 Nigeria as a federation has three arms of government, the executive, the judiciary, and the legislature. Each of the arms have their own roles and responsibilities. The president is the head of the executive arm and is often perceived as the most powerful arm. And although they all have their own powers, the other two arms could be influenced by the powers of the executive. But to discuss how this works and of course the importance of separation of powers and ensuring success of a democracy, we have joining us live, Dele Faroctimihi is a legal practitioner. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much for having me. Great. Good evening. Happy Independence Day. It's interesting when we talk about the separation of powers. I mean, I'm sure everyone who went to secondary school did that aspect of government if we still can't remember it. But looking at it in its practicality, how independent is our judiciary and our legislature, besides the executive? I guess what qualifies me to speak to you more than anything else is the fact that I'm actually a retired lawyer. Because if I were to be a lawyer, I would have to deal with the issues of diplomacy. And I might not be as forthright as your question desires or deserves. When you speak to the independence of the judiciary, you're presuming a lot of things. Even everything, the totality of your question presumes a lot. It presumes the regularity of the state. It presumes citizens. It presumes power that is anchored on law or to law. It presumes the separation of powers. It presumes the judicial ribbon independence. It presumes the independence of the legislative arm as well. But all these are actually presumptions that are not found on any reality within the Nigerian space. What you find in that sense, 1966, top 10 date, Nigeria has been top heavy, it's been essentially about the executive arm developing at the expense of the other two. So while it's all through the military and peregrine, when you had the succession of military bandits that ruled Nigeria, the one thing that was never left, that was never left, nobody ever touched it, or the executive, the powers of the presidency, the power of the military and peregrine. So you had a situation where the military could dictate and declared itself to be above the law. So you had a situation where the judiciary could say whatever it cared to say, but its rulings were never really binding on successive military regimes. So it developed as a behemoth. The only body that developed without the niceties of a legislative arm were the military junters. So all this continued until we began this democracy experiment. So what you are seeing is a situation where, though we speak to the separation of powers, as though we were to be like every other country, we are in a situation where there really aren't any true independence of the judiciary. So you're saying that this is non-existent, it's not even existent, not a tiny bit of it can be found in the Nigerian state. See, let me give you an example. When General Bwari was tired of the face of the CJN or not there, it took extra judicial measures to remove him, extra legal measures to remove him from office in order to have his preferred CJN. Let's be clear about that. There was a suspension of the legal order in order for the person in Asura. This is not about his own person alone. Several other presidents before him have done their own thing. So it is not like the judiciary has been particularly independent of the executive arm of government in Nigeria. It's always been essentially his master's voice, it can be. If you doubt it, check this out. Every time there are issues within the political parties, they're going to find as many as three, four different conflicting judgments of the courts that comes out in record time. But when it is about human rights, they find the same judiciary, slow walking, and then in case it's staying two years in court and the person is not saying any judge. There are over 300 Nigerians in Kirikiri, for instance, arrested since the immediate aftermath of the ensign. None of them has been taken before any judge to be tried. This is the 12th month. 12th month, and there is a judiciary. So exactly how independent or effective is that judiciary? So but it does cause a question, you know, the people who make up the judiciary, the bench, the lawyers, every single person, including the NBA and the NBA president. But we cannot talk about it without talking about how we got this bad. Because the picture that you're painting me is of course of doom and gloom because I'm thinking to myself, whatever happened to, I mean, where is the hope of the common man? Because the judiciary used to be referred to as the last hope of the common person. But you're referring to those common people as the ones that are languishing right now and there's nobody to speak up for them. So I'm putting that question to you. What happens to the hope of the common person? See, you said, I just painted a picture of doom and gloom. Truth of the matter is that all I just done was show you a mirror. I don't nothing like paint any picture and what I just done is show you maybe a brief glimpse, it's a taste. The reality is that for any Nigerian to expect that there is a sector of our country that has been spared the putrefaction that you see in every other parts, the health sector, the security sector, the whatever part of Nigeria you look to is not me painting any picture. It's me holding up a mirror. All you really need to do is look at the fact that today, within what you call a judicial system, how many Boko Haram or Fulani terrorists are waiting trial. But in such protestants, people who are just walking on their own, people who are picked up randomly. I'm saying it on here. Over 300 of them in Kirikui and this society is quiet. They are talking about judicial system. The fact of the matter is that on several levels, our country is, there's nothing to be happy about. There's nothing to talk about as independent. It's not me painting a picture of doom and gloom. This is me telling, let's stop pretending to ourselves that everything is fine or that we're in a normal situation where we can speak to high principles of state, such as separation of powers, a judicial system, a legislative harm or anything. We don't have those things. We just have, we have a frankest end that pretends to be a state where you don't have citizenship, where the law does not rule and where injustice is more likely to be found within the legal system than justice. So when we are speaking in terms of these high principles, it will be a purely, it will just be me trying to rehash my government, the my days in the eleventh government, the several things that entered the jam that forced me to let government perhaps better than most students because I