By Augustine Eigbe, PhD
As the judiciary turns the 2025 All Nigerian Judges Conference into a praise-singing arena, playing and singing the pro-Tinubu political anthem “On Your Mandate We Shall Stand,” the nation’s integrity takes another severe blow.
Let’s be honest—when the U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly described Nigeria as a “disgrace country,” every patriotic Nigerian felt the sting.
We rushed to defend our nation’s honour, citing our resilience, culture, and potential. However, in our quiet moments, when we observe the circus our institutions have become, that label echoes with uncomfortable truth.
The recent Judges Conference should have been a moment of solemn reflection on the integrity of our judiciary. Instead, it became the very embodiment of that “disgrace.”
The gathering of serving judges, who are the custodians of our constitution and the last hope of the common man, was singing the praises of the President of Nigeria. This was not a private birthday party for the Commander-in-Chief(C in C) but an official gathering of the third arm of government.
In one sycophantic chorus, they shattered the illusion of an independent judiciary and showed the world a branch of government that sees itself as an appendage and subservient to the executive arm.
The irony was so thick that it could be cut with a gavel. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu stood before these same judges and urged them “not to turn the bench into a sanctuary of compromise.” He was preaching against corruption to an audience that was actively compromising itself before his very eyes.
This judicial carnival didn’t happen in a vacuum; it fits a pattern. A ‘panoptic view’ of our political landscape reveals a consistent collapse of institutional integrity.
The legislature often acts as a rubber stamp, prioritising party loyalty over national interest. The executive increasingly centralises power. Most alarmingly, the judiciary now publicly serenades the very power it is meant to check.
When these dots are connected, the picture that emerges is the very definition of a “disgrace”: a country where institutions have abandoned their constitutional roles.
The real tragedy is that the “disgrace” is no longer an external insult. It is an internal reality. We are not disgraced by President Trump’s words; we are disgraced by our judges’ praise song.
When the guardians of justice publicly bow, every citizen becomes less safe. When the bench becomes a “sanctuary of compromise,” there is no sanctuary left for the ordinary Nigerian seeking justice.
The country’s honour cannot be reclaimed with press releases denying foreign insults. It can only be reclaimed by judicial self-cleansing. The National Judicial Council ( NJC) must sanction any judge who participated in this charade because silence is complicity.
The media must name and shame this culture of sycophancy. We must stop calling it ‘politics’ and start calling it what it is which is the destruction of our democracy.
The citizens and civil society organisations must demand a judiciary defined by its fierce independence, not its talent for singing praises.
Until then, the painful truth remains: the label “disgrace country” hurts because our own leaders and public office holders keep making it true.
Augustine Eigbe, PhD is a Historian and Development Communication Expert.
