The administration of justice in any constitutional democracy rests upon a foundation of hierarchy, discipline, and the unqualified obligation of every court to obey the orders of the court above it. When a judge deliberately flouts that obligation, he does not merely commit a legal error. He strikes at the very architecture of the rule of law. It is that species of conduct that demands the most unsparing condemnation.
The recent proceedings before the Court of Appeal in Abuja, arising from the matter concerning the deregistration of the African Democratic Congress and four other political parties, have brought this problem into sharp public focus. On 22 May 2026, a three-member panel of the Court of Appeal comprising Justices Mohammed A. Danjuma, Adebunkunola A. Banjoko, and Oyejoju O. Oyewumi made an express order in Appeal No. CA/ABJ/CV/569/2026 staying further proceedings in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/2637/2025 before the Federal High Court, pending the hearing and determination of the appeal.
That order was enrolled, signed by the Deputy Registrar of the court, and communicated to all parties. Notwithstanding that subsisting order, the Federal High Court judge proceeded to deliver judgment in the matter. A separate three-member panel of the Court of Appeal led by Justice A. B. Mohammed found it necessary to condemn that conduct in the strongest terms available to it, characterising it as the gravest form of judicial misconduct, a brazen violation of the hierarchy of the court and the 1999 Constitution, and the highest form of judicial impertinence. The panel further invoked the Supreme Court's own characterisation of such conduct, namely that a judge who acts in this manner is unfit for the bench and that it amounts to judicial rascality. A stay of execution was granted and the judgment rendered unenforceable.
I do not write to make a personal example of any individual judge. The members of the bench include some men and women of learning and distinction, and it would be unfair and ungenerous to reduce this discussion to a castigation of any one of them. My concern is larger and, I venture to suggest, more urgent than that. The conduct that attracted the Court of Appeal's censure in this instance is not an isolated aberration. It is a recurring and deeply troubling feature of judicial practice in Nigeria, and it is one that the legal community and the institutions of judicial governance have for too long addressed with insufficient resolve.
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Time and time again, when an appeal has been entered in the Court of Appeal in respect of proceedings before a lower court, judges of the lower court continue to adjudicate on the very matter that is the subject of that appeal. They take evidence. They make rulings. They deliver judgments of far-reaching consequence, as though the appeal had never been filed and the appellate court had never spoken. This pattern of conduct is inimical to the integrity of the appellate process and must be confronted directly.
The problem manifests across a spectrum. At one end are those judges who, though no express order of stay has been made by the appellate court, continue to deal with the substantive issues that form the subject matter of the appeal without adequate regard for the implications of the pending appellate proceedings. The proper course, as a matter of sound judicial practice and basic constitutional fidelity, is for a lower court judge to stay his hand in relation to those issues pending the determination of the appeal, at least where proceeding could prejudice the subject matter of the appeal or render it nugatory. If the appellate court ultimately finds in favour of the appellant, orders made by the lower court in the interim may create hardship and irreversible consequences that no subsequent order can adequately remedy.
At the other and far more serious end of the spectrum are those judges who not only know that an appeal is pending but who are aware of a specific and express order made by the Court of Appeal directing them to suspend proceedings, and who proceed regardless. It is this category that attracts the characterisation of judicial rascality that the Supreme Court has employed, and it is this category that demands the most serious institutional response. A judge in that position cannot claim ignorance. He cannot claim honest error. He cannot invoke judicial independence as a shield, because judicial independence has never meant, and cannot mean, independence from the constitutional hierarchy of courts. It means independence from improper external influence. It does not confer upon a judge of the Federal High Court any licence to disregard an order of the Court of Appeal made in the lawful exercise of that court's supervisory constitutional jurisdiction.
It must be stated plainly: a judge who is aware of a stay order made by the Court of Appeal and who proceeds to conduct proceedings, make rulings, or deliver judgment in defiance of that order is acting in a manner that the Supreme Court has described as rendering him unfit for the bench. The pronouncements made in such circumstances are not merely voidable. They are void. They have no legal effect. But their legal nullity does not exhaust the mischief they cause. They create confusion. They cause hardship to the parties who relied upon the appellate court's intervention. They communicate to litigants and to the public at large that court orders are negotiable, and that the appellate process may be circumvented by the simple expedient of a determined judge acting quickly enough to present the higher court with a fait accompli.
Judges of the lower courts must learn, and learn firmly, how to take their hands off a case when an appeal has been entered. This is not a counsel of timidity or an invitation to judicial passivity. It is a counsel of constitutional fidelity. The moment a competent appeal is lodged in the Court of Appeal in respect of a matter before a lower court, the lower court judge's role in relation to that matter is, at minimum, substantially circumscribed. Where the Court of Appeal has gone further and made an express order of stay, there is nothing further to consider and no discretion to exercise. The order must be obeyed. That obligation is absolute and unconditional.
A judge's personal convictions about the correct outcome of the litigation before him are wholly irrelevant once the court above him has ordered him to stand down. The system of appellate review exists precisely because no judge, however learned and however experienced, is immune from error. A judge who proceeds in defiance of a stay order is not expressing confidence in his own judgment. He is denying the appellate court the opportunity to perform the function the Constitution assigns to it. That is an act not of judicial courage but of judicial insubordination, and it must be called by its proper name.
The persistence of this problem across the Nigerian court system points to a failure of institutional accountability. Verbal condemnation by the Court of Appeal, however forceful and however warranted, has plainly not proven sufficient to deter recurrence. The National Judicial Council bears constitutional responsibility for the discipline of judicial officers, and it must take this recurring problem with the seriousness it deserves. Where a judge has proceeded in knowing defiance of an appellate court order, the matter goes directly to his fitness to continue to hold judicial office. The NJC's disciplinary jurisdiction is not a theoretical reserve power to be held in perpetual abeyance. It is an active instrument for the protection of judicial integrity, and the time has come for it to be deployed with greater consistency and resolve whenever conduct of this kind is established.
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A judiciary whose members obey the orders of superior courts only when they find it personally convenient to do so is not a judiciary worthy of the name. The distinction between a court of law and an instrument of individual will lies precisely in the unconditional submission of every judicial officer to the hierarchical constitutional order. That submission is not optional. It is the very foundation upon which the authority of every court in this country rests.
The case that has recently attracted the Court of Appeal's condemnation must therefore serve as more than a cautionary tale for the judge immediately concerned. It must serve as a clear and unambiguous signal to the entire lower court bench in Nigeria. The Supreme Court has said, with a clarity that admits of no misunderstanding, that a judge who conducts himself in this manner is unfit for the bench and that such conduct amounts to judicial rascality. That statement is not rhetoric. It is a standard of accountability, and it is a standard that must now be enforced.
·Atake, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, writes from Lagos.
