I sympathise with the Nigerian judiciary. This is because, of all the state institutions, executive, legislative, the judiciary, the press and Civil Society Groups, it is by far the most vulnerable. It has in the last few years gone through great stress and strain as a result of the conspiracy of the executive and the legislative arms of government which with lacuna deceptively left in their laws, tie the hands of the judiciary they both regard as a stumbling block because quite often they are driven by selfish interest as against public interest.

This perhaps explains why the political class and their political parties, according to the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola “could not manage their affairs well and ended up having about 600 cases from the party primaries alones in courts” during the last election. Unfortunately, instead of putting their rancorous house in order, the judiciary which is often made to carry the can for the malicious actions of politicians, often become becomes the scapegoat. The fear until last week was therefore whether tarred with the same brush with the political class, the judiciary that is increasingly coming under threat of political sore-losers, their supporters, their sympathetic media and those pretending to be public intellectuals, can as a part of a whole, be holier than the whole.

But the current leadership of Nigeria’s Supreme Court gave an indication of the direction it was headed when on Thursday October 22, 2023, it upheld President Bola Tinubu’s election through a unanimous judgment passed by seven Supreme Court judges, who threw out his challengers’ opposition which did not question the fact that he won the election ‘round and square’ with 37% of the popular votes at the expense of his warring opponents, but based on purely technicalities.  It last Friday further consolidated this position when it chastised the justices of the various appeal courts that had attempted to upturn victories of popularly elected governors including Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Alex Otti of Abia, Bala Mohammed of Bauchi, Cross River’s Bassey Otu, Abba Yusuf of Kano, Caleb Mutfwang of Plateau, Francis Nwifuru of Ebonyi and Dauda Lawal of Zamfara.

With the Supreme Court’s last Friday judgment, hailed by the opposition as “representing the triumph of democracy…and reaffirming the sanctity of the ballot as the determining factor for democratic legitimacy,” came some relief for the embattled Supreme Court whose credibility had for years been under repeated assault of political gladiators.

Its travail started when the Supreme Court nullified the election of Emeka Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as governor of Imo State and declared Hope Uzodimma of the All Progressives Congress (APC) as the winner of the March 9, 2020 governorship election even when the latter came a distant fourth during the state gubernatorial contest. The Supreme Court was to lose further credibility with the high-profile political cases of Lawan Vs Machina and Godswill Akpabio Vs Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and others, in which the court endorsed Akpabio and Lawan as candidates for the senatorial seats of their constituencies even though they were not available for the primaries of their political parties.

The cases according to a Punch newspaper editorial “have evoked excoriating public criticism and perceived somewhat as perverse… The decisions show that the Supreme Court is slavishly adhering to technical legalisms and formalism at the expense of substantial justice”. And for the same reason, Lasisi Olagunju of the Tribune accused the “the Supreme Court justices of abducting this democracy… and deciding who rules and who does not… They have evolved to become Bashorun Gaa of Old Oyo; they enthrone and dethrone as it pleases them.”(Nigerian Tribune Dec. 18, 2023).

The credibility of the apex court got further battered with “All eyes on the judiciary’ smear campaign led by sore losers – Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi and their supporters in the February 2023 presidential election. They openly expressed lack of confidence in the ability of the current leadership of the Supreme Court to guarantee justice and went on to claim without proof, that the judiciary under him was the worst in 45 years. Last week they swallowed their words.

But there are others who were genuinely concerned about the fate of our country and that of our young democracy. Among such concerned Nigerian opinion leaders are ex-president Goodluck Jonathan and Femi Falana (SAN), a celebrated human rights lawyer).  For President Jonathan “the ballot paper should decide who holds any elective office from the councillorship to the presidency. That is democracy. “I am not saying the judiciary is not doing well. But my point is that our laws should suppress the issue of the judiciary returning candidates… If a candidate is declared winner after a flawed electoral process, what the courts can do is to annul the election and order a fresh one, where a winner will finally emerge through the ballot.”

And for Femi Falana and others, “Judges are not suited to determine the winners of elections…determining winners of election is an exclusive reserve of the Independent National Electoral Commission” (INEC) if things are done properly”.

Last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling must therefore be seen as a tribute to all those who campaigned for the sanctity of elections based on electorate’s votes cast at the polling booths and as much a tribute also to the current leadership of the Supreme Court that chose to listen to the people.

It is on record that similar campaign carried out in the past was ignored by the past leadership of the apex court who was probably convinced that justice was better served by upturning victories of popularly elected candidates on technicalities to demonstrate the judiciary’s  zero-tolerance for disobedience of court orders as  was the case in Zamfara in 2019 when duly elected officials from governorship to state House of Assembly members lost their positions  and in Rivers where candidates and their supporters were disenfranchised.

 The current leadership of the apex court on the other hand, whilst not denying that there was disobedience of courts orders in Plateau State, was sensitive enough to protest by voters in both Plateau and Kano to come to terms with Lord Denning’s dictum to the effect that “Justice must be rooted in confidence, and confidence is destroyed when right-minded people go away thinking: “The judge was biased.”

