A great nation needs good people. The definition of a good person is easy: a person who will do to his/her neighbours as he/she wants them to do unto him/her, and who would not do unto them as he/she wouldn’t want. This is the soul of the 10 Commandments, all the way through to Sharia and the millions of laws, civil and criminal codes that we are stuck with today. From just 10 Commandments by God to millions of laws by man, the world is as unsafe as the time of Cain and Abel!
A good fellow will never covet or take what belongs to others – their valuables and their lives – much as he or she will not love others to take his or hers. However, yonder stands Lucifer “with his lean and hungry looks,” along with his multitude of followers, in utter disobedience of God’s commandments! They are the reasons why man has multiplied God’s commandments a thousand fold. From civil crimes to arson, murder and treason, laws are made to take care of them. It is the foundation of civilisation, rule of law and democracy.
The degree to which citizens live in obedience to the Rule of Law, and punish infractions promptly and impartially, is directly proportional to the degree of peace and prosperity experienced by society. Laws are made to be obeyed, irrespective of forms of government. It is popular struggle that purifies political and justice systems. A time was when apartheid was legal, when slavery was legal and colonisation was legal. 70 years ago, black people could not vote in America despite the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” Citizens have the courts available to challenge laws they feel are unjust and fight till a more just system is obtained. However, once stabilised for every season, the role of government and the judicial system is to ensure speedy dispensation of justice based on the Constitution – the Rule of Law.
Nigeria’s history of constitutional and legal evolution is as old as its age. There are many areas crying for review and improvement but there are several settled civil and criminal positions, older even than Nigeria and as old as humanity and the 10 Commandments. Today, no one is in doubt about the law’s position on rape, theft, arson, armed robbery, murder, fraud, kidnapping and terrorism. Why then are we helplessly overwhelmed today in the relentless assault of these mentioned vices?
Although Hannah Arendt said “no punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes,” which is a clear recognition of the power of the devil as mentioned earlier, any elite in government, however weak and in moral deficit, must still mind Joseph Story’s words, that “without justice being freely, fully and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor or rights, nor our properties, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its values; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.” A state we are rapidly sliding into but must twice as rapidly retreat from.
The solution lies in the courage of the best of our elites, few as they are, especially the top echelon of the judiciary, to set a powerful new tone, with powerful new examples. The laws available are more than enough to serve them in a Nigeria era when it seems like it is a crime to punish big crimes! “The Constitution is what the judges say it is,” said Charles Evans Hughes; and Andrew Johnson said “All the rights secured to the citizens under the constitution are worth nothing, and are mere bubbles, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous judiciary.”
Self-help and jungle justice are symptomatic of a failing policing and justice system in which majority no longer has confidence because of a litany of unpunished crimes committed in full public glare (indisputable examples too many to mention here) – a clear danger to order, Rule of Law and democracy; a recipe for anarchy. The restoration of Nigeria needs many medicines: a major one is a resurrected judiciary, encouraged by elites fully aware of the signs of the time, the handwritings on the wall and the scope of their historic mission.
