 Let me begin by thanking the executive of our association, the Nigerian Law Teacher's Association, for the very kind invitation to join you at this 53rd annual Law Teacher's Conference. A Law Teacher's Conference is always a homecoming for me. I started teaching at the University of Lagos in November of 1981. And for, that is no indication of how old I am, I'll show you. And for many years, attending the Law Teacher's Conference was always special. First, because it was the only conference that my university at the time agreed to pay for us to attend. And that was a big deal at the time since our salary, my salary as a lecturer, two at the time, was 629 right a month. Now that isn't so bad in 1981, but it was not exactly great. So I'm pleased to be here. And I must say that I'm not here alone. I'm here also with two law lecturers who work with me now, Dr. Jimoke O'Doally, who's a special advisor to the president on ease of doing business. And she used to teach the law of contract, commercial law, and international economic law at the University of Lagos. And Dr. Balke Suicideu, who is a senior special assistant to the president on legal research and compliance and on law, legal research and compliance. And she's also my legal advisor. She used to be a professor, associate professor at the U.S. Man Damford University, Sokoto, where she taught jurisprudence, Nigerian legal system, and Islamic family law. Although not here today, also my chief of staff who is also the deputy chief of staff to the president is a former law teacher, Mr. Rahman Adeypaye. He is not here today, but as you can see, I'm completely surrounded even in my office by law teachers. Your excellencies, friends, and colleagues, the place of the law teacher's conference is crucial. And let me paraphrase parts of my comments at the 50th anniversary of our law teacher's conference in 2018, because we law teachers are the purveyors, the custodians, and the creators of the underlying concepts and foundational premises of legal thought. And because we are the thinkers for our system of law injustice and our profession, our conference has always been a forum for the free and yet deep interrogation of fundamental ideas and principles that hold society together. Questions like the trajectory of the rule of law, law and order, democratic practice, and their current interpretations and current efficacy. So our conference is a time to step back and reflect in order to come back to the problems with boldness and with greater innovation. The theme of this conference, law, democracy, and the electoral process is entirely appropriate and not just because our national elections will come in about a year, but because, as you would have noticed, democracy has come under severe attack in our sub-region and on our continent in recent times. Since 2017, there have been 12 military coups in Africa. Half of them have occurred since 2020. Last month, the democratically elected government of Burkina Faso was overthrown. Earlier, Mali and Guinea had suffered the same fate. While only last week there was an attempted coup in Guinea-Bissau that was thankfully repelled. The recent spate of extra constitutional disruptions of democratic governance in our region lends an added poignancy and urgency to our reflection on law, democracy, and the electoral process. It's now 22 years since we put away the yoke of dictatorship and took off the reins of democracy. A generation of Nigerians have now come of age that has only civil rule, that has known only civil rule and assume that that is simply how it must be, the right and power to choose their leaders. This is also the longest stretch of democratic governance in our history. We have witnessed a series of peaceful transitions of power and this is a huge credit to the democratic sensibilities of all our people. Along the way, we are learning valuable lessons that can only make us better practitioners of liberty. We may be in the 22nd unbroken year as a democracy, but in the grand scheme of things, our country is still a young democracy. Many of our institutions are still in their infancy and we must carefully guide them to maturity. We recognize that the price of liberty, as they say, is eternal vigilance. As one of the oldest democracies in a region that has long been plagued by autocratic and extra-constitutional regimes, democracy itself has now become part of our national exceptionalism. Our gallant armed forces are totally subordinated to civilian command and authority and are fully committed to defending our constitutional order against internal and external threats. We have a relatively strong civil society that continue to push for greater accountability and the deepening of democratic practices. In keeping with our foreign policy traditions, ours has become a clear and strident voice for the promotion of democracy on the continent and have been resolute in condemning extra-constitutional seizures of power. Historically, we have worked to restore and preserve democracy in places such as Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia. And at the same time, the events now happening beyond our borders impose a burden on us to exemplify the highest manifestations of democracy at home so that we can be more credibly, we can more credibly promote democracy abroad. In 2015, we made history when an opposition party defeated the ruling party in a national election and a peaceful transfer of power followed. In so doing, we vaulted over a hurdle that had fallen, that where we had fallen at previous times in our democratic history. Since then, we have seen more and more elections at the state level, featuring transitions between parties. Certainly, we have witnessed electoral contests in which membership of the ruling party is not a guarantee of victory. These are signs, signs of growth of our democracy. There remains, of course, much room for improvement. But the overarching foundational issue is democracy. Democracy is the overarching foundational issue. The notion of the government of the people by the people for the people and the critical implications of that notion. Now, law and the electoral process must work for the achievement of the most democratic outcomes. Legal or electoral processes must enhance, not defeat democracy. Central to democracy is the will of the voting public, the will of the electorate. That is central to democracy. And the right of that voting public to vote for candidates of their choice. That right is so central to democracy that it must be protected by electoral laws and judicial interpretation in electoral cases. This means that electoral justice