“If everything is for sale, including the courts and the police, trust evaporates, credit vanishes and business withers.” Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, p 257
One of the contests that ended up in court concerned the governorship of Osun State in South West Nigeria. Presiding over the tribunal in that contest in 2007 was a judge of the Plateau State High Court, Thomas Naron. In this capacity, Justice Naron got into intimate telephone exchanges over the case with Kunle Kalejaiye, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria , representing the then Governor of Osun State, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, in whose favour the tribunal eventually decided.
When it decided the case of Kunle Kalejaiye, the Supreme Court did not appear to remember the case of Athanasius Hart from 43 years before. Two years after, on June 16, 2021, the Supreme Court equally forgot what it did in Mr. Kalejaiye’s case. The case this time involved three lawyers, Mamman Waziri, Olayori Muideen and Osaretin George Izegbuwa, disbarred by the LPDC for serious professional misconduct. As with Mr.
With these words, Nigeria’s Court of Appeal says collecting bribes is within the scope of a judge’s official functions? By the way, if the Court of Appeal had bothered to read Nigeria’s Code of Conduct for Judicial Officers, it would have found that Rule 1 of the Code requires all judicial officers to “respect and comply with the laws of the land….