In the era of the military junta, Nigerian courts were relegated to the background. Judges knew that verdicts delivered against the major actors in the military hierarchy would not be obeyed. Judges also knew that such unfavourable verdicts against the military personalities and institutions would hardly be enforced by any institution of the State. Impunity was the order of the day and culture of anyhowness blossomed.
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It would be this same arrogance and disobedience against the state that the military carried over into 1999 as democracy restarted once more and for the fourth time in Nigeria. As it was now a learned culture in some quarters of the country, the attitude of flouting court orders became commonplace among the elite and political office holders who believed they could get away with any and all of their incredulous actions.
It was in the spirit of enforcing compliance to court orders that an Abuja High Court judge, Justice Jude Okeke, sentenced the Director-General of the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC), Olusegun Runsewe, to prison.
The order, which was given on Thursday, compelled the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to arrest Runsewe with immediate effect and hand him over to the Nigerian Correctional Services (NCS) pending when he retraces his steps. The order which Runsewe flouted had been about a stay of execution on December 15, 2017, stopping the demolition of one disputed Art and Culture location in Abuja.
The judge, who described Runsewe’s action as contemptuous, noted that the measures taken against the political appointee will serve as a deterrent to others who abuse their office and disobey court orders without hesitation and consideration of the consequences.
Likewise, just before the end of the last decade, on December 5 2019, Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu also ordered that the State Security Service (SSS) which had been holding Omoyele Sowore illegally to release him within 24 hours or face consequences which included the payment of a N100,000 fine and severe actions against the authority at the SSS.
Though the SSS obeyed the court order and subsequently re-arrested Sowore and Olawale Bakare on flimsy grounds, reason prevailed at last as the threat by the judge appears to have also worked its own magic in the meantime.
As sensitive as the Sowore case was, and as invincible as the SSS and the presidency thought itself to be, it finally surrendered to a combination of international pressure and court verdicts.
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Now that the upper echelons of our society housing the political elites have realized that they will hardly go unpunished for flouting court orders, we may be expectant of more compliance to orders and rules laid down by our common society going forward.
Until the general Nigerian populace begins to see evidence that the same law and sanctions apply to the people in authority and the rest of us, nobody will take the statutes of actions and consequences seriously. The recent case of Olusegun Runsewe and the actors at both the SSS and the presidency should serve as a signal to others in position of power who feel they are untouchable by the laws governing our society.
Source:
Guardian NG
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