Nigeria’s democracy deeply compromised – Obasanjo

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo on Friday expressed concern that Nigeria’s judiciary has become “deeply compromised”.

Obasanjo noted that corruption among judges has turned Nigerian courts into “court of corruption rather than courts of justice”.

The ex-President made the assertion in his new book, ‘Nigeria: Past and Future’, published by the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library.

The former Nigerian leader lamented what he described as the “steady decline of the judiciary’s integrity”.

“The reputation of the Nigerian judiciary has steadily gone down from the four eras up till today. The rapidity of the precipitous fall, particularly in the Fourth Republic, is lamentable,” he wrote.

The former military Head of State equally stated that justice had become commodified in Nigeria, with dangerous consequences for the nation’s stability.

“The great fear of most well-meaning Nigerians and good friends of Nigeria is that where ‘justice’ is only available to the highest bidder, despair, anarchy, and violence would substitute justice, order, and hope.

“I went to a state in the North about ten years after I left public office. Next to the government guest house was a line of six duplex buildings.

“The governor pointed to the buildings and stated that they belonged to a judge who put them up from the money he made from being the chairman of election tribunals,” Obasanjo said.

He accused the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, of undermining the electoral process since 2015.

“No wonder politicians do not put much confidence in an election which the INEC of Professor Mahmood Yakubu polluted and grossly undermined to make a charade,” he added.

Nigeria’s democracy deeply compromised – Obasanjo