But the current leadership of the Supreme Court and the NJC and the president must go a step further by ensuring those Appeal court justices chastised for ignoring Supreme Court’s earlier pronouncements and for presiding over cases in which they did not have jurisdiction in Kano and Plateau must be sanctioned.  In the corporate world, once there has been an infraction of corporate rules, the opportunity of getting to the apex of one’s profession by the erring officer becomes very slim. The problem with the judiciary is that judicial officers are hardly sanctioned for infractions or incompetence but promoted even when their fitness is in doubt.

 As argued by Abiodun Owoniko (SAN) while answering questions on ARISE Morning show last Tuesday, ‘there should be career progress delay’, before they are allowed to move to the next level which is the Supreme Court” because of the danger they pose to the health of the judiciary.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was a simple, straight forward man whose life ambition was to stop human beings from being exploited by others. His life was characterised by studies of all kinds, the power of human reason, a simplicity that concealed his tenacity, his audacity that led to the October Russian Revolution and his love for the human race irrespective of race, gender, region and religion.

Lenin did not set out to change the world, but when the world around him changed, he became a catalyst for change. He had a protected childhood and seemed unconcerned with the world until a month before his 17th birthday in March 1887 when Alexander, his elder brother who was a Zoology student, was arrested for involvement in a plot to bomb Czar Alexander III. Alexander Ulyanov was hanged two months later.

Lenin tried to move on a few months later by securing admission to read law at the Kazan University, but was expelled within months for participating in a students’ protest. He could not get a new admission and had to study as an external candidate at St. Petersburg University, graduating in 1891. But he remained on the radar screen of the Czarist monarchy and tried to evade arrest by using aliases like Petrov and K. Tulin. Three years later, he was sent to prison for one year and then moved to Siberia where he was released in 1900. He then adopted the alias Lenin, after the Lena River in Siberia.

Following the completion of his sentence, Lenin left for exile, and except for a brief visit in 1905 during a failed uprising, spent the next 17 years abroad before returning to lead the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Karl Marx had developed the revolutionary theory that became known as Marxism. But Marx passed away on March 14, 1883 and had such not witnessed the 1884/85 Berlin Conference where Europe and the United States met to carve out other parts of the world into colonies. This had a fundamental impact on the capitalist system Marx had so expertly analysed. Lenin in studying Marx, extended the theory in the context of new realities and concluded that humanity had gone beyond the capitalist system to build an higher system- imperialism. He posited that it was an era of oligopoly with a few countries accumulating capital and exporting it to the new colonies. He published his conclusions in a book titled: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin in his simple style of explaining what appears complex , said: “If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.”

In his book, State and Revolutionary, he explained his praxis on Marxism: “During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonise them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the ‘consolation’ of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarising it.”

For his deepening and expanding revolutionary praxis, the ideology became known as Marxism-Leninism. At this time, the All-European War which was called the First World War was raging. While the various parties, politicians and ruling classes queued behind their various governments, Lenin and his relatively small party refused. He correctly saw it as a war to share colonies as booty and a struggle to accumulate wealth.

Lenin described the conflict as “an annexationist, predatory, plunderous war” over which workers and farmers across the world do not need to lose their lives. He led the Bolshevik Party to pressure Russia get out of the war. The programme for revolution was simple: ensure peace by getting out of the war, providing the masses, especially poor farmers, land, and ensuring food for the starving population. The slogan was simple: “Peace, Land, and Bread.”

While most in Russia dillydallied, Lenin saw the opportunity to carry out a socialist revolution many had theorised about. He analysed that power was lying in the street; so the issue was not about theory, but fighting to pick it up. Lenin led an armed attack bringing down the government in days of fighting. His theory is that: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” These were days that changed Russia and world politics.

The Bolsheviks within two years effectively took over the country in what became known as the Great October Revolution. So Lenin succeeded in turning the theory of Marx into practice.

The Russian Revolution inspired many revolutions across the world. These included that in Yugoslavia led by Marshall Tito, the Romanian, Czechoslovak (now Czech and Slovak Republics) and Polish revolutions plus those across Eastern Europe.

Marxism-Leninism gave birth to the 1949 Chinese Revolution and to what became known as Maoism. It inspired the Vietnamese to throw out French colonialism and defeat the American forces of occupation.

It led to the revolts by Latin American countries, including the Nicaraguan and Venezuelan Revolutions.

Many countries in the West like Britain, United States and Israel supported Apartheid, helped the racists build nuclear weapons and encouraged them to imprison or kill liberation fighters like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Ruth First on the false premise that they were terrorists. In contrast, the socialist countries, including the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which had been influenced by Marxism-Leninism, supported the liberation fighters. Thanks to the these followers of Leninism, many African countries, including Algeria, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa became free.

On August 30, 1918, Lenin was shot by a lady, Fannie Kaplan. He never fully recovered. On January 21, 1924 he died at 53. To mark a century of his exit, an international conference on his ideas is holding in Abuja, Nigeria from January 22-23, 2014. The theme is ‘Lenin, Leninism, Africa and the World.’

The idea according to the Conference Coordinating Committee which I chair, is to “specifically examine Marxism-Leninism as a tool for analysing neo-liberalism, multilateralism, the rise of bodies like the BRICS, globalism and the contemporary world…; examine why the Socialist Bloc collapsed and if Marxism-Leninism can be used to analyse, understand and tackle the current challenges of democracy and underdevelopment in Africa and whether it is still emancipatory and relevant today.”

Lenin was a simple man who changed the course of world history; his life teaches humanity loads of lessons.