must not be for the candidates alone indeed the principal players, the electorate, must be front and center of judicial reflection on how to determine electoral cases. The judiciary must be wary of substituting their will for the will of the electorate. They must seek every interpretation that leaves the people with a choice of who they prefer. In the decision of the Supreme Court, in the case of APC and Marafa, and that's a case where the Supreme Court nullified the elections of all candidates of the APC, who nullified the elections of all the candidates of APC and gave judgment in favor of the party who were resoundingly defeated in the same election. In that election, in the 2019 elections, the grounds that the Supreme Court gave was that the APC's primaries would produce the candidates that were voted for were invalid. And without recourse to the electorates who had in the polls rejected all the other candidates of the other political parties, the Supreme Court declared candidates of parties other than the APC as winners of the various offices that were contested in that February 23rd and March 16th general elections. The court held that the APC votes cast by the Zamfara State electorate to select their preferred candidates to governors, senators, members of the House of Representatives, members of the House of Assembly were all, and I quote, wasted votes. Why? Because according to the court, APC did not conduct any valid primary election, and as such had no candidates for any elections in the state. So here was a situation where the party that lost every seat from governorship down to the House of Assembly was given all those seats by judicial pronouncement. For the voter, this decision must have at best been puzzling. First, they had no idea, that is the voter, those who went to the polls that day, had no idea that the candidates of their preferred party were disqualified before voting. Indeed, at least one court had declared the primaries valid and was on that basis that Aina gave the go ahead to the candidates to contest. Second, rather than giving seats to those that the electorate had rejected, ordering a rerun would probably have yielded perhaps a fairer, a fairer result in the opinion of many of those who went to the polls on that day. And I agree with my brother, A.B. Mahmoud Essayen, that there is a real issue of whether the courts have not assumed a larger duty in election cases than was constitutionally intended. In other words, our courts going beyond the constitutional expectation, especially in election cases. And it's important to emphasize this because the whole idea of democracy is that it is the people who determine who their leaders will be. The law, electoral processes, everything must bow to the will of the people. The appropriate interpretation, the appropriate interpretation must always favor the will of the people. I'm certain that these issues will benefit again from the views of our colleagues in the cause of the conference. Nevertheless, I think it is a testament to our commitment to improving our electoral process that we have an electoral bill that is currently in the process of being passed. The bill itself has been the subject of robust engagement between government and civil society. And while some have expressed reservations about how long it's taken to pass this new law, we should remember that a truly inclusive democratic deliberative process often takes time. I'm confident that the legislation that will emerge will be one that will reflect a broader consensus between all of the stakeholders. While INEC continues to improve its capacity to conduct credible elections, particularly through the deployment of technology, we recognize that democracy is about much more than voting. It's also about constitutionalism, the rule of law, respect for civil liberties. We must diligently work to uphold all these principles. Permit me to refer to section 14 of our Constitution which proclaims that the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a state based on democracy and social justice. End of quote. Democracy and social justice are inextricably linked. The insistence that our society must be governed by the rule of law and not by the whim of man is the cornerstone of democracy. As law teachers and legal practitioners, we are custodians of this truth. However, democracy cannot endear without social justice. The passage of justice lies at the heart of the quest for a good society. And this makes the legal profession one of the cardinal vocations upon which civilization itself rests. Indeed, law, as is frequently said, is an instrument of Pacific social engineering, the end of which is justice. When it is rooted in this postulate, it follows that the law and therefore democracy are meant to be beneficial social ends. More broadly, our idea of social justice also refers to the social and economic rights of the people. This includes the right to food, shelter, employment, education, and a reasonable national minimum living wage, care for the elderly, pensions, unemployment benefits, and welfare of the physically challenged. All of these bequests are in the second chapter of the Constitution as part of the fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy. Without social justice, legal justice is ultimately unattainable. The degree to which citizens are in possession of their social and economic rights has a direct impact on the degree of their access to legal services and therefore to justice. Our concern as law teachers and practitioners of the law must go beyond the courtroom, beyond the precincts of our legal institutions to the social reality in which these structures themselves exist. The law is a social construct, and it makes sense only within a social context to treat the law as something apart from society or as a body of technical abstractions is to strip it of meaning. This also fosters alienation between the legal profession and the people that is meant to serve. Approaching the law simply as an instrument for achieving legalistic justice is grossly inadequate in our circumstances, especially given the levels of poverty in our societies. When an age in which society must grapple with the issues of structural poverty, entrench inequality, disparities in access to social and economic opportunities, fractured access to justice, and the occasionally abusive conduct of law enforcement institutions, all of which create profound radical discontent within our societies. Notions such as the rule of law are meaningful only in the context in which the law is relatable by the public and is deemed consistent with the universal