There was a time in this country when the judiciary was not merely an arm of government but a moral architecture. Courts were temples in the old sense of the word, approached with solemnity, awe, and a quiet fear that justice, though slow, would eventually arrive. Judges were not celebrities, influencers, or political foot soldiers. They were men and women whose names carried weight not because of surnames, godfathers, or genealogies, but because of intellect, restraint, and an almost sacred commitment to the rule of law.
Today, that architecture looks less like a temple and more like a family-owned conglomerate. Welcome to Ajayi, Usman & Emenike Judiciary Company (AUE JC); a thriving enterprise where justice is franchised, surnames are assets, and the law is no longer blind but highly networked.
The late-night lament is familiar: “Go to court.” It has become the favourite refrain of the current government, a phrase delivered with the confidence of someone who knows that courts have become political laundromats, where contradictions are washed clean, absurdities pressed neatly, and legitimacy dry-cleaned for public consumption. Yet anyone who has actually gone to court recently knows that “go to court” in Nigeria is less an invitation to justice and more a dare to madness.
As Chidi Odinkalu aptly observed, “Nigeria’s process for appointing judges has become largely performative, rigged to favor the ‘judicial gene’ over merits.” That sentence alone should trigger a national inquiry. Instead, it merely earns nods from those who already know. We are now firmly in the era of what Odinkalu calls hereditary judges; a judicial aristocracy where the robe is passed down like heirloom china, and competence is assumed to be genetic.
In this new order, productivity and hard work have become optional electives. Chris Kwaja captures it when he laments that “Sons, daughters, spouses, in-laws, cousins, and cronies sit comfortably in the temple of justice, dispensing judgments that routinely undermine the very rule of law they swore to protect.” Merit has been replaced by lineage. Integrity by intimacy. Independence by inheritance.
And beneath the elevated benches, a darker machinery hums.
The bailiff and clerk system; once the invisible backbone of court administration, has degenerated into what can only be described as an informal criminal syndicate. The rot here is not subtle; it is brazen, theatrical, and deeply normalized. These actors move with summons, divorce papers, stamps, ink, and if rumours are to be believed, sample judgments tucked neatly into their boots. Justice is no longer delayed; it is pre-packaged.
One must admire the efficiency. Why wait for hearings when outcomes can be “guided”? Why trust due process when templates exist? In this ecosystem, law has become sexually transmitted—passed through proximity, whispered conversations, backroom alliances, and transactional intimacy. It spreads fast, mutates often, and leaves institutional damage in its wake.
Look at the Supreme Court.
Once the apex moral compass of the nation, it now regularly delivers verdicts that feel less like jurisprudence and more like performance art. Judgments arrive that confuse not only lay citizens but seasoned lawyers. Political cases end in outcomes so acrobatic that even logic needs a lawyer. Precedents are stretched, twisted, and occasionally strangled. Dissenting opinions sound like polite screams trapped in footnotes.
The tragedy is not merely that judgments are laughable; it is that they are predictable. When citizens begin to forecast outcomes not by law but by political alignment, ethnic arithmetic, or surname recognition, the judiciary has already lost its soul.
As someone who works within the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) spectrum; a certified mediator, arbitrator, and conciliator. I speak to this subject not as a distant commentator but as a practitioner. I train judges, lawyers, traditional leaders, and community actors across Nigeria in conflict resolution, conciliation, and justice delivery outside adversarial courtrooms. I have sat with disputants who fled the courts not because they dislike law, but because they fear it. I have mediated conflicts where parties explicitly said, “Anything but court.”
That statement should terrify us.
ADR thrives on trust; trust in neutrality, fairness, and process. Yet increasingly, ADR is not chosen because it is better, faster, or culturally grounded; it is chosen because the formal judicial system has become emotionally unsafe, financially exploitative, and procedurally unreliable. People are not avoiding court because they are lawless; they are avoiding court because they are rational.
And let us be honest: when judgments read like political press releases, when injunctions are procured faster than common sense, when technicalities defeat justice with gymnastic flair, what exactly are we defending?
The judiciary today behaves like a dynastic merchant guild. Judicial appointments resemble succession planning. Promotions feel like loyalty rewards. Accountability is treated as an external nuisance. Internal discipline? A whispered myth. The National Judicial Council often appears more comfortable managing optics than confronting decay.
Meanwhile, the public is instructed—almost mockingly—to trust the system.
But systems do not earn trust by command. They earn it through consistency, courage, and consequences.
There is something profoundly dangerous about a judiciary that believes it is untouchable. Power without introspection always rots. And when justice rots, it does not rot quietly—it infects politics, poisons the economy, radicalizes citizens, and erodes national cohesion. Courts are not isolated buildings; they are social anchors. When they fail, society drifts.
This is why Ajayi, Usman & Emenike Judiciary Company is not just satire; it is diagnosis. It names a reality where law is commodified, justice franchised, and robes worn like brand labels. It exposes a system where surnames speak louder than submissions, and connections argue better than counsel.
Yet sarcasm alone is not enough.
If we are serious about reform, we must confront judicial appointments with radical transparency. We must audit not just judgments, but processes. We must dismantle hereditary assumptions and re-centre merit, ethics, and competence. We must clean the bailiff and clerk ecosystem with the same urgency we apply to headline corruption cases. And yes, we must allow the judiciary to be criticized without treating critique as sacrilege.
Respect is not demanded; it is earned.
Until then, “go to court” will remain what it has sadly become; not a promise of justice, but a punchline. And Ajayi, Usman & Emenike Judiciary Company will continue to flourish, not because it is legitimate, but because we have allowed legitimacy to be inherited rather than earned.
The tragedy is that the law was once our last hope. Today, it is fast becoming our most sophisticated betrayal—May Nigeria win.
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