The Department of State Security, DSS Judge’s raid has again brought up a new vista of understanding into the psychology of the some Nigerians. While everyone agrees that corruption is our society’s greatest evil which must be eliminated, many disagree on the method used in eradicating it. However, there is another group of people who feels that every successful person in Nigeria is a thief to some sorts; hence they do not bother about what methods used, so long as the big men are ruined (a kind of envy).
In the field of psychology, there is a theory known as the frustration aggression theory. The theory postulate that when people are frustrated they tend to be aggressive, hence they become angry at the system and everyone attached to it. They blame the government for their hard lock and see every government policy as a ploy to siphon money meant for their growth. They would therefore appeal to sentiments and put reason behind their judgments.
Every reasonable person know that the way and manner the DSS carried out the operation was wrong but because some feel that Judges belong to the upper class, hence, they have being enjoying the good of Nigeria, they should be made to suffer like the ordinary people, forgetting that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Some people tend to forget that you cannot put something on nothing and expect it to stand; illegality cannot begat legality, the some way you do not expect a goat to give birth to a human being.
I have always maintained that corruption is the bane of our development and that any government that reduces the incidences of corruption will go down in history as the best. However, just like every other rational being, I am worried that this government is tending towards absolutism which is not healthy for any democratic system.
There are heavy allegations leveled against officers in the three arms of government but it is only the judiciary that has developed an inherent power to purge itself of corruption, the NJC which is the body with statutory power to discipline erring judicial officers has either suspended or made recommendation for the retirement of judicial workers who are found wanting in their official duties.
You cannot treat someone who spent five years in the University, went to law school and have had over fifteen years post call experience as a common criminal. Just like Ben Nwabueze said, whilst judges are not granted immunity from criminal process ,the vital and sacrosanct role of the judiciary in governance (especially in a democratic setting) entitles them to great respect over and above ordinary citizens. To disgrace a judge, as by a degrading treatment, is not just the disgraceful treatment of an individual; it brings the entire judiciary, as the Third Estate of the Realm, into disrepute and undermines its credibility in eyes of the public. It diminishes our country, and all of us.
Nobody who gives his nation his best expects to get the treatment meted out to the judges. If they are corrupt, gather your evidence and charge them in the court of law properly so called. You cannot break into a man’s house at an unholy hour and expect him to remain patriotic. For those who think the DSS was right irrespective of the method used, may it be so for you on your own day, what is right for me, must be at the same time, that which is right for all others, to whom the same alternatives, under the same circumstances, are presented. We are not altogether different from those in positions of authority because they are recruited from among us.
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