NIGERIA: SARO-WIWA’S EXTRA JUDICIAL MURDER RE-ECHOES

-19-YEAR-OLD APPEAL LANDS JUDICIARY IN HUGE CORRUPTION SCANDAL

Nigeria – the giant of Africa’s bad news and the world’ largest black democracy - is again in the news. 56 years following independence from British colonization, Nigeria still has no solid judicial institution - another way of saying that justice eludes the good people of that wealthy nation. This was the main reason President Obama declined to visit that country during the US president’s two-time tour of elite African states.

In 1995, it was the brutal murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa, renowned environmental activist and playwright, alongside other selected elites of Ogoniland through an act of judicial recklessness, under a military dictatorship. Their murder was condemned all over the world as the height of judicial terrorism.

Today, in 2016, barely 20 years after that dark spot in Nigerian’s judicial history, the life of another innocent Nigerian, a British-educated journalist, Prince Woboroma II, hangs in the balance, due to yet another judicial wickedness arising from corruption, avarice, incompetence and negligence.

Information filtering in from that country reveals that an Appeal Court in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil-rich city in the Niger Delta region, where Ken Saro-Wiwa was controversially executed in 1995, has been retaining and hindering a “lucrative” fake Appeal for 19 years without trial,  and has allowed fake Appellants plunder Prince Woboroma’s multi-million dollar heritage with impunity.

The Honourable Justices have also corruptly allowed a man said to be a Senator of the Federal Republic and the fake Appellants who sold the Respondent’s property to him to hire bands of kidnappers to chase the Prince and his family into exile for nearly two decades.

One of the Respondent’s counsel, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, duped him of a large sum of money after being bought over by the fake Appellants and hired a third band of kidnappers to try to locate and eliminate the Prince and his family, under the close watch of the Appeal Court.

Prince Woboroma, a former controller of News and Current Affairs in the Government-owned Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and later Consultant to the same TV company, has been on the run for two decades and has escaped assassination a number of times, even around the court premises- (See attached pix) His children have abandoned college and the entire family gone into hiding in view of the prevailing danger.

The Appeal (File No: CA/PH/142/97) dumped in the Court since 1997, and which till date not been properly served on the Respondents but has suffered innumerable adjournments, is in connection with over 200 plots of prime land in the oil-rich city, heritage of Prince Woboroma and his four  elder brothers, three of whom are late. A lot of value is attached to landed property in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria because of agriculture and oil exploration.

Two lower courts, including a High Court Appeal Panel, had ruled in 1993 and 1996 in favour of the Prince that only their late father’s five biological sons were traditionally entitled to share the heritage and warned that grand children (including the fake Appellants) were customarily forbidden from jointly sharing a man’s property with their fathers.

In the 15th year of the Appeal, a brilliant team of Justices posted to the court had the matter Struck Out on 27th November, 2012. The Appellant failed to apply for re-listing within the 90-day period lawfully permitted under the rules of court, and the Appeal was officially ended.

However, three years later, in February, 2015, a new team of Justices in contravention of the Rules of Court and in contempt of the Rule of Law, had the matter exhumed following an application by a band of three fake applicants, children of the late Appellant, two of them lecturers at the Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt, whom earlier judgments had warned had no portion in their grandfather’s estate.

In 2015 alone, the exhumed Appeal suffered at least 7 adjournments, still without trail. What has happened, however, is that under the nose of the Honourable Justices what was remaining of the over 200 plots have been sold by the fake Applicants and the proceeds shared between them and the Bench and Bar, while the real ownership, the Respondent himself was chased into exile.

Reports say, the Respondent and his family now live in penury, danger and afflictions in the midst of plenty, while those who approved the sale of their heritage dwell in affluence.
As it is now, the journalist-Respondent is unable to return to his homeland because of the danger to his life and his family’s, his children are unable to return to school, his possessions and heritage secretly handed over by Appeal Court to criminals, politicians and a terrorist Senator and his only other means of livelihood as Consultant to NTA Headquarters in Abuja unilaterally truncated by some corrupt management officials of that organization who foolishly meddled in the family’s palaver.

Questions are being asked everywhere as to why an elite court should keep an incompetent Appeal pending for upwards of 19 years without trial. And why they should permit fake (even if genuine) Applicants to plunder a man’s heritage under the constitutional care of their Lordships in a democracy? What on earth should prompt an elected Senator to indulge in buying a property that is subject-matter of a lawsuit and then employ the services of terrorists to chase away the rightful owner?

Intelligent observers of the Nigerian Judiciary have argued that this was the quality of judicial recklessness that led to the brutal murder of the Environmental Activist and Playwright, Ken Saro-Wiwa of blessed memory. They have also argued that a Court of Appeal that allows external influences to control its actions is incompetent and, therefore, subject to dissolution.

Similarly, any court like the one in question which gets itself enmeshed in acts of criminal misconduct, including deliberate collaboration with people, with terrorist tendencies, is an “ accomplice after the fact of terrorism” and, therefore, a terrorist organization.
The most important task of Government (including the judiciary) is to protect the lives of citizens and their possessions, Governments should confront the great and small threats to national security.

The current efforts at combating corruption in Nigeria should be universally pursued. The anti-graft agencies of government should not concentrate on corrupt practices that affect the Treasury alone. The loot and plunder of the wealth of the citizens should also concern the authorities as this also affects the national economy.

In 2015, at least 20 justices and magistrates were dismissed from service in neighbouring Ghana for corruption. In Nigeria, However, the giant of African corruption, such justices are worshipped as mini-gods and their anti-social activities treated with sanctimony.

Who will rescue this family from the brutal hands of this unjust and terrorist judicial organization? Will the new anti-graft Federal Government of Nigeria and the civilized world fold their arms and, like the impotent Appeal Court in Port Harcourt, allow this law-abiding journalist and his family undergo this gargantuan tribulation perpetually?

Unless a quick, drastic intervention is launched, Nigeria may be slowly marching backwards into the Drak Ages of anarchy and terrorism due to Judicial recklessness and absolute incompetence of some of its learned and “Honourable” in-Justices.

Written by:
Karen Dabrowska from UK