The government structure of Nigeria, like most other democracies, is made up of the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary. In recent times, while the Executive and Legislature have been enmeshed in one controversy or another, usually bordering on corruption, policy inconsistency et al, the Judiciary has been hailed! Especially in the light of their recent judgements, as relates to the 2007 election. So much so, that the Judiciary is being hailed as the “…last resort of the common man”.
While it is generally correct that the Judiciary has done rather well, a closer look will indicate that even within the hallways of the Justice, corruption can be just as rampant as what obtains within the outer perimeters of the larger society.
I draw my thinking and conclusions from an incident that occurred to my friend. My friend recently won a case against the Ministry of Transport in Port Harcourt for having his car impounded and being fined N50,000 without any legal backing or conviction of the court, as the law states. The real story is that even after the judgement, the court bailiff refused to serve the judgement on the respondents except my friend paid N5,000. What is more shocking is that the court and the Ministry of Transport are very close to one another, right there in the secretariat area of Port Harcourt.
Isn’t it amazing that the same court that exercises judgement in your favour against an injustice meted out to you, will turn around and exact a bribe before the same judgement is served on the defendants? Isn’t that another injustice? So perhaps maybe it is safe to say that our Judiciary simply replaces one injustice with another!!
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