needed to pass the job. But in reality, these are just theories that they don't apply to us. If we were in a democracy, we would not be having some of the discussions we've been having. But we are in a democracy. Are we not in a democracy? Out of place, out of place. What system of government is Nigeria preting on since you do not think that we're a democracy? Let's first of all get something clear. Democracy is essentially about the expression, the capacity to express your right to self-determination. People tend to confuse that with the right to a referendum. Now, this is not about that. The right to self-determination means that the people within a space have the capacity to express their democratic will over and above that of any other entity within the state. The collective will of the people rules. By whatever definition or parameters anyone cares to measure, Nigeria does not qualify to be called a democracy. The will of the people has never found expression. What you will call the 1999 constitution, for instance, not any constitutional lawyer who called the grown norm of Nigerian state is an imposition of a coterie of military bandits who decided what kind of governance structure they wanted for Nigeria. The last time Nigerians had any say in their own, there were only four regions. Today there are 36. And those 36 states, how many people have been vote? You've never had up to 30 million people vote in any election and you say you have over 100 million. And whose vote is that? Whose vote is that? I was going to ask you. The reason why I was here, the reason why you're saying that nothing, nothing we're referring to actually is real, you're saying that all of these things are window dressing. The fact that we call Nigeria a democracy, the fact that we think that we have separation of powers. But what is the role that we as Nigerians have played to have the system that you have said has deteriorated to almost nothing? All right, let me say this. Sometime we, in an attempt to be politically correct, we tend to end up doing what I call victim blaming, call victim shaming. I'll tell you this. A lot of young men, some of whom I later met, most of those who were injured in the aftermath of the Ansar's protest, I had occasion to work with some of the victims. So I met some of them, young people, courageous, and what I'll say to you is this. Nigerians have tried their best several times to be heard, but those of us who have presumed to offer alternatives, we have failed them by not offering ideas. We've been reacting, reacting to systemic injustices instead of offering alternatives as to the way forward for Nigerians. So it's very easy to turn around and say, what have we done? Or think about it. The collective will of the Nigerian youth, immobilized properly, if I might say, got them together this time last year. They started their movement and then the front work became known as the Ansar's movement. And these people blocked their wills, their wishes, their desires for Nigeria, they brought it to the table. It started with a protest against the section of the Nigerian police, the brutality of the SARS unit. And then it snowballed. What started at the Ansar's became and bad governance. It became and impunity. It became and swap. It became a byword for we want a new Nigeria. Question is this, regardless of how many lies the Nigerian state might have told, we've established clearly before they left the tribunal. The response of the Nigerian state was clear and unequivocal in spite of the fact that multiple weaknesses testify to the pitiful nature of the protests. Multiple weakness is testified to the sponsored violence of the state. That multiple weakness is testified to the fact that men wearing Nigerian army uniforms were active in that place and they were not firing guns. I would not presume to say what, to determine what the panel went but coming up with. But one thing is clear, by the amount of deniers that have come out of the government, the works of people like Agent Fasula and the rest of them, it's become abundantly clear that the state has something to hide. And it cannot deny the fact that when the Nigerian youth offered alternatives as to how they want to see Nigeria progress and the direction they wish to see it move, the state responded with brutality. So it is not like Nigerians have not offered ideas. When they do go to the polls increasingly, the state has also shown there is a waste of time going to the polls. It is not, look, the normal heads that have been broken in Nigerian electoral violence, the number of people that have been injured for simply speaking their truth in this country and wearing a democracy. I, actually, imagine how many years might have been broken to them, protest. I didn't bother, I didn't go out to protest but I know people have gone out to exercise their God-given right, their right and what should be a democracy. I don't know how well they fare today. But if that is, Nigerians have tried, perhaps, those of us who consider as self-port leaders need to offer more concrete ideas and I previewed it today and I said that maybe that is a lacuna we can feel but it would be unfair to say that. How do we feel it in closing? Because I was going to ask, well we're not trading blames here, we're looking for solutions. And if the judiciary that is supposed to help strengthen the process seems to be a bit toothless, where do we even start to deal with the issue? How do we feel that lacuna? Because it is obviously a problem. See, there is a thought that is circulating through my mind and I'm working on it. And what it says to me is that Nigeria is actually suffering from what I'll call a multiple identity syndrome or space personality syndrome. But what has happened is that one of the personality has overshadowed the rest and it has influenced the trajectory of Nigeria and determined that it has flowed. But those of us who I will say are the unmanifested twin of that entity suffering from this disorder, we've lost our voices, we've ignored to offer alternative visions for the future that will be sufficient to ignite the imagination of the Nigerian people so that we might be able to mobilize them behind a vision and behind ideas. We don't have the money to spend that the politicians have to spend. All we have are ideas, truthful ideas. We must be prepared to take these ideas to the people and let those ideas engage them to take them to a new place. Well, I want to say thank you. Delhi Farhan to me is a legal practitioner. He says he is a retired lawyer. Thank you very much for speaking with us. Happy independence. Thank you very much. Well, thank you all for staying with us. We'll take a quick break and when we return our last conversation is on insecurity across the country and how far the fight against it has gone. Stay with us.