Afrigather By
JESUTEGA ONOKPASA.
I’ve seldom learn an article written by a lawyer that’s most unbecoming of realized counsel because the load of crap written by Professor Chidi Odinkalu, which he weakly, and slightly fairly childishly titled “Monica Dongbam-Mensem: In God’s Title, Go!”
In what turned out to be no higher than mere profusely pontifical narrative, he accuses Her Lordship, the President of the Court docket of Attraction and her colleagues on the Court docket of Attraction Bench of perverting the course of justice, and, he does this with out providing the slightest substantiation that any true lawyer may probably acknowledge as proof.
Reasonably he saved piling suspicion upon supposition and heaping innuendo upon aspersion.
I saved studying and rereading, line after line, painstakingly hoping to come back to that time at which he would possibly present even the remotest shred of what can be acquainted to a lawyer as basis for the accusations he plied in opposition to the Court docket of Attraction.
He introduced completely nothing of the type and, slightly fairly insultingly, for that matter, he appeared to count on his readership to subscribe to what I can solely fathom to be a falacy of authority to the impact that just because Chidi Odinkalu mentioned so, then it should be so!
Certainly, “some moms do have them” could also be all to be mentioned for the pompousness of the professor.
The sum complete of the balderdash showcased in his poorly packaged piece quantities to not more than an ode to conceitedness and self-aggrandizement and I’m fairly astonished that any lawyer can be the writer of Odinkalu’s abominably defamatory drivel.
Clearly, that is the season whereby a number of hitherto revered legal professionals additionally occur to have utterly misplaced their heads and fully took depart of their senses in a tantrumic response to the crushingly embarrassing lack of their most popular candidate within the presidential election, regardless of that candidate’s politically illiterate deployment of faith and ethnicity in support of the actualization of a miserably mismanaged ambition that noticed the Nigerian voters seeing via the facade of his messianic pretentions, proper right down to the dreadful narcissism beneath.
This woefully immature response, certainly totally childish strategy to managing disappointment, equally frames essentially the most disgracefully unhinged and stomach-churning disposition that somebody like Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, has adopted towards the Judiciary, the identical establishment which made him no matter he’s and quantities to in the present day, but which he’s decided to burn to the bottom just because he was not made a Supreme Court docket choose!
What Agbakoba, on his half, forgets is that at no time was he, or every other lawyer, particularly, ever essentially the very best infusion from the Bar into the Supreme Court docket, and, whereas I and most different legal professionals insist that there ought to at all times be direct recruitment from our midst into the best rungs of the Bench, it isn’t as if the method vide which he and others have been supposedly nominated by the Bar for elevation to the Supreme Court docket Bench was howsoever democratic or reflective of the desire of nearly all of legal professionals on this nation at that or every other time limit.
Odinkalu, on his personal half, has clearly forgotten that the final sin a lawyer ought to commit is to stage accusation with out providing proof, to not discuss of realized counsel pitiably decomposing into motorpark mode and most abhorrently combining in themselves the totally reprehensible stati of choose, jury and executioner.
Having not but had the privilege of learning the judgement of the Supreme Court docket, I consider the choices rendered by the Court docket of Attraction, not less than within the case of Kano and Plateau States, was the suitable determination.
For those who disobey a court docket order, it isn’t a preelection matter however a pending and subsisting infraction.
Certainly, you might be, and stay, in contempt of court docket, a most egregious and fairly heinous standing, which within the contemplation of regulation, constitutes a show of essentially the most unconscionable lawlessness and brazen rascality that you just should be made to pay dearly for.
For those who stuff poll bins with faux, unsigned and unstamped ballots, they must be deducted out of your tally of votes with a view to train you and everybody else to not rig elections.
However, I’m a lawyer; proof is my faith and purpose is my process, wherefore I’m fairly keen to study from the place taken by the Supreme Court docket in contrast to the likes of Agbakoba and Odinkalu who suppose they know all of it and like their ilk, reject any and each factor that doesn’t go their method.
After I get to learn the choices of our most honourable apex court docket, I’ll both agree or disagree with the judgements however regardless, I’ll nonetheless settle for them, whilst I’ve already accepted them, without having but learn them as a result of that’s what correct legal professionals do.
Whereas, as legal professionals, and certainly residents alike, we’re all actually entitled to criticize judgements on factors of what the regulation stipulates and what the info compel, we don’t, upon our disagreement with a choose’s determination, proceed to denigrate the Bench or turn into so maniacal as to go to the extent of accusing judges of corruption or different malfeasance with out providing proof for such allegations just because the court docket had not dominated in our favour.
Certainly, the truth that every so often, judgements of decrease boards would possibly find yourself being put aside on attraction is the fixed expectation of legal professionals.
There isn’t a lawyer who doesn’t know that that is exactly why the Judiciary is ready up in accordance with the template of an appellate structure besides such lawyer shouldn’t be worthy to be a lawyer.
What each lawyer equally is aware of is that the truth that a judgement occurred to be put aside shouldn’t be in any method prima facie indication, a lot much less affirmation, of malfeasance on the a part of the court docket under.
I don’t know the form of regulation Chidi Odinkalu teaches his college students, wherever he teaches regulation, however from what I learnt from the likes of Obilade, Agbede, Omotola, Osinbajo, Osipitan, Uchegbu, Adeyemi, Uzodike, Agomo, Fogam, Utuama, Ajibade and different incontestable luminaries of our occupation, the truth that a call was overturned shouldn’t be essentially an indictment on the court docket under however finally an indication of the reliableness of the authorized system and its administration of justice structure.
Actually, any lawyer, certainly any choose, would readily inform you that usually occasions it’s the overturned determination that was the suitable one and it was the appellate determination that may had been rendered in error.
In ours, in addition to in jurisdictions the world over, a superior court docket would possibly overturn a call of a court docket under solely to finish up finally adopting it in a subsequent case as the proper interpretation of the regulation!
After all, Odinkalu is aware of this very effectively however he apparently stays too irretrievably gaoled in disappointment and frustration by Peter Obi’s inevitable loss on the presidential election to even be minimally affordable or vestigially truthful anymore.
I pity Professor Chidi Odinkalu as a result of his article shouldn’t be the submission of realized counsel; it’s the vituperation of a badly introduced up quack.
Onokpasa, a lawyer, writes from Abuja.
