stolen mandate was absent for one day out of the 180 days the election tribunal tried the petition.
That was a bewildering reversal of the Supreme Court's own precedent. All over the world, courts rely on precedents to adjudicate current cases. Precedents may be modified, but they are rarely overturned without a compelling reason, certainly not within a few years after they were established. That is what legal scholars call stare decisis, that is, the doctrine that courts should follow precedent. A Chief Justice that is ignorant about something as basic as "technicality" is unlikely to know what "precedent" means, much less something as rarefied as the doctrine of stare decisis.
After the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Oyetola, I wrote on social media that the ruling was judgment, not justice. In spite of suppositions to the contrary, "judgment" and "justice" are not synonymous. Some judgements pervert justice. The Adeleke vs Oyetola case is a classic example of that. Sadly, the distinction between judgement and justice will become starker, bolder, and more invidious now that we have an unbelievably ignorant and incompetent Chief Justice who heads a Supreme Court that's now an unabashedly "remote controllable" extension of Aso Rock.
Even feeble pretenses to democracy and decency are now dead in Buhari's Nigeria. Atiku Abubakar's petition against Buhari's unexampled electoral fraud has no chance of success in a Supreme Court that overturns its less than one-year-old precedent, that is headed by a nescient and inept chief justice who doesn't know the meaning of basic terms that are crucial to the administration of justice, and who owes debt to an audacious electoral mandate snatcher for his position.
What is perhaps even more regrettable for me as a northerner is that Tanko has helped to feed the stereotype of the northern know-nothing who owes his rise in society to incestuous northern nepotistic patronage networks. Of course, it's unfair to hold up Tanko's obvious cognitive inferiority as representative of all northerners. There are way smarter, more educated northern lawyers than Tanko who nonetheless vegetate on the fringes.
Our problem in the north has always been that we don't put forward our best eleven, to use the common soccer analogy. We are often led by our worst. And we are all judged by the crass ignorance and indiscretions of our worst who nevertheless become our public face. Buhari is taking the elevation of wretched ignoramuses to important positions to the next level. How utterly sad.Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.Associate ProfessorJournalism & Emerging Media
School of Communication & MediaSocial Science BuildingRoom 5092 MD 2207402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University
Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.comTwitter: @farooqkperogiAuthor of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World
"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will
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