I find it amazing that Justice Nwali Sylvester Ngwuta began his long letter to the Chief Justice of the Federation by describing how he felt symptoms of a malaria attack, how he delayed seeing a physician and how he subsequently got medication to treat the protozoa.
He did not forget to mention how all malaria medications make him drowsy so after he took his first dose of the prescribed drug on the evening of Friday 7th October 2016, he retired to his bedroom leaving his housemaid who was the only person with him inside his house to handle other domestic duties.
The drama began shortly after that and Justice Ngwuta described being terrified by armed men in ski masks and not even an identification card or search warrant presented to him did much to crash his trepidation. The lordship despite being dizzy and lying down a few times described in some detail how the 'terrorists' from the State Security Service ravaged his home from room to room. In one room were found several bags, briefcases and travel bags most of which contained magazines, papers and old clothes. A certain small bag locked with a padlock and with its key in a side pocket however contained some money.
Justice Ngwuta then described becoming even more dizzy such that he had to lay down drifting in and out of his terrified state. At a point, he claimed he couldn't observe the movements and activities of the operatives and when he or his maid had to move about, they were shadowed by gun wielding potential assassins.
I find it very bizarre that the justice mentioned being so afraid of being shot by men who had a search warrant. I do not know if describing what many 'people of color' are afraid of experiencing at the hands of misguided police officers in the United States was just for effect or if indeed he felt cold steel apposed to his temple. A supreme court justice was then ordered to sign and write his name on a piece of paper which had a list of items to be taken from his house as evidence. He signed the paper seemingly under duress even though listed was a huge sum of money he claims he knows nothing about and which was allegedly placed in his house by the SSS. I still do not understand how a senior member of the bench could be so fearful to sign an incriminating document. Could he not take a hit for the love of country and stand on what is right and true?
The next part of his long essay is quite bewildering. He highlighted the actual amount of money found in his home to dispute whatever the SSS claimed they had recovered. $25,000 which when converted is about 11,375,000 naira was found cooling off in a small bag which had the key in a side pocket on a Friday night and not safely locked away in a hidden fireproof safe. He acknowledged that 710,000 naira (which is just over $1,500) was his September allowance from the supreme court was sunbathing in a brown envelope while another 300,000 naira ($666) was tucked away in the briefcase which he takes to work daily.
It is indeed fascinating how these huge sums of money and what the learned wig termed "loose change" littered the home of a member of the highest court in the largest black nation on earth. It is even more amazing that some Nigerians justify these occurrences maybe because they believe someone in the office of a judge justifiably earns so much and gets to collect 710,000 naira as a cheque or in cash from the supreme court as monthly allowance. How many Nigerians will be able to sleep without palpitations in their homes if they had $25,000 in an unchained bag and with a housemaid patrolling? I'm almost certain that many will do worse than the character 'Pa James' in the popular comedy show 'Papa Ajasco' who tied a rope to his leg through a window to a vehicle parked outside his house to alert him of any theft.
Justice Ngwuta thereafter narrated how he became convinced he was in the custody of the SSS when he was driven to their office. He described the situation as an act of impunity and a violation of the rights of a justice of the supreme court. He went further to described his suffering in SSS custody, the time wasting torture of the men and even the "stained old mattress " he shared with another script writer Justice Okoro. He claimed he questioned his interrogators about the strange money allegedly recovered from his house to which he got no response. Supreme court justice did not forget to remind Chief Justice Mahmud Mohammed of his incorruptible credentials despite past accusations of corruption in 2000 (Ebonyi) and in 2009 (Calabar.)
EKITI and his present plight.
Justice Ngwuta moved into the next chapter of his thesis and traced his current ordeal to a chance encounter with Governor Rotimi Amaechi sometime in 2013/ 2014. According to him, they exchanged contacts which Amaechi put to good use a few weeks later when the case contesting the election of Ayodele Fayose as the governor of Ekiti state was determined at the Court of Appeal. Amaechi was stated to have met up with the judge two days after calling and "begged him to ensure Fayose's election was set aside and another election ordered for his friend Fayemi to contest. " The response was apparently an emphatic 'NO!!'
