Misunderstanding Wike’s visit to CJN

This is what, without doubt, the All Progressives Congress (APC) is pretty good at, although the backlash of their massive pre-election campaign propaganda has now caught up with them as they grapple with change without direction.
Their hesitation, as well as caution, is to be applauded. Gov. Wike paid an unscheduled visit to the office of the CJN at the Supreme Court, Abuja, on July 6, 2015. The CJN was unavailable, as he was away on hajj. Wike returned on July 8, 2015, and the CJN was again unavailable, as he was attending the screening of nominees for consideration as Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN). It is reasonable to infer that Gov. Wike came a second time, apparently because staff in the CJN’s office might have informed him that, by the date of the second visit, the CJN would be at his desk. Why did Wike visit? He had gone there primarily to discuss with the CJN the imminent lapse of the acting appointment of the Chief Judge of Rivers State, an event that would occur at a time when the judiciary, and members of the National Judicial Council, headed by the CJN, would be on annual vacation. Wike was seeking to renew the acting appointment.
Over this, all hell broke loose in partisan quarters, because Wike is a respondent in a petition filed against his election in April, this year. Although the hacks can hardly be credited with nobler objectives, let us, however, assume that they were motivated by a desire to ensure that the CJN is not perceived as being susceptible to political manipulation and inducement in the dispensation of justice. Regrettably, that is where they got it all wrong.
By insinuating, or implying, that the CJN could be swayed to overturn justice following a visit or two by a politically exposed individual is to insult the person and office of the Chief Justice of Nigeria. To further imply that Gov. Wike, whose victory in the April 2015 governorship election is being challenged at an Election Petition Tribunal, may have gone, or presumed to have gone, to obstruct justice, or manipulate the outcome of the petition in his favour, The Nation and its columnists have cast aspersion on the integrity of the CJN, as well as on the members of the Rivers State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal.
Clearly, the partisan commentators failed to educate themselves on what went on in the past. Until he won this year’s presidential election, President Muhammadu Buhari had contested the election three times, beginning in 2003. After he was defeated in each of those polls, he went to court to petition the loss. All his cases ended up in the Supreme Court, which is headed by the CJN. Pray, the Presidents in those years (Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, and Jonathan) held public and private meetings with the incumbent CJN over those years. And there is no record that any jaundiced commentator wrote about the potential of the president influencing the CJN with respect to an election petition in which the president was a respondent.
It is common practice for legal practitioners and judges to hold meetings in judges’ chambers—before they come into the open court. Nobody ever imputes in those circumstances that justice is being wangled. A case is decided on its merit. To imply that a visitor to the CJN could work on him to rig the outcome of a petition not directly before him, or even if it were before him, is, as stated earlier, the ultimate insult to the Bench.

Ken Odessa writes from Port Harcourt