Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has criticized the Nigerian judiciary, saying that he has been “deeply compromised” and that corruption among the judges has turned the courts into “a court of corruption instead of a court of justice.”
In his new book, Nigeria: past and future, Obasanjo laments the constant decline of the integrity of the Nigerian Judiciary, warning that justice has become marketed in Nigeria.
“The reputation of the Nigerian Judiciary has constantly decreased from the four times until today. The speed of the precipitated fall, particularly in the fourth republic, is unfortunate,” Obasanjo wrote.
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He expressed concern that the decline of the Judiciary raises a significant threat to the stability of the nation.
Obasanjo told an incident in which a governor showed six duplex buildings that belonged to a judge who allegedly acquired them from the money won as president of the electoral courts. This anecdote, he said, illustrates the depth of corruption in the Judiciary.
The former president also accused Mahmood Yakubu, president of INEC, of ​​undermining the electoral process since 2015.
“It is not surprising that politicians do not have much confidence in an election that the INEC of Professor Mahmood Yakubu contaminated and weakened a lot to make a farce,” he said.
Obasanjo also claimed that politicians believe that the result of the electoral disputes depends on the will of the court judges, the judges of the Court of Appeals and the judges of the Supreme Court.
“No matter what the will of the people, the president of INEC since after the 2015 elections made his will greater and more important than the will of the people,” he added.
In addition, Obasanjo directly accused the late former president Muhammadu Buhari of Coludo with the Judiciary during his electoral cases.
“Buhari threw caution in the wind, regardless of what would have happened between him and the judges who made his tender. In his electoral cases, financially, he surpassed him with appointments for them regardless of his age and ranks,” Obasanjo claimed.
The former president concluded that the current state of the judicial and electoral system in Nigeria is alarming, saying: “After a false declaration of results, making the winning losers and loss winners, the victim of the trap that goes to the Court is advised, which is a court of corruption instead of a court of justice of justice of justice.“
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