Kayode Ajulo is my friend, my brother, and at one time, my counsel. I therefore understand his instinct to defend the judiciary. It is a noble and necessary instinct. In every society, the judiciary must be protected, preserved, and defended — because once the courts collapse, everything else follows.
But let us also be honest: corruption in the judiciary is not new in Nigeria.
Long before social media turned every rumour into a headline and every allegation into a court of public opinion, some of us raised these issues loudly and repeatedly. The evidence is there in cold print — magazine covers, investigative reports, legal exposés that spoke of crooks on the bench, scandals in tribunals, justice for sale and compromised verdicts.
These were not written yesterday. They were not produced by political opponents or desperate bloggers looking for attention. They were the work of journalists, editors, lawyers and ordinary citizens who still believed that sunlight is the most powerful disinfectant.
The tragedy is not that corruption existed. Corruption exists in every nation. The true tragedy is that we failed to act decisively when the disease was still manageable. We shouted. We warned. We documented. But instead of fixing the foundation, we merely painted the walls.
Now the cracks have become canyons.
Today, corruption in the judiciary has reached a point where it threatens not just the court system but the very architecture of the Nigerian state. When citizens no longer believe in the courts, they stop believing in contracts, in elections, in justice itself — and even in the future. They begin to seek alternatives. And those alternatives are often violent, ethnic, religious or anarchic. That is how institutions die.
At the same time, I fully agree that it would be wrong and dangerous to paint every judge with the same brush.
There are many judges in this country who are upright, courageous, disciplined and deeply committed to the law — men and women who sit daily with clean hands and clear conscience. They deserve our respect, our protection and our gratitude. Indeed, there are people who lose cases and, in the bitterness of disappointment, make careless and unfounded insinuations against the bench. Such moments must be treated with caution and fairness.
However, while we must honour the integrity of good individuals, we cannot ignore the wider state of the institution. At a systemic level, the condition of the judiciary today cannot, in good conscience, be described as healthy or inspiring. The failures — even if committed by a minority — have become so visible, so repeated, and so consequential that they now shape public perception of the whole.
That is the real tragedy: the sins of a few have stained the robe of many.
I pity the innocent ones, truly. They are victims too — of a system that has not sufficiently protected its best while failing to hold its worst accountable. But silence, even when driven by sympathy, does not stop decay. It only allows it to spread further, even to those who are presently clean.
This, therefore, is not an attack on good judges. It is, in fact, a call to defend them.
Because a judiciary that is not seen to be fair will eventually lose even the loyalty of its most upright members. And when good people stop aspiring to sit on the bench because they believe it has been compromised, then the real collapse begins.
Kayode’s defence of the judiciary is therefore understandable — but defence must never become denial. A doctor who truly loves his patient does not pretend that cancer is a headache.
This thing has been there. The only difference is that it has now metastasised.
The question before us is no longer whether corruption exists in the judiciary. The real question is whether we will finally confront it while the house can still be salvaged.
Because history has taught us a hard truth: when justice is for sale, society is for grief.
Silence will not protect the righteous. Only truth will.
