Reporting News and opinions
On the morning of August 6, 2017, gunmen stormed St. Philip’s Catholic Church in Ozubulu, Anambra State. When the gunfire ceased, at least a dozen worshippers lay dead on the pews, including the elderly father of the intended target.
It was 2008. The country was being asked to choose a president, and Clinton’s famous campaign advertisement presented the image of sleeping children, a ringing telephone in the White House and a question: Who do you want answering the phone?
The late Sam Mbakwe, first civilian governor of Imo State and a man whose impatience with mediocrity remains legendary, once declared that he would gladly invite the British back to rule Nigeria for another fifty years. Other politicians have echoed the sentiment over the decades, usually after another round of epileptic power, collapsed roads, or the discovery that the latest “transformation agenda” had transformed mainly the bank balances of its authors. The quip is usually delivered with a sigh, half-joke, half-confession: better the colonial taskmaster who at least kept the trains roughly on time than the indigenous ones who treat the national timetable as optional reading.
Nigeria’s judicial budget is a complex, contentious issue at the intersection of constitutional design, fiscal federalism, political power dynamics, and the practical realities of justice delivery. While the 1999 Constitution (as amended) enshrines judicial independence including financial autonomy the implementation reveals deep gaps between legal provisions and on-ground realities.
There is an old saying that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. In Nigeria, if wishes were horses, the beggars would still be waiting for the federal allocation to buy the saddle, the state governor would claim ownership of the horse, and the local government chairman would invent three new wards so his cousins could ride too.
