By Abu Najakku

Oh you Muhammadu Buhari, go on and dice with them squarely. Taking decisive action against the corrupt is your lifetime assignment, and you have to do this no matter the price you have to pay. Who else can do it but you?
Does it sound like a directive from the scripture? Well, it is not and it doesn’t have to be, dear reader, but our country is so cabled to corruption that it requires more than a minimum effort to cut it off from our national life and indeed the only person who can strike at this monster is President Buhari.

And so the day of reckoning is here for some of Nigeria’s senior judges, and as usual, their sympathisers are crying over the manner of their arrests. On Saturday morning, the country woke up to reports of ‘sting’ operation conducted by the operatives of the Department of State Security (SSS) in the homes of suspected corrupt Judges. It was the most courageous undertaking by the government of President Buhari since his assumption of office and since General Murtala Muhammed’s daring retirement of the then Chief Justice of Nigeria in 1975. According to media reports, seven judges suspected of fraud are in custody and eight more will be arrested shortly from now.
The spate of adjournment of cases, the length of time it takes to conclude them and the confounding logic in arriving at some of them cannot but lead one to conclude that some of these verdicts are indeed purchased. It is inconceivable that in this war to cleanse Nigeria of the scourge of corruption Buhari will spare the judiciary. Not at all; it is time to stem the judicial and legal terrorism that the state and its citizens have suffered in the hands of some of our judges.
What immunity do judges have against reasonable suspicion that they have betrayed the state and its citizens in the discharge of their duties notwithstanding our trust in them? How else do you catch these suspects? What do you wait for in the face of glaring opportunity to nab these judges in their homes irrespective of the time and while they had with them those scandalous amounts of money? It is unfortunate that the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) has, in addition to condemning the arrest of the judges also threatened to go on strike to protest the action by DSS. The NBA has to understand that the state has a duty to protect the society from the unwholesome practices of members of any profession. In this case, the NBA’s reaction is no better than the usual behaviour of the leadership of Keke NAPEP or tanker drivers who threaten peace every time their members have been found on the wrong side of the law. I believe that in due course when a compelling evidence of fraud is made available, the NBA may change their stance on this matter. Mercifully, the arrested judges are still suspects and it is up to them to prove they are not corrupt whenever they are arraigned before their colleagues.
According to DSS, “A particular judge entered a departmental store and collected bribe from a go-between. He didn’t even bother to buy anything. He just came out with the money. That is how bad it has become.” The Service says it has a video recording of this sad incident as evidence.
In the light of the recovery of such humongous amount of money in various international currencies from their homes, no reasonable person should quarrel with the timing or manner of the arrest of these judges. Unless the SSS is lying, the discovery of over ninety three million Naira; five hundred and thirty thousand United States Dollars, twenty five thousand British Pounds and five thousand Euros in the possession of the arrested judges, is a sad commentary on the integrity of some of these leading lights of our judiciary. In addition to this huge amount of money found in their possession, DSS said it had also discovered fat bank accounts opened in the names of members of the families of these Judges. The Police Service Commission should do well to punish the Rivers State Commissioner of Police for obstructing the DSS from arresting one of the suspects, a Judge of the Federal High Court, Port Harcourt.
I do not believe arraigning Senators Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekweremadu on charges of forgery is an assault on the Senate or National Assembly. I do not believe that arresting 15 judges on suspicion of corruption is an attack on the Judiciary. I do not believe that President Buhari’s fight against corruption is a witch hunt.
Addressing corruption in the judiciary, the former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Muhammadu Lawal Uwais was quoted as saying “A corrupt judge is more harmful to the society than a man who runs amok with a dagger in a crowded street. The latter can be restrained physically. But a corrupt judge deliberately destroys the moral foundation of society and causes incalculable distress to individuals through abusing his office while still being referred to as honourable.”
The fight against corruption remains Buhari’s flourising currency and he needs to keep on disbursing it. On the question of corruption in the judiciary, it is time for these judges to be disgracefully jailed, if possible, since they’ve decided to serve us poison in place of justice. President Muhammadu Buhari should go full steam ahead with the war against corruption to the glory of the country.