I would like to start by sharing with you an anecdote about my growing-up years, especially my time in secondary school. We used to stage and produce amateur plays on makeshift platforms, some rough-and-ready proscenium stage on which we regaled our audiences who knew precious little about the niceties and nuances of histrionics. They were too carried away by our exaggerated theatrics to care about the truth of fiction, or the fiction of truth (read: poetic truth) for that matter. Of all the plays we used to produce routinely during special occasions, The Incorruptible Judge was the most popular. The reason(s) for its mass appeal is/are not too far to seek. Apart from its quotidian theme, the dialogue is racy, its diction affectingly direct and pellucid and the running-time very short. The hall was always packed to the rafters with members of the audience anytime we staged the play. D. Olu Olagoke’s The Incorruptible Judge is about a young school-leaver who applies for a vacancy in a government department, parading as he does excellent credentials and a wonderful testimonial from his principal. Instead of giving the bribe of five pounds demanded of him by the Establishment Officer, he reports the matter to a policeman, and this leads to the corrupt employer’s arrest. Despite all the attempts made to influence him by his father-in-law and an important Chief, the trial Judge proves incorruptible. The corrupt officer is eventually convicted and sent to prison.

The literary experience drilled into our impressionable and callow but curious minds during our formative years in secondary school had brought to us, generally, the hazy phenomenon of Nigeria’s justice system and the signal importance of judges in the nation’s administration of justice. But prior to this time, I had always seen people, mostly crowds of adults, gather in front of the Magistrate Court and the Customary Court in our rather bucolic, somnolent village. What had fascinated me at the time was not the glum-looking older people who usually stood forlornly and woe-begone in groups or sat on wooden benches, staring vacantly into the distance, waiting, just waiting… At that time, even if you didn’t go out of your way to try to find out why these people were always gathered in front of the courts, you still knew what the issues were, as those adults ‘yapped’ and jabbered about a raft of cases or disputes, most of which were civil in nature or maybe, sometimes, criminal like the one involving a man who had slain his brother to death on a particular spot along our farm-path. When that tragic event occurred, it had rocked the entire village as well as other outlying villages to its very core. How could a brother be so insanely incensed to the point of butchering his brother? Later, much later, I read in the Bible that members of the same family are sworn enemies to one another. Even a Yoruba saying tells us that: the leaf-eating grub resides in the leaves. Rendered more prosaically, so-called enemies are not strangers you encounter on public transport or in random places of collective social intercourse. Enemies are closer to you than the clothes you are wearing right now: so-called close friends, business associates, colleagues in your office, and, of course, blood relatives are your enemies. Appositely, in “Who the Cap Fit”, Bob Marley croons:

“Some will eat and drink with you/Then behind them su-su’pon you/Only your friend know your secrets/So only he could reveal it […] Some will hate you pretend they love you now/Then behind they try to eliminate you…”

Returning to the types of cases litigated in courts, the courts I was familiar with, growing up used to hear civil cases such as divorce cases, land and boundary disputes such as the celebrated one depicted in Chinua Achebe’s Arrow of God, in which Ezeulu tells his Umuaro that he is not prepared to lie and be drawn into a “Fight of Blame” with Okperi. Such is the nature of the law or truth that it is usually not as straightforward as 2 + 2 = 4. Or as simple as the aesthetic appreciation of a painting hung on a trestle or a wall. The onlookers are liable to come away with divergent impressions of the image. Legal truth or the law is similar in fundamental ways to literary criticism, the type we engage in Literary Studies as a discipline. Take, for instance, an analysis of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: If a class of ten students is asked to analyse the novel’s tragic scheme vis-à-vis the tragic trajectory of the protagonist, Okonkwo, chances are all ten of them are likely to deliver ten divergent and differing interpretations of Okonkwo’s fate. Is he a hero? What type of hero is he? Aristotelian, Millerian or Brechtian? Isn’t it more accurate to regard him as an anti- hero, a villain? Or isn’t he in equal measure both a hero and a villain? If so, does the tragic complexity of (his) personality not reflect the putative Janus-facedness of Everyman – you and I? Aren’t all of us constituted of both Beauty and Beast? By the same token, therefore, the innate complexity of truth or the law, in this instance, bespeaks the many-sidedness of truth as a categorical system. We are here reminded of Pontius Pilate’s timeless quip: What is Truth? (John 18: 38). Also, we are put in mind of the legend of the Elephant and the Six Blind men. Having touched different parts of the pachyderm, they, all six of them, enthused that what they touched was the entirety of the animal’s anatomy. Whilst every one of them was partially correct, they were all also partially wrong. They told the truth but not the whole truth.

In law, there are many branches of the field, branches such as constitutional law, statutory law, common or case law, civil law, criminal law, equity law and administrative law. These can be further subdivided into substantive and procedural law or municipal and international law, inter alia. As we all know, evidence is a sine qua non in legal matters. Unsurprisingly, according to the Nigerian Law of Evidence, Section I of the Act provides as follows: “Evidence may be given in any suit and proceedings of the existence or non-existence of every fact in issue and of such other facts as are hereafter declared to be relevant and of no others” (see 3.4.1).

