This season, Justice Waziri has been extremely busy. Justice Waziri was assigned to Jos, Plateau State, for his duty station during this election petition appeal season. There, the Justices of Appeal, from the state where the President of the Court of Appeal is from, have been busy rewriting the election results, stealing seats from one party and giving them to another on the basis of jurisprudence that can only be described as incredibly fictitious.
But let's not get carried away. His Lordship left Jos to go to the Supreme Court in Abuja for his matrimonial rites. It was advised that the location and length of the subsequent honeymoon be left up to personal choice.
Just twenty-five days after the nuptials, however, the previously mentioned Justice Abdulaziz Waziri was scheduled to give the keynote address at the Nigerian Bar Association's Law Week in Yola. The rumors that His Lordship would be sidetracked from this appearance by the joys of a well-earned honeymoon turned out to be remarkably false.
It was in Yola that His Lordship developed his legal acumen and started his judicial career. The advent of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and His Lordship's professional breakthrough have occurred at the same time. Governor Jibrilla Bindow, who was elected on the APC platform in March 2016, swore him in as an Adamawa State High Court judge. Just five years later, in June 2021, he was appointed by party leader Muhammadu Buhari to the position of Justice of the Court of Appeal.
His Lordship was kept away from home by election petition season and regular judicial duties. Thus, the Yola Bar's invitation had a beneficial purpose. On December 12, Justice Waziri physically arrived in Yola and proceeded with the fervor of a man whose virginity had just been put to the test and proven.
Judge Waziri launched into a wanton defense of the Court of Appeal's jurisprudential preferences in the Plateau State election petition appeals while speaking to the Yola Bar. In a sense, he asked participants to comprehend why judges are more knowledgeable than the people who should be in charge of them and to be more understanding of the Court of Appeal Bench's generosity in overriding the will of the people of Plateau State and dutifully giving their mandate to people other than those they had selected.
His Lordship ridiculed those complaining about the Court of Appeal, telling his listeners to "always stand on the side of the law" and pointing out that the people who were upset about the ruling were not understanding that the Peoples' Democracy Party, whose victories the Court of Appeal had fraudulently taken, did not have a formal structure in place when it came time to nominate candidates. He asserted that the party's "structures" had been destroyed by a ruling from a higher court and that their existence was only incidental to holding party congresses that produced the candidates running for office in 2023.
These statements made by a relatively junior Justice of Appeal were deemed significant enough to garner national attention on all platforms. The beneficiaries of the seats he has been busy awarding as a Justice of Appeal also happen to be his appointive benefactors, the APC, as befits a man whose recent life has been filled with constant coincidence.
It is impossible to feel anything but brotherly affection for a man facing midlife crisis and struggling with the fatigue of an unfulfilled honeymoon. The mitigation that his head might be elsewhere as an anatomical proposition, and not just a figure of speech, must be afforded to him in any attempt to address him. Despite these exceptional circumstances, we must be held accountable for Justice Waziri's comments.
According to tradition, judges' rulings convey the most authority and credibility. Their use of the soapbox or its language to defend their actions on the Bench is, at best, unusual and, for the most part, misguided. But in Nigeria, we are living in unique times. Speaking in public about whether a political party has "structures" before an election was, a generation ago, would have been viewed as judicial malpractice because few people believed that was the purview of the courts.
The judge went beyond his actual jurisdiction in this instance. North-central Nigeria is home to Jos, the capital of Plateau State, where the Justices of Appeal have done their work. From Yola, in the northeast, where His Lordship installed his judicial soap box, it is a journey of more than 520 kilometers.
However, it is not entirely unwanted that His Lordship feels compelled to mount a vigorous defense of the Court of Appeal's detour into the area of electoral burglary under the guise of the law in this particular case. His attempt to enter the judicial soap box removes all of the customary restrictions that are applied when speaking with a member of the Bench.
The facts are not as convoluted as his Lordship attempted to make them appear. One Augustine Timkuk filed a lawsuit in 2022 to contest the legitimacy of the events that followed the state congresses in Plateau State. The Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were among the defendants.
In Augustine Timkuk v. INEC and 6 Others, Mr. Timkuk appealed to the Court of Appeal using appeal number CA/J/300/2022 after failing to have the congresses and the slate of candidates that emerged set aside at the High Court. On February 11, 2023, a few days before the 2023 election season began, the Court of Appeal in Jos, Plateau State, upheld the results of the state congresses and dismissed Mr. Timkuk's lawsuit. There was no judgment rendered before the election nullifying the party congresses or their slate of candidates, nor was there an appeal against this ruling.
However, while serving in a post-election capacity, Justice Waziri and his fellow panelists on the Court of Appeal have acted with imprudent premeditation, dissecting rulings from the very court of appeal and fabricating explanations for actions that jeopardize the judicial branch's reputation as a deliberative body that is held to the highest standards of evidence, precedent, logic, and institutional self-control. By telling the people of Plateau State that they are unfit to decide who represents or governs them, they have done more harm than good. Rather, they claim, both verbally and physically, to be the experts as Justices of Appeal.
The most kind thing to say about this is that it's judicial overreach. Some with less of a heart could view Plateau State as the scene of a criminal court case.
The victim of this shady deal, Plateau State, has been the scene of numerous atrocities in Nigeria since 1994. There is no shortage of official literature demonstrating that the state can unhinge with little provocation. Both for coexistence and elective government, the effects will be extremely damaging. Justice Waziri and his fellow members of the Court of Appeal ought to be aware of this.
However, in case they need to be reminded, there are also precedents from the area. Mali's Constitutional Court reversed the opposition's victory in 31 parliamentary seats in April 2020. Its choice to give these seats to the ruling party set off a chain of events that resulted in the Constitutional Court's dissolution and the military coup that toppled the government.
Goodluck Jonathan, the former president of Nigeria, attempted mediation in that case without success. Justice Waziri might benefit from traveling to Otuoke for a private seminar on how to prevent a repeat of the Mali crisis in Nigeria if he feels that he needs some diversion from his honeymoon and the wanderings of an itinerant jurist.
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