The road to chaos comes when citizens begin to abandon the courtroom, argues
ADENEKAN SHOGUNLE
Olusegun Adeniyi is one of Nigeria’s respected public intellectuals. His experience, insight, and understanding of the nation’s political psychology give weight to his interventions on matters of national importance. When voices such as his raise concerns about the state of the judiciary and the growing wave of political litigation, such concerns deserve thoughtful reflection, not casual dismissal.
Yet, with due respect, it is important that social anxiety does not become constitutional diagnosis.
The growing tendency to portray the Nigerian judiciary as the “route to anarchy” risks blaming the emergency room for the injuries sustained on the battlefield of politics.
Our courts did not manufacture most of these political crises. They merely became the constitutional arena to which wounded political actors are rushed after political parties violate their own rules, conduct chaotic congresses, impose candidates, create parallel leadership structures, and ignore internal dispute resolution mechanisms.
Having failed to govern themselves according to law, many politicians now seek to transfer responsibility for their disorder to the judiciary.
That is neither fair nor intellectually complete.
The starting point of this conversation must remain the Constitution itself.
Access to justice is not a political inconvenience. It is a constitutional guarantee. Every Nigerian who feels aggrieved possesses the right to approach the courts for redress. No statutory provision, party guideline, or political sentiment can override that constitutional safeguard. Once a citizen believes his rights, interests, or legitimate expectations have been violated, the courtroom becomes not merely an option, but a lawful sanctuary provided by the Constitution.
That principle is foundational to every civilized democracy.
It is therefore dangerous when public discourse begins to frame litigation itself as evidence of democratic collapse. A society should worry not when citizens rush to court, but when they stop believing the courts are worth approaching at all.
For once lawful channels lose legitimacy, disputes do not disappear. They merely migrate elsewhere: to the streets, to propaganda platforms, to ethnic mobilization, to intimidation, and sometimes to violence itself.
A crowded courtroom, however untidy, remains infinitely safer than a crowded street filled with political mobs.
Those who now lament the “judicialization of politics” often ignore a central paradox: politicians themselves increasingly invite judicial intervention by refusing to respect their own constitutions and internal democratic processes. Political parties that ought to function as disciplined institutions have instead become theatres of impunity where rules are observed only when convenient.
The judiciary merely inherits the smoke from fires already lit elsewhere.
None of these suggests that the courts are beyond criticism. They are not. Concerns about conflicting orders, forum shopping, procedural abuse, and contradictory interim injunctions are legitimate matters deserving urgent institutional reforms. Public confidence in the judiciary must be protected through discipline, ethical accountability, procedural clarity, and administrative firmness.
But criticism must be situated within proper constitutional context.
The judiciary becomes vulnerable not simply because judges issue controversial decisions, but because political actors manipulate legal processes, security agencies selectively obey court orders, and institutions charged with maintaining internal political discipline routinely abdicate responsibility.
To isolate judges from this wider ecosystem is to diagnose only the smoke while ignoring the fire.
Democracy, by its very nature, produces tension, litigation, and institutional friction. This is not peculiar to Nigeria. Across the world, courts routinely determine electoral disputes, interpret constitutional boundaries, restrain executive excesses, and resolve internal political conflicts. Constitutional democracy inevitably places judges at the centre of national disputes because the alternative to constitutional adjudication is often raw political force.
And history teaches that nations seldom survive for long once force replaces law as the preferred mechanism for settling grievances.
Perhaps the real danger before Nigeria today is not an overactive judiciary, but a growing culture of political irresponsibility accompanied by an increasing impatience with constitutional processes themselves.
For the day citizens begin to view the courtroom as illegitimate, democracy itself begins to lose one of its final lines of defence.
That, truly, is the real route to anarchy.
Shogunle, Esq., Fsi is the ICPC Resident Anti-Corruption Commissioner for Edo State
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