However, while laymen and women like us are keen to know what the law says regarding a matter at issue, some legal terminology and jargon tend to get in the way of holistic apprehension. Now what do we make of such Latinisms as mutandis mutatis, ceteris paribus, stricto sensu, loco standi and alibi? How about that polysemic abyss of intentionality in Law whose depth we try vainly to plumb with actus reus, versus mens rea? Or, put simply, the “guilty act” (real action) versus the “guilty mind” (or intent)? We are equally confronted with the letter versus the spirit of the law! As always, the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life, as the scripture reminds us. It is this Rabbinical impersonality of the law that should interest us at this juncture. What does the law say about someone taking human life? Any extenuating circumstances? Let us consider the synonyms of kill: murder, butcher, slay, annihilate, delete, take out, liquidate and slaughter. Which of the terms above correctly captures the truth of the particular death? In trying to establish the truth, emotion gets in the way. Sentimentality becomes the touchstone of truth. This act of subjective recklessness completely muddies the waters. It is against this backdrop that we can meaningfully engage with the post-election legal fireworks going on as we speak. Most people have taken to social media to air their opinions and views on the (mis-)conduct of the 2023 presidential election and its largely abhorrent corollaries. It bears reiterating that in our endemically low-trust polity there seems to be a paralysis of optimism. You would think, should Jesus Christ come down from Heaven to reassure Nigerians that everything good will come, they would laugh Him to scorn. This trust deficit is what Nigerian poet and public intellectual, Niyi Osundare in his hugely-popular poem titled: “My Lord, Tell Me Where to Keep Your Bribe” spells out with such savage clarity:

Behind the antiquated wig

And the slavish glove

The penguin gown and the obfuscating jargon

Is a rot and riot whose stench is choking the land

Behind the rituals and roted rigmaroles

Old antics connive with new tricks

Behind the prim-and-proper costumes of masquerades

Corruption stands, naked, in its insolent impunity

For sale to the highest bidder

Interlocutory and perpetual injunctions

Opulent criminals shop for pliant judges:

Protect the criminal, enshrine the crime

And Election Petition Tribunals

Ah, bless those goldmines and bottomless booties!

Scoundrel vote-riggers romp to electoral victory

All hail our buyable Bench and conniving Bar

The excerpt above clearly does not require glossing of any kind as the poet homes in on the heart of the matter with such cruel explicitness. Deeply concerned about the sorry and unsavoury state of our judiciary as poeticized above, I sought further enlightenment from a legal authority. And this is what he said: “[T]he gulf between truth and [its] technicalities in the Nigerian legal system can be attributed to several factors, including the complexity of the law, the lack of resources and training for judges and lawyers, and the prevalence of corruption and political interference in the judiciary. In many cases, judges may hide behind “technicalities” in order to avoid making difficult decisions or to protect themselves from criticism or retribution. This can lead to miscarriages of justice, where the outcome of a case does not reflect the true facts or the principles of justice. Furthermore, the legal system in Nigeria is often slow, inefficient, and underfunded, which can exacerbate the challenges of ensuring that justice is done. This can lead to delays in trials, a lack of access to legal representation for defendants, and inadequate resources for judges and lawyers to carry out their duties effectively”.

Going forward, what should Nigerians expect from the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal? Are the issues in contention cut-and-dried? Any elbow-room for manipulation and manoeuvring? Or are we in for another epic case of the Elephant and the Six Blind men? Are our Lordships not supposed to be blind, that is, blind to prejudice and suchlike obfuscatory side-shows? Where is Lady Justice in all of this? Isn’t she blindfolded for a reason? But beyond talk of blindness, blind men and blindfolds, what has remained at issue is the perennial problem of truth and its technicalities. Or, if you prefer, the law and its technicalities. Now, matters arising: Why do the framers of the Constitution and its energising Grundnorm deliberately make them difficult to understand or interpret? Why is Jurisprudence such a bottomless pit of trial-and-error? What has legal jargon or terminology got to do with it? Would the law lose its binding force if it was rendered in “is and was”; i.e., the language of everyday people? What or whose purpose is served by the hermeticism, the arrogant grandiloquence or the gobbledygook of legalese? The fact is, there are already campaigns elsewhere to “make it simple”. Obscurantism is always counterproductive. Even so, can the poor; the homo ordinario get justice in our courts? The Judge in the play, The Incorruptible Judge posits: “Father, you know what my duty is. It is to administer justice impartially, no matter whether somebody is rich or poor, whether he is known to me or not. When I hear a case, I go into the details of it. I sift the evidence carefully to find out whether the accusation is false or true. If it is false, I dismiss the case, sometimes with costs against the accuser. If it is true, I still have to go into the case carefully to see whether the accused is guilty or not. If he is guilty, he is then punished in accordance with the law[…] If the citadel of justice is corrupt, what will happen to the body politic?”

So, can our justices be impartial, incorruptible as they adjudicate and consider the facts of the recently-held presidential election? This is a million-dollar question upon which the fate of the greatest Black nation on earth hangs! Cometh the hour, cometh the man!

Chris Anyokwu, PhD, a dramatist, poet, fiction writer, speaker, rights activist and public intellectual, is a Professor of English at the University of Lagos, Nigeria.