Features General Judiciary

In the House of ‘My Lord’, There are Judgments, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Abdul Leigh Balogun became a judge of the High Court of Lagos State in 1976. In a career as a trial judge spanning 17 years and three different decades, the man better known as A.L.A.L Balogun earned a deserved reputation as one of the most knowledgeable trial judges to adorn the Nigerian judiciary. His reputation

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Features General Judiciary

President Tinubu’s Legal Practitioners Bill Seeks Capture and Reprisal, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Twenty-three days after the transmission by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the upper chamber of Nigeria’s National Assembly, better known as the Senate, held public hearings on 18 December 2025 to consider the Legal Practitioners Bill. At this pace, the bill will be certain to become law well before the middle of 2026. The journey to

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Features Judiciary Politics

Nigeria: How Politicians Started Dashing Cars and Houses to Judges, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In January 1993, Ibrahim Babangida was Nigeria’s military ruler. He was supposedly in the last year of an interminable transition at the end of which he promised to hand over power to an elected civilian administration. Moshood Abiola was actively canvassing to inherit that mantle. As Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Mohammed Bello was in

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Features General

Nigeria: Ending the afflictions of age falsifications by Judges, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

“The mind grows old, no less than the body.” Aristotle, The Politics, Book II, Ch. 9, 146 (Penguin Classics, 1981) A little over two decades away from its perception as a shrine for the resolution of the most rarefied disputes in the country, the Supreme Court of Nigeria played host to a Nigerian drama. With

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Features General

Nigeria And The Fading Lights Of Justice, By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu As he settled in to deliver the judgment of the Edo State Governorship Election Petitions Tribunal on 2 April 2025, presiding judge, Wilfred Kpochi, felt obliged to get one ritual out of the way. Glancing left and right, he asked each of his two colleagues on the three-person tribunal to confirm that the

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