Judge Ngwuta claims he met with Amaechi sometime in 2013/14 (it is unclear the exact date or period) after the court of appeal decision was made. Fayose was elected and returned as governor on the 16th of October 2014. Fayemi thereafter took his case to the Ekiti governorship election tribunal contesting the eligibility of Fayose to have contested the election ab initio. Fayose's election was upheld by the tribunal on the 19th of December 2014 and the case moved up to the court of appeal. This appeal was heard and decided on the 16th of February 2015 in favor of the tribunal's ruling. I do not know if this was actually a glitch in the lordship's memory and if this was actually the period Amaechi called and met with him. The supreme court upheld Fayose's election and return on the 14th of April 2015. I am not certain if 2013/14 is close enough to February 2015 to be explained as an error. Should I trust the memory of a judge who swore to an affidavit that his facts were near flawless?
RIVERS COURT OF APPEAL RULING.
The lordship claimed he encountered Amaechi again after the court of appeal ruling in the Rivers state governorship election was decided at the court of appeal. Amaechi reportedly confronted him a few days after the judgement and barked "You have seen Wike"....."Oga is not happy." The oga in question here was reported to have been Mr President but I must confess that this is the most incoherent portion of the entire essay. Ngwuta told Amaechi "go and talk to his wife" and I wonder whose wife he made reference to and I also wonder as well what "we shall se" allegedly uttered by Amaechi meant.
The Rivers state governorship election tribunal had annulled Nyesom Wike's election on the 24th of October 2015 and the court of appeal ruling of 16th of December 2015 affirmed the tribunal's judgement. I do not understand how such a decision in favour of Dakuku Peterside and the All Progressives Congress from the appeal court could have caused Amaechi enough distress to storm into a meeting with Ngwuta breathing fire and saying "Oga is not happy? " The day after the appeal court ruling was president Buhari's 73rd birthday and some celebration took place at the presidential villa which Amaechi was part of. I am not sure if he left that event for a Judge's house who was not even involved in the decision of the appeal court.
Wike took his appeal to the supreme court after losing at both the tribunal and appeal court. The case was heard and decided on the 27th of January 2016 and seven justices of the court were on the bench; the Chief justice Mahmud Mohammed, Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad, Kumai Bayang Aka'ahs, Kudirat Olatokunbo Kekere-Ekun, John Inyang Okoro, Aminu Sanusi and Sylvester Ngwuta. According to Justice Ngwuta, he spoke with the CJF about not including him in the panel for the Rivers appeal which sat on the 27th of January 2016 to which the CJF replied him that he was already included.
They allegedly talked about Amaechi's attempt to woo other judges of the highest court to rule in his and APC's favor. He thereafter made reference to a lunch break given to them at 4:20pm on the day of the Rivers appeal hearing and how he went to his chambers where he received a call from Rotimi Amaechi which was perhaps meant to intimidate him. He switched off his phone immediately after that call.
These events about knowing his inclusion on the panel before the day of the hearing and having a lunch break in his chambers away from the other justices goes against the content of a 3 page document written by a certain Ahuraka Isah who is the media aide to the chief justice of the federation titled "SUPREME COURT: WERE THE JUDGEMENTS REALLY INFLUENCED? " obtained from the bulletin section on the website of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. It was a piece to debunk claims and accusations in certain quarters that the supreme court was rigged to pass judgements contrary to stipulated guidelines and the constitution. He had scathing remarks for those who contested the supreme court rulings with respect to the election appeals of Abia, Rivers and AkwaIbom.
Mr Isah detailed how the CJF went to great lengths to outmanoeuvre any politician who wanted to skew the SC in his/her favor. He wrote about how the CJF selected 16 supreme court justices randomly for the cases on February 3rd 2016 before handing 10 or all of them one or two of the case files for hearing. They were not supposed to know which group of 7 panelist they would belong to, the Co-panelists or the exact appeal(s) to be heard. Why did Justice Ngwuta beg to be left out of the River's panel? Was he threatened? Why would Amaechi approach a judge in 2015 who had rebuffed him sometime in 2013/14? The Supreme court set aside the judgements of the tribunal and appeal court thereby upholding the return of Nyesom Wike as the elected governor of Rivers.
It is certain that one of Justice Mohammed and Ngwuta is lying and there is a conspiracy to cover up endemic corruption in the Supreme court. Only 8 justices ended up hearing both governorship election appeals heard on the 27th of January 2016 with Ngwuta replaced by Chima Centus Nweze for the Ebonyi hearing.
THE EBONYI ANGLE.
