ACCOMPLISH MAGAZINE DEC 2023

FEATURE / ANALYSIS
NIGERIA’S
CORRUPTED
SPIRIT OF
JUSTICE
By Prince Justice Jadesola Faloye
i
disagree with those claiming that corruption becoming rife in the
judiciary is a recent phenomenon. One commentator on Seun
Okinbaloye’s show on Channels TV articulated that corruption started
in our magistrate courts and only seeped into the high courts in the
1990s and the Supreme Court in the 2000s. This, also, is an incorrect
historiography and chronology of corruption in our judiciary. The judiciary
has been rotten from its roots and contravenes our natural African
spiritual sciences and concept of justice.
What has made corruption in our
judiciary more evident is not only
the spread of social media, but the
democratic dispensation of governance.
Under military rule, there was more
discipline through a scalar management,
with the military leadership unattached
to many civil issues. Therefore, the
military had shielded us from the effects
of the shaky, unnatural foundations of
neocolonial justice systems. People who
believe the present crop of politicians
since 1999 corrupted the judiciary are not
looking far back enough to the previous
democratic dispensations whose fall
could be attributed to the failures of the
judiciary.
As a teenager whose parents were law
officers, and one who also had holiday
job stints within the precincts of the law,
I was fully aware of some rotten eggs
on the bench in the 1980s. The most
memorable were the three Ibadan judges
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