Prof Odinkalu
There are two different expressions that show how deeply courts, judges and politicians are inter-mingled in Nigeria today. When politicians desire to signal how deeply their control of the courts runs, their dialect is mirth: “go to court!” And to celebrate an improbable outcome snatched through undue propinquity to judicial robes, they gloat with “heavens will not fall!”
These are two sides of Nigeria’s alluring currency of impunity. Its remit runs everywhere – the executive, legislature, judiciary, bureaucracy, universities, contractocracy, faith organisations, civics. Even the uniformed services are not left out in the rat race for impunity. Those who have it want to maximise it; those who lack it seek its face.
In the past week, the debate on impunity in Nigeria has centered around the judgment on 5 November 2026 by Peter Lifu, a judge of the Federal High Court, nixing the slate of candidates of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) for the 2027 general elections. It is the most recent – but by no means the only one – of a slew of quite incredible judgments by a judge who has developed a genius for being the destination referee in the “endless family quarrels” of Nigeria’s politicians.
Much of this latest controversy has focused on the text of what Peter Lifu decided but the trouble with this case precedes its outcome. It is the evidence around it of what can happen when judicial administration is captured.
This case began on 2 September 2025 in the court of Emeka Nwite, another judge of the same Federal High Court. The claimant was one Nafiu Bala Gombe, who sought judicial recognition as the rightful national chairman of the ADC. To achieve this, he asked the court to de-recognise David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola in the roles of national chairman and secretary respectively of the party.
A procedural objection by the party traveled all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided on 30 April 2026 to return the case to Justice Emeka Nwite for hearing on its merits.
Four days after that decision, on 4 May 2026, Nafiu Bala Gombe delivered a letter to the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court, John Tsoho, inexplicably complaining that the case before Emeka Nwite had suffered “prolonged and inordinate delay” and asking the Chief Judge to transfer it to another judge.
Remarkably, the date on this letter was 4 April. That was nearly one month before the Supreme Court decided the appeal. That did not make logical sense
Yet, the day after receiving Nafiu Bala’s transfer request, on 5 May 2026, Chief Judge Tsoho transmitted it to the lawyer for the ADC, Luka Musa Haruna, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN.
In a response dated 11 May and copied to the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Luka Haruna said Nafiu Bala’s request was “an odious effort” to impugn the integrity of the trial judge. Instead, he sought compliance with the order of the Supreme Court to return the case to Emeka Nwite, together with accelerated hearing of the case.
Three days earlier, on 8 May, upon being notified that Nafiu Bala had written to the Chief Judge to ask for the transfer of the case to another judge, Emeka Nwite adjourned the matter indefinitely to await the decision of the Chief Judge.
In the midst of this frenzy, on 14 May 2024, the National Judicial Council (NJC) recommended 12 judges to the president of Nigeria for elevation to the Court of Appeal. One of them was Emeka Nwite. Six months later, that recommendation still awaits the president’s attention and Emeka Nwite still works as a High Court judge.
Meanwhile, on 19 May, Chief Judge John Tsoho addressed a fresh letter to Luka Musa Haruna SAN in which he observed that the recommendation of Emeka Nwite for appointment to the Court of Appeal “constitutes an intervening event that makes the reassignment of this suit inevitable.”
The Chief Judge informed the lawyer that he had “therefore, reassigned this suit to Hon. Justice P.O. Lifu for accelerated hearing.” He offered no reason for why it had to be Peter Lifu.
At this time, Peter Lifu was already presiding over another case seeking the de-registration of the ADC. On 22 May, the Court of Appeal issued an order “staying further proceedings” in that case. That was a mere three days after the Chief Judge chose to send to the same judge yet another case seeking essentially the same outcome. He took no notice.
On 15 June, in defiance of the directive of the Court of Appeal, Peter Lifu issued judgment de-registering the ADC. Why then would he sit to decide the leadership of a party that he’d ordered de-registered?
Two weeks earlier, on 1 June, in a four-page letter to Chief Judge John Tsoho, National Secretary of the ADC, Rauf Aregbesola, protested the reassignment of the case saying, among other things: “we have serious concerns regarding the reassignment of politically sensitive matters involving opposition parties to a recurring group of judges of the Abuja Division, particularly, Hon. Justice Peter Lifu….” The letter named two other judges among this list. It also accused the Chief Judge of “administrative interference” with the proceedings and of undermining full compliance with the decision of the Supreme Court. The Chief Judge took little notice.
To be sure, the ADC was not alone in noticing the pattern of assignment of political cases by the current Chief Judge of the Federal High Court. Law Akhigbe, who has analysed the pattern, publicly wonders “how so many politically explosive cases seem to find their way before the same judge”, and worries that “when a judge repeatedly finds himself at the centre of politically consequential disputes, scrutiny inevitably follows.”
He is not alone. On 28 July 2026, the Court of Appeal overturned the decision of Peter Lifu to de-register the ADC, accusing him of the highest level of “judicial impertinence”, and calling him a “misfit on the bench.” The NJC, which has met since then, was unconcerned; nor, it appears, was Chief Judge, John Tsoho.
Merrily, Peter Lifu’s latest judgment achieves the same end that the Court of Appeal overturned in its judgment of 28 July.
In response to this latest outing by Peter Lifu, Aviation Minister, Festus Keyamo SAN, joined the “heavens will not fall” gang, in capital letters. Babafemi Ojudu, a former Senator and presidential adviser, responded to him thoughtfully, inviting him to care about the country.
In a separate response, Olusegun Adeniyi argues that “when a minister of the Federal Republic, and a respected SAN, tells critics to keep quiet about a judgment with this history, he is not defending the judiciary.”
The political significance of judicial power is not in doubt. That is precisely why it needs to be conserved with care, not weaponized with recklessness. The price of failing to conserve it can be steep.
The index case, of course, was Nazi Germany. Ernst Fraenkel reminds us in The Dual State, his classic study of Adolf Hitler’s overthrow of democratic institutions leading to the catastrophe of the Third Reich, that “administrative and general courts aided in the achievement of this condition…., the purpose being the achievement of a political aim.”
When Kenya voted in presidential elections at the end of 2007, their judiciary was widely acknowledged to be “designed to serve the interest of the president and could not be trusted to pass impartial judgments, particularly where the president was involved.” So, the politicians sought to settle their electoral disputes in killing fields.
With the country staring down the edge of the precipice, they finally agreed to pull back. The price was a clear out of the judiciary. In 2010, they began a re-set under a new Chief Justice whose record included political detention and exile. He had never sat previously as a judge.
Those – like Festus Keyamo – living under the false assurance that the heavens will not fall, stare in the wrong direction. They should fear instead for what may happen to the ground underneath them when some judges and their political patrons finally achieve the goal of rendering the courts irrelevant with a succession of noxious decisions. The final moments as the earth satiates its anger and the skies recede in one terminal ‘woosh!’ could be worse than a collapse of the heavens.
- A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu
