THE PRICE OF WRONGNESS: WHY NIGERIANS BUY INJUSTICE, NOT JUSTICE

 

By David Alani Ige (The Scribe)

For decades, Nigerians have lazily leaned on a popular, cynical phrase to describe our judiciary: "Justice is for the highest bidder." It is a phrase echoed in market squares, newsrooms, and even the hallowed chambers of our courts. However, submitting this common saying to strict philosophical scrutiny—as recently provoked by the veteran journalist Chief Tola Adeniyi—reveals a fundamental flaw in our thinking. 

Nobody actually buys justice. Justice, in its purest form, is not purchasable. What the crooked, the wealthy, and the politically connected pay for in Nigeria is injustice.

The Economics of Falsehood

To understand this paradigm shift, we must look at the natural state of truth. Justice is the default alignment of reality. If a man rightfully owns a piece of land and the court declares him the owner based on glaring evidence, that is justice. It happens naturally. It requires no extra financial lubrication. Justice is the free baseline. 

When that baseline is disturbed—when the truth is flipped, when the rightful winner of an election becomes the loser in the eyes of the law—something must pay for that violent disturbance of reality. That something is money, influence, or power. Therefore, when a desperate politician bribes a judge or compromises an electoral umpire, he is not buying justice. He is paying a premium for a deviation from reality. He is purchasing an unjust advantage, making him a customer of injustice.

Purchasing Injustice: The Weaponization of Technicalities

Let us look at the present-day Nigerian reality. During our election cycles, we repeatedly witness a scenario where the electorate’s mandate is clear. Yet, a defeated politician with a massive war chest will hire a battalion of Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) to bypass the substantive truth. They comb through the Electoral Act not to find justice, but to find a loophole. 

When a tribunal overturns the obvious will of the people based on a minute clerical error or a delayed timestamp, the wealthy politician did not "buy justice." He successfully purchased the override of truth. The seller of this deviation—the compromised official or the technicality-obsessed system—has simply auctioned off its dishonest service. The magnitude of the injustice is directly proportional to the size of the bribe.

The Paralysis of True Justice: When the Mandate is Hijacked

However, the tragedy of the Nigerian system extends beyond the mere purchasing of wrongness. There is a second, equally devastating reality: the blatant suppression of true justice by political impunity. 

What happens when a citizen cannot be bought, when a judge stands firm on the side of truth, and pure justice is actually delivered? In today's Nigeria, getting a favorable, honest court judgment is only half the battle; enjoying the fruits of that legal victory is entirely another.

Consider the numerous instances where citizens, labor unions, or deposed traditional rulers legitimately win their cases in court. The judge delivers true justice—ordering the unfreezing of accounts, the release of an unlawfully detained activist, or the reinstatement of a wrongfully impeached official. Yet, the politically powerful simply refuse to obey. The executive branch uses its control over the police and state apparatus to block the enforcement of the court order. 

In this scenario, the common man is handed the certificate of justice, but the political elite violently confiscate the enjoyment of it. They do not even bother to buy the injustice; they simply use the machinery of the state to enforce their wrongness.

Correcting Our Language, Reclaiming Our Power

As long as we continue to say "the court sold justice," we inadvertently dignify corruption. We misname the transaction. The powerful do not command justice; they command injustice. 

A nation that prices injustice out of the reach of the poor, but makes it a readily available commodity for the highest bidder, is a nation operating on borrowed time. It is time we amend our marketplace of common wisdom. We must look the system in the eye and declare it for what it is: in Nigeria, justice remains free, but the state has allowed injustice to become its most profitable export. 

David Alani Ige (The Scribe)

Is a Public Policy Analyst & Institutional Archivist writing from Igboho Oyo state.He can be contacted through Phunshor01@gmail.com.