The Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, has noted that court judgment in the country is now a matter of cash and carry.
The respected traditional ruler said it has now become elusive for the poor in the country to get justice, which he said is now the exclusive preserve of the rich who have have enough to purchase positive judgment for themselves.
Sultan Abubakar spoke on Sunday during the 2025 Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Conference held in Enugu over the weekend, saying the nation’s judicial system has been highly compromised.
While the innocent poor are being punished, he said, the rich who commit crime against the country are allowed to go scot-free because they have the wherewithal to compromise the system.
According to him, the NBA must ensure that the rule of law is upheld in the country, adding that once this is done the political crisis ravaging the country will be easily addressed Abubakar: “Today in Nigeria, justice is increasingly becoming a purchasable commodity.
“The poor are becoming victims of miscarriage of justice, while the rich commit crimes and walk the streets scot-free.”
He urged NBA to ensure that the situation is resolved to the benefit of everyone, rich or poor, government or citizens.
“You are resolving to uphold the highest principles of the rule of law to ensure that everyone, including those in power, is subject to and accountable under the law. If we are able to do this, we would have addressed the core of the crisis of governance in this country,” the Sultan of Sokoto noted.
Instructively, Abubakar’s remark comes on the heels of a scathing criticism of the nation’s judiciary by The United States, U.S, Department of State and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who had last week issued separate condemning the corruption in the Nigerian justice system
Obasanjo and US indicted the judiciary, saying corruption, inefficiency, and political interference have seriously affected the delivery of jsutice in the country.
While the US in its 2024 Human Rights Practices Report released on August 12, catalogued troubling evidence of Nigeria’s declining rule of law to include arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, corruption in high-profile prosecutions, and weak enforcement of labour and child protection laws., obasanjo said the nation’s court have now become the “courts of corruption”.
The former Nigerian leader made the assertion in his new book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’, published by the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, where he lamented the “steady decline of the judiciary’s integrity”.
“The reputation of the Nigerian judiciary has steadily gone down from the four eras up till today. The rapidity of the precipitous fall, particularly in the Fourth Republic, is lamentable,” he wrote.
He stressed that justice had become commodified in Nigeria, with dangerous consequences for the nation’s stability.
“The great fear of most well-meaning Nigerians and good friends of Nigeria is that where ‘justice’ is only available to the highest bidder, despair, anarchy, and violence would substitute justice, order, and hope.
“I went to a state in the North about ten years after I left public office. Next to the government guest house was a line of six duplex buildings.
“The governor pointed to the buildings and stated that they belonged to a judge who put them up from the money he made from being the chairman of election tribunals,” Obasanjo said.
Discover more from The Source
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