aspirations towards an end state of social justice. A society in which an increasing number of people consider themselves alienated from legal institutions or perceive these legal institutions to be incapable of delivering justice for all cannot be stable and prosperous. Section 17 of our constitution asserts that the independence, impartiality, and the integrity of our courts of law and easy accessibility there to shall be secured and maintained. It is significant that the framers of our constitution enshrined access to justice along with social and economic rights in the directive principles and objectives of state policy. It indicates that they saw access to justice. They saw the integrity of our justice system and socioeconomic rights as related and integrated imperatives. There's a school of thought that holds that one of our unfinished tasks, or one of the unfinished tasks of our democratization project is to actualize the rights and imperatives enshrined in the second chapter of our constitution. There are also those that promote a rigid distinction between fundamental rights in chapter 4 of the constitution and the social and economic rights that are in chapter 2. In my view, there is no truly irreconcilable dichotomy between political and civil rights and social and economic rights. They are and should be dealt with in one and the same breath. In terms of governance and public policy, the right to the dignity of the human person in chapter 4 of the constitution means that the citizens are to be fed and sheltered, that they are to be listened to when they speak, that they are to be listened to when they speak, and they are guaranteed liberty as long as you do not break the law. And they are entitled to a fair trial when they do. The right to human dignity is a world spring of efforts to guarantee freedom of speech and the right to vote. Welfare programs that ensure everyone has food and shelter and judicial reforms that enable even the most disadvantaged citizens to enjoy equality before the law. Consequently, the principle of the dignity of the dignity of the human person implies that governments must be considered egalitarian and universal in the sense that they must serve everyone. This understanding has driven interventions for us at the federal government level, interventions such as our social investment program, which is the most ambitious welfare program on the continent, and our efforts to expand universal health insurance, all aimed at ensuring that our most vulnerable citizens are not abandoned to the vicissitudes of fate. I would say that the postulation of a rigid dichotomy between fundamental human rights and social and economic rights is a progressive perception of rights. The progressive vision is one that holds that poverty and underdevelopment pose a serious obstacle to the full realization of human rights. Indeed, the progressive vision holds that human rights, in their fullest sense, encompass both civil and political rights, as well as economic, social and cultural rights are progressed as a democracy must therefore also be prosecuted in terms of the struggle to reduce the problems of health, of malnutrition, of illiteracy and farming, which daily afflict our people. Where social and economic rights are unsecured, people are unable to fully maximize their civil and political rights. For instance, access to qualitative education enhances and enriches freedoms of expression, freedoms of thought unconscious. The illiterate cannot express themselves in a manner where they are able to take full benefit of the laws and of all of those supportive institutions. Conversely, we know that pervasive illiteracy can also nullify the freedom of the press. How do people who have no education access the traditional, even the non-traditional institutions of the press? Neither can such people derive their political rights and socioeconomic rights. All of these are mutually reinforcing. But why do these issues matter? Simple. The value proposition of democratic governance is that it delivers the fulfillment of the social contract between the state and citizens. That is the value proposition of democratic governance that ultimately it will deliver a social contract. The people speak about democracy. They expect that it will deliver that social contract that ensures social and economic rights, that ensures civil and political rights. Elections are a means, only a means to this end. In practical terms, therefore, democracy means more than the right and opportunity to freely choose one's leaders. It also means accessible qualitative education to the unlettered, affordable healthcare to the sick, inclusion for the alienated, social mobility for the poor, justice for the wronged, and security for the vulnerable. How effectively we deliver on these propositions will determine the growth and endurance of our democracy. To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., we must bend the arc of our democracy towards social justice. As teachers and practitioners of the legal craft, we should not be afraid of tackling the big conceptual and philosophical questions around the meaning of democracy. We must take the lead in shaping the conversations that drive policy and legislation around those issues, and in doing so, preserve public confidence in our vocation and in our capacity as a people to self-correct and self-govern. And I want to say that, especially for us law teachers, the criticism of decisions of our courts used to be standard for us. We had in our law journals so many different law journals critiques of several judgments of our courts. Our courts would usually quote those journals. If a judge wanted to give a dissenting opinion or perhaps felt the need to support his views with some scholarly intervention somewhere, they referred to our legal journals. We must not allow a situation where our legal journals disappear completely or where the voices of our legal journals have become silent. And those legal journals must ensure that we're looking at what our courts are doing. The courts are reinforced by scholarship. It is scholarship that reinforces and helps our courts to clarify their own thoughts and clarify their own reasoning. Where there is no alternative view coming from anywhere, where scholarship is silent, then we cannot blame the direction in which our legal institutions go. On this note, let me once again thank my colleagues for extending this kind invitation to me. And it's now my single pleasure and privilege to formally declare this conference, the Nigerian Law Teacher Association Conference, 53rd Conference, open. Thank you very much.