By Gloria Mabeiam Ballason
1. Our judiciary has come to sadly accept that there is such a thing as a ‘political judicial trial’; these are two streams whose waters do not mix. It is either they choose brackish political trial and allow politicians to do their thing or retain the purity of judicial trial where the rule of law prevails.
2. Kanu’s video shows us that subjecting trials to political whims can diminish the court’s legitimacy and its ability to make enforceable orders. Institutional legitimacy is a prerequisite for the enforcement of rightful and justified authority.
3. The Judiciary endangers itself each time they enable the justice system to be pawned. Politicians come and go but justice just has to be a constant in order that it may command the respect of all. The Court loses moral authority if the executive can sway them wherever and whenever they will. To put it more starkly: No Judiciary should allow the executive to ever think or imagine that the Judiciary is ‘their boy’.
4. I return to my (1) above: The state and lawyers must not like someone to defend them from injustice. Judges and Lawyers swear to uphold the Constitution when we act otherwise -regardless of the situation, we perpetuate everything else other than justice. When this happens the courts become a shrine for all sorts of despicable libations rather than retain its hallowedness as a Temple of Justice.
Gloria Mabeiam Ballason, lawyer and C.E.O. House of Justice
