Human rights activist, Chidi Odinkalu says there is no hope for justice to be dispensed by the judiciary, that judges were like juju priests and courts, voodoo shrines.
This follows an announcement by opposition parties to contest Saturday’s presidential election results in court after allegations of widespread fraud and violence during the presidential poll.
He said:
“I am one of those who have lost hope. So, please don’t speak about some. That is one of the reasons I no longer can claim to be a lawyer.
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“The kinds of things that come out of our courts these days can only be manufactured by juju priests and voodoo shrines. I did not train for either and lack the qualifications to practice any of those.
“This is not just about technicality; it is also about bare-faced abuse of judicial office. Going to court these days cannot be fulfilling or meaningful for those who do it at any level, from the area courts, magistrates’ court, or district courts to the Supreme Court.
“Most of the people appointed to the Bench these days are related to powerful judges or powerful politicians – the son of this, the daughter of that, the wife of the other one, or the mistress of that one. It is no longer about competence, character, skill or qualification.”
He faulted INEC for its inadequate preparations in the build-up to the poll and failure to extensively test-run the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines, which recorded widespread malfunctions in many parts of the country during the election.
The ex-NHRC chief said:
“Anyone who took minimal interest in the matter would have figured that INEC’s assurances of a seamless process or flawless BVAS deployment were both empty and not believable. I wrote about this more than once, but I guess, as Nigerians, we are wired to miracles and magic.”
Odinkalu further said:
“BVAS was untried on anything approaching the scale of the claim INEC made on it.
“Prior to this, it had only been tried in three off-cycle governorship elections in Anambra, Ekiti, and Osun, as well as in the FCT local elections. In all of those, the flaws were very evident.”
