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WEDNESDAY MUSINGS
WHEN JUSTICE IS HURRIED, LIBERTY IS BURIED: A SOBERING REFLECTION ON PROLONGED DETENTION, COERCED GUILTY PLEAS, AND THE EROSION OF CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUARDS IN NIGERIA
The Constitution is not a decorative manuscript to be admired in tranquillity and discarded in moments of political expediency. It is the supreme covenant between the State and the citizen, binding alike on the governed and those who govern.
Recent events emanating from purported proceedings conducted before the Federal High Court, Abuja, have once again brought into sharp focus a profoundly troubling question: Can the pursuit of convictions ever justify the abandonment of constitutional safeguards?
Under our criminal justice system, the right to fair hearing is neither a procedural luxury nor a charitable concession from the State. It is a fundamental constitutional guarantee entrenched under Sections 35 and 36 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended). These provisions are not ornamental phrases inserted into our grundnorm for aesthetic appeal; they are binding commands designed to protect every citizen against the immense coercive powers of the State.
The framers of our Constitution understood a timeless truth: that the greatest threat to liberty often comes clothed in the garments of legality. Consequently, they erected formidable constitutional barriers against arbitrary detention, secret proceedings, involuntary confessions, denial of legal representation, and every other manifestation of executive overreach.
It was therefore with cautious optimism that we received reports that several young Igbo men and women, fathers and youths alike, found themselves unjustly bundled together with “notorious hardened terrorists”, without any meaningful distinction between the innocent and the culpable, having hitherto been subjected to prolonged detention for periods exceeding five years, with some languishing in custody for over six years without trial, were finally being brought before the courts to answer criminal allegations levelled against them.
Like many concerned Nigerians, we hoped that the long-delayed process would provide these detainees an opportunity to confront their accusers, challenge the allegations against them, secure competent legal representation, and enjoy the constitutional presumption of innocence guaranteed under Section 36(5) of the Constitution, a fundamental right that has regrettably eluded them throughout the long and harrowing years of their solitary confinement.
Regrettably, emerging accounts from those proceedings appear to have transformed what should have been a solemn judicial exercise into a matter that raises grave constitutional concerns.
From reports presently available to us, and obtained by our lawyers who were present in the courtrooms, the proceedings were conducted under an atmosphere of unusual secrecy. More disturbing are allegations that some defendants were induced, pressured, or otherwise prevailed upon to enter guilty pleas to offences whose factual foundations they neither understood nor admitted. Equally troubling is the fact that legal practitioners from our office, who sought to represent some of these accused persons/defendants, were prevented from doing so and, in some instances, threatened with arrest should they remain within the courtroom; While the Legal Aid Council, an agency established and funded by the government, is the only institution permitted to represent the defendants in the very criminal proceedings being prosecuted by the same Government, serious concerns inevitably arise regarding the perception of fairness and the defendants’ right to counsel of their choice.
These accounts strike at the very heart of constitutional democracy.
A guilty plea in criminal proceedings is not a magical incantation capable of curing fundamental procedural defects. Before any plea can attract legal validity, the court must satisfy itself that the plea is voluntary, unequivocal, informed, and entered without coercion, intimidation, inducement, or misunderstanding. Anything short of this constitutional threshold reduces the process to a mere ritualistic performance dressed in judicial robes.
The Constitution does not permit the State to manufacture convictions through fear, isolation, prolonged detention, or procedural ambush. Indeed, our courts have repeatedly emphasised that justice must not only be done but must manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.
Particularly alarming is the fact that some of the individuals presented before the court were among persons whose detention had been repeatedly denied by security agencies over the years, even as litigation concerning their detention progressed through the superior courts up to the Supreme Court. This situation would expose a deeply disturbing contradiction. A citizen cannot simultaneously be non-existent in custody and yet appear years later before a court after spending half a decade within detention facilities.
Among those presented to court as terrorists, were several innocent, unarmed, and law-abiding Igbo youths, apprehended in 2021 without any lawful justification, and thereafter subjected to prolonged detention in solitary confinement.
From 2021 until their eventual appearance before the court several years later, these young men remained in custody without being formally charged, arraigned, or afforded the constitutional safeguards guaranteed under the law. They were among the individuals who were subsequently and discreetly brought before the court approximately five years after their arrest to answer to terrorism-related allegations, despite having been deprived of their liberty for an extraordinarily long period without due process of law, during which period they were unlawfully denied access to their lawyers and family members, in further violation of their constitutionally guaranteed rights.
One is inevitably compelled to ask: Where were these citizens during those lost years? Under what legal authority were they held? Why were they denied timely access to judicial processes? Why were constitutional timelines for arraignment and trial seemingly disregarded? And who bears responsibility for those years irretrievably stolen from their lives?
The tragedy of prolonged detention without trial extends far beyond the prison walls. It destroys families, extinguishes careers, fractures communities, and condemns innocent relatives to years of emotional and economic anguish. Time unlawfully taken from a citizen is one commodity the State can never restore.
The Constitution is unequivocal. Section 35 guarantees personal liberty. Section 36 guarantees fair hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial court. Section 36(6)(c) guarantees the right of every accused person to defend himself through legal practitioners of his choice. These guarantees are not suspended because an allegation bears the label “terrorism.” Constitutional rights do not evaporate merely because the accusation is politically convenient or publicly sensational.
Indeed, the true measure of a constitutional democracy is not how it treats the popular, the powerful, or the politically connected. It is how it treats the vulnerable, the unpopular, and those standing accused.
History offers a stern warning. Every era that permitted expediency to triumph over due process eventually discovered that the machinery of injustice, once unleashed, rarely confines itself to its original targets.
The struggle, therefore, is not about shielding the guilty from lawful accountability. Those who commit crimes should be investigated, prosecuted, and punished in accordance with the law. The real struggle is to ensure that constitutional safeguards survive even when the State is pursuing those it suspects of wrongdoing.
For when due process becomes inconvenient, liberty becomes endangered. When constitutional guarantees become negotiable, justice becomes illusory. And when convictions become more important than fairness, the courtroom risks becoming a theatre where outcomes are predetermined and rights are merely ceremonial.
For now, I shall refrain from further comment until all relevant materials and records are obtained and subjected to careful legal scrutiny. However, one principle remains immutable and beyond dispute:
The Constitution has not changed.
Its supremacy remains unchallenged.
Its provisions remain binding.
And no institution, no agency, no official, and no government possesses authority greater than the Constitution itself.
The Constitution remains supreme, and every action inconsistent with its provisions, no matter how expedient or politically attractive, remains null, void, and constitutionally unsustainable.
#NigerianConstitution
#AccessToJustice
#EndArbitraryDetention
#CivilLiberties
#PresumptionOfInnocence
#LegalAccountability
#JusticeMustBeSeenToBeDone
#DefendTheConstitution
#HumanDignity
#FundamentalRights
#NigeriaRuleOfLaw
#NoConvictionAtAllCosts
#ConstitutionalDemocracy
#BarEjioforWrites
Signed
Sir Ifeanyi Ejiofor, Esq., KSC
Dunu-Ezeugosinachi
17 June 2026
English
