It is often regarded as an act of unpatriotism to cast aspersion on one’s country, let alone showing pessimism about its future. Like a popular Yoruba saying, only a bastard points at the direction of his father’s house with his left hand. It is obviously on the crest of this adage that former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in his usual native demeanour, threw bricks bats at the musician who went wild to render the popular song, Nigeria jagajaga.

But in a country where rogues rule over the princely, where known criminals are the major beneficiaries of the nation’s economic enterprise, where saints roast to hell and sinners smile to heaven, it will not be too unprincely for any man with good conscience to share a pessimistic view about a better tomorrow or  lose hope n the future of this country. This appears to be the case with the geographical entity called Nigeria.

Like the James Ibori’s case which had earlier been dismissed by a supposedly competent Nigerian court, but which later landed the former Delta State governor in London prison, the recent two year jail term with an option of N750,000 fine handed down to Mr. John Yakubu Yusuf, a former Assistant Director in the Police Pension Office by Abuja High Court for stealing N23.3billion has further reiterated the pessimistic view that there must be something fundamentally wrong with Nigeria as a nation. It is either we are deficient in reasoning or that we have lost our moral compass.

I often come to this conclusion each time I muse about Nigeria as a political and economic enterprise. But it becomes more agonizsing to realise that the nation’s judiciary which is regarded as the nation’s bastion of hope or the last hope of the common man has equally been compromised. The court’s judgement about Yusuf has not only advertised us as a nation whose judicial system is on trial, but also as people who are burdened with leaders without conscience or morals.

It is a common parlance that justice must not only be done, but must be manifestly seen to have been done. But in Yusuf’s case, can any man with morals and good conscience proudly say that justice has been manifestly done in all legal and moral terms?

What the judgement suggests is that any rogue, after cheating his country to as much as about N23.3 billion, can look justice straight in the face, dare his victims to go to hell, mock his prosecutors, and then walk out of the courtroom majestically in wild jubilation into the arms of his cronies who are anxiously waiting to throw a party for him in his illegally-acquired mansion, just because he has stolen enough to pay a paltry sum of N750,000 fine in exchange for a jail sentence.

I believe this can only happen in a country where known criminals and public treasury looters pride themselves as government’s contractors and friends and supporters of political leaders. But for the British Court in London which exposed the caricature of what we call justice in Nigeria and convicted Ibori, he would have been a free man looming large in the country today, and perhaps dictating who becomes what in his State and Nigeria. Even at that, the thieving governor who is now serving a jail term in London is still being paid pension by the same State he has ruthlessly and shamelessly robbed of billions of naira. What a shame!

Those who advance the argument in favour of Yusuf that the pension thief has, after all, forfeited 32 properties to the State and has returned parts of the loot must be men and women of little or no conscience at all, just as those who argue that the court’s judgement was a reflection of the Nigerian law that prescribes a two-year jail sentence with an option of fine for a thieving public official must be suffering from moral migraine. The same law leaves the judge with the option and discretion of jailing a convict with or without an option of fine, or jailing him in addition to payment of fine. A reasonable judge with good conscience would have opted for the latter in Yusuf’s case considering the magnitude of the offence and the sum of money involved. How convenient then is it for our judges to hand down a six-month jail sentence to a man who stole an ordinary goat for lack of better things to live on?

Anywhere in the world, the administration of criminal justice system is rooted in punishing both the ‘men rea’ i.e. intention and the ‘actors rens’ i.e. act of an offence so as to serve as a punitive measure to the criminal as well as a deterrent to others who may want to ride on the crest of his fraudulent success.

It is therefore not enough for any man with good morals, good conscience and good intention for Nigeria to argue or presume that a mere return of the loot or parts of it by a man who was found guilty for a charge of N23.3 billion fraud or the payment of N750,000 fine in exchange for a two-year jail sentence, has served the course of justice.

Doing so will amount to a travesty of justice and a mockery of our judicial system. And until the court’s judgement is reversed by an appellate court and justice is manifestly seen to be done, the Abuja High Court’s judgement would forever remain a huge debt on our collective conscience, as well as a bad precedence in our judicial system. We only hope that the re-arrest and re-arraignment of the pension thief by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for fresh charges would produce a good judgement and serve as a relief to people with good conscience.

Boye Salau