There are a few countries where lawyers and courts are as gifted in twisting judicial pronouncements as those in Nigeria. It is not merely the wigs and gowns, relics of a colonial past, that make the courtroom forbidding. It is the language, especially Latin, that often turns justice into an elaborate puzzle, hiding meaning in plain sight.
As facts go on trial, so does plain language
Though Latin still features in many Commonwealth countries which inherited the colonial legacy of British jurisprudence, the language itself is nearly dead. Latin is no longer the classical global language of the Roman Empire and is used only in the Vatican City in formal, limited contexts.
Why Latin has retained a constant presence in legalese and remains a critical factor in judicial proceedings should be a primary consideration for legal reforms. Such reforms are urgent, before the courts become a circus of Latin-induced misinterpretations, further dimming the hope that justice lies there.
Latin weaponised
One Latin phrase, “status quo ante bellum,” has turned a court judgment into a farcical melodrama involving the African Democratic Congress (ADC), a party that could replace the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) as the lead opposition ahead of next year’s general polls.
The phrase means “the state of affairs before the war.” In legal terms, it is typically invoked to restore parties to their position before a disputed action. On the surface, it is straightforward. In practice, as recent events show, it has proved anything but.
Latin did not clarify the court’s intention; it complicated it. Instead of resolving the dispute, it opened the door to competing readings, each with significant political consequences.
There are many things for which you can blame the ADC, and I have not spared them, given that they are a party more notable for its presidential wannabes than for offering a viable long-term option for change.
For example, there were multiple protracted court cases when the former Senate President David Mark’s group joined, and key politicians like the Deputy National Chairman, North, Nafiu Bala Gombe, felt shortchanged by the joiners. Mismanaging Gombe has proved a dangerous mistake.
Old wine, new skin
The ADC sounds like a new party, but it is not. It was originally formed in 2005 as the Alliance for Democratic Change, and was officially registered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as a political party in 2006, and was renamed ahead of the 2007 general elections – that’s a cumulative lifespan of about 21 years.
Despite this over two decades of history, and until the last seven months or so, most Nigerians will not recall ADC if asked to name political parties. The party has never won a councillorship or local government seat, not a state or national assembly seat, all this time.
Then the big bang happened. What at first looked like a friendly takeover has turned hostile, and an implosion is imminent if events continue on the current trajectory. This is why the crisis, which perfectly fits the idiomatic cliché of a storm in a teacup, is assuming a character larger than the party’s profile. How Mark, a PDP chieftain, became the interim chairman of the ADC is the difference between a coup and a takeover.
The new entrants thought they were in charge after replacing the ADC’s captain and crew. They felt safe until what now seems at first glance like a judicial booby-trap was sprung by the toe of the presumed buried exco member sticking out of the shallow grave.
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Don’t blame the victim
Yet, as far as the current crisis goes, ADC can hardly be accused of complicity in the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) decision to behead the leadership of the party publicly. After the March 12 Appeal Court ruling, INEC Chairman Joash Amupitan said on April 3 that its concern was compliance with the court order to prevent a recurrence of what happened in Zamfara in 2019, when the Supreme Court voided all APC electoral victories due to factional infighting.
The commission’s response was to cut off the head as a cure for the headache. That is wrong. The commission should have returned to the court to seek a clarification of the meaning of “status quo ante bellum” in the circumstances.
Delisting the ADC’s leaders was hasty and prone to needless controversy. Whatever its legal department may be telling the commission, Amupitan, a professor of law and senior advocate, should know that INEC’s action gives the impression that the commission is an interested party in the dispute, and calls his judgment and independence into question.
If the courts do not dispose of the case before INEC’s May 10 submission deadline for parties to submit the list of their candidates, the commission cannot extricate itself from accusations of foisting a fait accompli on voters. That would be an extraordinary outcome: a party undone not only by its internal contradictions but also by the ambiguity of a Latin phrase.
To redeem itself, INEC must exhaust all avenues to ensure that the crises in the ADC are resolved within a timeframe that does not exclude the party from the forthcoming general elections.
Politicians and their manoeuvres
It’s no exaggeration that Nigerian political parties are permanently in a state of affliction. The source of the plague is always the politicians themselves, who find useful surrogates in willing courts to change night into day.
But whatever the auguries this time, INEC’s hasty delisting of the names of the leaders of ADC has fuelled the flames. Surely this cannot be what INEC intended – to create a perfect storm that threatens to destroy the party it claims it wants to save.
Vulture in sight
I perfectly understand the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) hovering over ADC’s divided house, waiting like a vulture, to feed on the carcass. The ADC would do the same if it were in the APC’s position; the veterans there today might remember that this is a page from the PDP’s monstrous playbook.
If the Latin phrase, “status quo ante bellum”, does not kill the ADC, it will make it stronger and better placed in future, not only to beat the APC at its own game – as the APC did to the PDP – but also to become a more viable opposition.
In the quest for that future, I offer a comfort phrase to the ADC’s distressed leadership from the diminishing repertoire of street Latin: Potestas non est ad libitum – power is not given at one’s pleasure. It’s not served à la carte.
- Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.