Cry or laugh — take your pick. But this is what the Nigerian judiciary has been reduced to.
For years, I thought I knew everything that was going on in my own court case. I was there. I was cross-examined. I had lawyers. I followed up.
But it turns out, the most damaging thing happened without my knowledge — and only came to light recently, when I personally obtained and reviewed the Certified True Copy (CTC) of the court proceedings.
I filed my civil suit in 2017. The defendant didn’t respond for over a year. