Malami and the hierarchy of hypocrisy

By Louis Odion, FNGE  

The issue with Buhari's anti-graft war is often said not to be the efficacy or otherwise of the tools to apprehend, but largely prosecutorial competence. By various acts of omission and commission, the prosecution is often unable to present a water-tight case to secure conviction.

The reason is not far-fetched: whereas brawn may serve you well to apprehend, you certainly need a lot of brain to forensically knock out a suspect in the court of law.

We may not have to look too far to see why the roof appears to be leaking pathetically on criminal justice administration in Nigeria today. With the recent juvenile verbiage by the Justice Minister and Attorney-General, Mallam Abubakar Malami, on the Arewa youths who had taken liberty to issue quit notice to Igbo in the north as though Nigeria were their father's exclusive estate, we, at least, now know the quality of thinking behind policies and programmes in a ministry tasked with otherwise critical responsibility of preserving law and order in the society.

The shame is not just the possibility of harboring bias, but also not being intelligent enough to conceal it. 

Asked why none of these misguided political delinquents (of course, his kinsmen) was arrested and arraigned in court, Malami simply narrowed it down to "security considerations". In order words, the nation's chief law officer believes that touching the Arewa youths could either trigger an ethno-religious crisis or complicate the existing political tension in the land.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State had ordered their arrest by security agencies. That was never enforced.

Meanwhile, the same Malami mindful of "security considerations" vis-a-vis the Arewa youths hardly thought twice before rushing to the court seeking a fresh order to commit the little neo-Biafran braggart to prison for breaching his bail terms. He does not appear to think or care about the ethnic sensibility of the South-east and possible security backlash in the event that Nnamdi Kanu is re-arrested.

Maybe because our fastidious legal czar assumes the guy and the mob behind him are nothing but kids of a lesser god. 

Nigeria is indeed in great danger if this is how best Malami thinks to interpret the law. A society is doomed if double standard is applied against two acts of perceived criminality.