I am curious to know who the witches and wizards who have been hunting Justice Ngwuta from Ebonyi since 2000 are. It will also be interesting to know how certain people from Andy Ubah's camp are supplying Amaechi with enough ammunition to tarnish the image of the revered judge in 2016. Mr Igwenyi who is a senior staff at the federal judicial service commission must really be a top class negotiator capable of setting up meetings with any individual in the world. It was no big deal when he managed to take Justice Ngwuta in his car to a highly confidential meeting with a former governor which both Igwenyi and Ngwuta had no clue about what was to be discussed.
Justice Ngwuta and Dr Ogbonnaya Onu are both from Ebonyi state and for men who are above 60 years old, it is difficult to accept a theory that both men did not know one another or had never interacted in the past and so required a middleman to set up a meeting between them. Onu was stated to have declared his interest in the court of appeal ruling on the Ebonyi election because the Labour party candidate Edward Nkwegu was poised to declare for the APC if he became the governor of Ebonyi. Nkwegu had asked for an annulment of Dave Umahi's election and asked for fresh elections but the Tribunal ruled in favour of the People's Democratic Party candidate on October 16, 2015. Dr Onu then asked about his relationship with the president of the court of appeal which he said was cordial. Justice Zainab Adamu Bulkachuwa was the presiding of the court of appeal Benin division sometime in 2005/2006 when Justice Ngwuta was on the same bench. Dr Onu allegedly wanted Ngwuta to use his influence as a justice of a higher court to pressure the Court of appeal president to get three already compromised judges on the 5 member panel to hear the Ebonyi case. Ngwuta wrote that he refused and Dr Onu asked him if he knew who the husband of Justice Bulkachuwa was.
Why would Dr Onu ask about knowledge of Adamu Bulkachuwa? The former legislator is said to have been one of the foundation members of the Congress for progressive change which was the former party of Mr President. Justice Zainab Bulkachuwa has been accused in some quarters of favouring the APC at the level of the appeal court because of some seemingly favourable decisions. Why did Dr Onu have to go through a supreme court justice when he could have gone through the husband of the Court of appeal president? It doesn't make sense to me that Dr Onu could have assumed that Ngwuta who didn't get appointed as a court of appeal judge until 2005 (seven years after Bulkachuwa got her own appointment) could have had any influence over the slightly older Bulkachuwa.
The court of appeal threw out Nkwegu's case on the 11th of December while the supreme court did same on the 27th of January 2016. The claim that Onu was interested in the Labour party candidate appears very similar to Justice Okoro's accusation of Amaechi's interest in the APGA candidate in Abia. I'm afraid that these two scenarios don't make much sense especially the one in Ebonyi which the courts regarded as a completely baseless appeal.
I am not sure if narrating how he was starved for a whole day despite suffering a malaria attack and delayed for long periods has earned him some public sympathy. If it has, it does not explain how a judge gets to have over 12 million naira and other loose change in bags and suitcases in his bedroom.
Only seven judges heard and decided the two appeals (AkwaIbom and Abia) on the 3rd of February 2016 contrary to the methodology highlighted in the publication by the press secretary to the chief justice. Justices Ngwuta and Okoro were however both left out of those cases. I think these justices do not take Nigerians serious and have resorted to what I can only term blackmail and distraction tactics. Their dates don't tally and their claim to influencing or attempting to influence their inclusion in election panels negates what should be a foolproof process of ensuring the judiciary doesn't get compromised.
Justice Ngwuta admits to meeting up with politicians who either offered him bribes or threatened him but he did not take such threats serious enough to inform law enforcement yet he could sleep peacefully with loose change all over his bedroom and feared being shot by SSS operatives enough to sign a piece of paper as ordered by a young man perhaps old enough to be his son. Justice Okoro was captured offering a present to the former AkwaIbom governor at a church service in 2013 to celebrate his appointment as a supreme court judge. This gesture does not in any way appear appropriate.
I wonder if it is a common practice for justices to have money in both foreign and local currencies adorning their homes; this development alone convinces me that the nation's judiciary is completely riddled with corruption such that what is right is just is now completely distorted but I may be wrong. All I can infer from the Okoro and Ngwuta letters is that both men will do very well as script writers for Nollywood or Africa Magic. They know most Nigerians won't read or search things out for themselves that is why I believe Rotimi Amaechi was selected as the notorious villain in both stories. If we follow both tales, it is safe to conclude that Amaechi will also appear as the 'Big Boss' if the chief justice of the federation writes his own letter.
If the judiciary had any fear of Nigerians, the members would declare a state of emergency and dismantle all their structures and the entire arm of government sanctified. The judiciary can be said to be a major reason why we have foreign exchange shortages in the country.
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