General Muhammadu Buhari swore in Olukayode Ariwoola as Nigeria’s third Chief Justice in as many years on Monday, June 27, 2022, the fourth of his seven-year tenure as president with electoral legitimacy. Tanko Muhammad, Ariwoola’s predecessor, resigned from office earlier that day, becoming the second successive Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) to be forcibly “resigned.”
The reason given for CJN Tanko Muhammad’s abrupt resignation was illness. This was only true as a metaphor for the state of the judiciary under his purported leadership. In any other case, ill-health was merely a convenient cover for the unmourned departure from office of a man who was uniquely unsuited for high judicial office and who would have struggled to become a Magistrate in a different season even in Nigeria. His presence in the office of Chief Justice exemplified every ailment that has come to characterize Nigeria’s third branch of government.
Last Monday was not the first time that allegations of serious illness swirled around CJN Tanko Muhammad. In December 2020, he missed the ceremonial start of the judicial year and was unable to perform the inauguration of the new Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs), which has traditionally been the highlight of the Chief Justice’s annual calendar.
On 15 December 2020, one newspaper reported that “the CJN had inaugurated eight justices of the Supreme Court on November 6, but there are conflicting details on when he was last seen in public,” a period of 40 days. On the same day, another news outlet reported that Chief Justice Tanko had “been flown to Dubai for emergency treatment after suddenly contracting coronavirus, indicating that he may be suffering from other ailments.” A different publication claimed the next day that the Chief Justice was “enduring a torrid battle with dementia and heart disease complications,” and that his “illness,….has been kept under wraps since he assumed office as Nigeria’s top jurist in 2019.”
The reports and rumors about Chief Justice Tanko’s health appeared to suggest that it was due to his advanced age. A Chief Justice of Nigeria must retire at the age of 70, according to the country’s constitution. The issue with Chief Justice Tanko was that much of his background was shrouded in obscurity or worse.
In May 2019, the Federal High Court in Abuja dismissed a case filed against Acting Chief Justice Tanko Muhammad, accusing him of falsifying his date of birth to December 31, 1953. To avoid the issue, the court ruled that the claimant lacked standing to bring the case and assessed him N10 million in punitive costs.
Chief Justice Tanko displayed impressive academic credentials, including a first degree, Masters, and Doctorate degrees in Islamic Law from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, but he couldn’t explain his primary school education, claiming in an affidavit sworn to while a Justice of the Court of Appeal in Jos in 1998 that “vicious termites destroyed his primary school certificate.”
Tanko Muhammad was appointed a judge despite these obstacles and went on to thrive in judicial office, becoming the fourth out of the previous seven Chief Justices of Nigeria to leave office in a blaze of scandal.
On August 29, 2011, Chief Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu retired from office, just 11 days after the National Judicial Council (NJC), which he chaired, attempted to suspend then-Court of Appeal President Ayo Salami. Salami accused Katsina-Alu of instructing the Court of Appeal to corrupt the judicial process in an election petition involving the contest for the office of Governor of Sokoto State in 2007.
For this transgression, the Federal Judicial Service Commission (FJSC), which, like the NJC, was chaired by the CJN, sought to promote the President of the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court. When he resisted, the NJC stepped in, turning the situation into a disciplinary matter.
To investigate the allegations, the NJC formed a fact-finding committee chaired by former Court of Appeal President Umaru Abdullahi. The Umaru Abdullahi fact-finding committee’s report was 23,952 words long. It was never officially released.
Before the Umaru Abdullahi Committee, a group of judicial elders led by former Supreme Court Justice Bolarinwa Babalakin waded into the matter, portraying the allegations as an inter-personal squabble that threatened the judicial enterprise. Following Umaru Abdullahi’s committee, the NJC appointed another, chaired by then-Federal High Court Chief Judge Ibrahim Auta, to determine punishment. The conclusion appeared to be predetermined.
Dahiru Musdapher, who was set to succeed Katsina-Alu as CJN, testified on Katsina-behalf Alu’s before the Umaru Abdullahi Committee but refused to do so under oath, claiming that he had done his ablutions instead.
When it was all said and done, the outgoing Chief Justice, his sure successor, and the president of the Court of Appeal all had ruined reputations. Nobody survived. The public perception of the judiciary suffered an even worse fate. The tragic appearance demonstrated that Nigerian judges could be bought and sold at the highest levels in a free and open political market.
The tenures of Aloma Mukhtar and Mahmud Mohammed as CJNs were thankfully free of scandal, which quickly returned when Chief Justice Walter Onnoghen’s tenure was cut short by an ex parte order obtained late at night from the Code of Conduct Tribunal in January 2019.
Tanko Muhammad was not widely expected to succeed Walter Onnoghen as Chief Justice when he took office in 2019. It was stated at his resignation last Monday that “the move to remove Muhammad from his seat was planned long ago and was spearheaded by a senior cabinet official and head of a security establishment.” According to the same report, “the ex-CJN was forced to resign on two grounds: the letter written against him by 14 Supreme Court justices, and ‘certain issues of financial impropriety.'”
Among the allegations: a “son (of the ex-Chief Justice) was said to have accepted a $10 million bribe from (a) former Governor…. after promising to procure judgement for him on an election matter that did not later materialize,” according to a medium.
The fact that these allegations were made repeatedly and credibly during Chief Justice Tanko’s tenure is more important than whether they are proven to a criminal standard of proof. With the CJN at the helm of the NJC, little could be done to prove the accused’s allegations while he was in office.
The now-famous letter from the Justices of the Supreme Court mercifully put an end to a judicial tenure that seemed destined to end in disaster.
Chief Justice Tanko’s limitations made him ideal for magnifying the rot in Nigeria’s judiciary. Making him a scapegoat is simple, but it is both lazy and convenient.
The most significant aspect of the Justices’ letter was that it had nothing to do with principled disagreements or the public perception of the judiciary. Rather, it concentrated on subsistence issues such as a lack of accommodation due to diesel rationing and WiFi hunger. It all confirmed Martin Luther King’s famous remark that “a riot is the language of the unheard.”
Tanko made a significant contribution to the decline of high judicial office in Nigeria by impoverishing the Supreme Court to the point where its Justice advocated for stomach infrastructure.
The letter itself demonstrates how far Nigeria’s judicial branch has deviated from its primary purpose. The Supreme Court must bear collective responsibility for this.
