By Adekunle Ade-Adeleye
For connoisseurs of anti-establishment politics, Justice Musa Dattijo Muhammad’s valedictory speech seemed to have been delivered with the force and cadence of liberation theology.
The speech resonated well at two levels. One, the eminent justice sounded a clarion call for reform of the justice system. He speaks about the need for transparency in the financial management of the judiciary, with special emphasis on the Supreme Court. He denounced what he observed as the dictatorial tendencies of the Chief Justice of Nigeria in general, and perhaps with the current CJN in mind, struck at creeping nepotism in the appointment of judicial officers, and without any hint of irony, lampooned what he concluded was sectionalism in the court.
He drew attention to so many other issues, but did it vituperatively and shockingly without the customary temperateness many associate with jurists.
For instance, when he railed against creeping sectionalism, could he by any stretch of the imagination not be promoting federal character in the dispensation of justice?
Two, by coming out forcefully and so unsparingly against his former colleagues and the entire Supreme Court that had ennobled him for years, Justice Dattijo did not seem to mind the small talk everywhere regarding his predilection for political partisanship, nor worry about the innuendoes that he scorned the composition of the panel that presided over the PDP/LP/APM presidential election petitions.
The problem, in short, is not that he observed certain deficiencies in the administration of justice in Nigeria, but that he chose to ventilate those observations in a language and style that were distinctively and juridically unflattering. Indeed, by choosing to burn the barn to smoke out a rat, the eminent jurist makes the world wonder what manner of judges are appointed into the top court, why they seem shorn of the temper and philosophy many analysts thought they were capable of manifesting effortlessly.
There was anger in Justice Dattijo’s admittedly sensible complaints; but there was no nobility.
