Africa-Press – Nigeria. The Secretary-General of the Nigerian League of Columnists, Prof. Anthony Kila, has described as a show of shame the incident of Nigerian judges singing President Bola Tinubu’s “On your mandate we shall stand.”
Kila called the scenario, which has been widely condemned, scandalous and unacceptable.
The judges sang “On your mandate we shall stand” immediately after President Tinubu finished delivering his speech on Monday at the All Nigeria Judges’ Conference in Abuja.
During the event, Tinubu had warned that the bench must never be seen as a sanctuary for compromise.
Asked for his thoughts on the judges’ behavior, the professor said on Arise News, “It’s a big shame.
“You see, the Judiciary, for somebody who studied law and does not practice it, I look at the judiciary in awe, with the respect they deserve, but they are not helping matters.
“There’s no other way to put it. Going to that conference and singing ‘On your mandate we shall stand’ is a shameful act. It doesn’t matter if it was just one person who sang it.
“I spoke to a friend of mine who’s a judge, a very senior judge, yesterday, and he said to me, ‘Oh, what do you want me to do, should I stand up and gag them?’ And I said, ‘Yes, somebody in that room should have had the courage, the courage of man and the courage of voice, to stand up and say, ‘No, don’t do this here.’ Even just waving their hand to say, no, stop this, would have been a place in history for them. It is not enough for them to just have it in their mind. Let me say that there are some people in that room who did not agree with that, not because they don’t like APC or the president, but because they understand respect for institutions.
“Be very careful. Partisan politics, generally, and in particular in Nigeria, corrupts, intoxicates, and weakens you [the bench].”
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