This is how administration of criminal justice works

Irrespective of what you read in the books or what you may have imagined, the following are true about the Nigerian courts:

1) More than half of the judges and magistrates you may come across are corrupt. They will sell justice to the richer or more powerful party in any case before them.

2) More than half of the judges and magistrates you may come across are not the brightest people among their peers. If you check, you will notice that most of the judges were not in the top 20% of their classes. They became judges because they are not strong enough to compete in the private practice or they just need a relatively noncompetitive environment, and they have political connection to get appointed judges.

3) Nearly all the judges and magistrates you may come across are afraid of government officials and will do everything not to offend the government authorities. The more corrupt or less intelligent a judge or magistrate is, the more he fears government authorities and bends his or her judgment in favor of the rich or government authority.

4) In all situations, there are two things you need at least one of in order to have justice in Nigerian courts – You either have a very brilliant judge or you will need a political lawyer. A SAN is a political lawyer. They are generally more confident, more experienced and are naturally able to give the judge the impression that there will be consequences to any abuse of his powers. It is the fear of what would happen should he misbehave that forces the judges to treat the political lawyers more cautiously. While the SANs do it more naturally, any lawyer that gives the judge the same impression will get the same treatment. The political lawyers are very expensive. So, only politicians and very wealthy people can afford them.

5) The assumption that the court is the last hope of common man is actually a half truth. The court can be your last hope only if the judge is intelligent and not corrupt or you can afford a political lawyer.  In majority of the cases, the court is common man’s nightmare. Indeed, some judges are dangerous people and worse than the police.

6) For reasons mentioned above, Federal High Court judges are better than State High Court judges.

7) The problem is that you don’t know what judge you are going to have until he is your judge.

In one DSS case, 10 men were brought together and accused of conspiracy and kidnapping. But these men actually didn’t know one another until they met in the DSS cell. When they were brought to court, they applied for bail. The judge refused them bail because he did not want to offend DSS. And why? Because he had been a highly corrupt judge. While the case was still on, the DSS arrested 5 judges and he was one of them.

Now, that he saw his career as a judge was coming to an end, he had to stop trying to be in the good book of DSS. One day, he told the 10 defendants that he knew all along that they were innocent, but that he had to transfer their case because he could no longer handle DSS cases. In other words, he knew all these 3 years that the case was in his court, yet he denied them bail. It was only after his bubble was burst that he had to admit the truth.

The 10 men were granted bail by the next court to which their case was transfered.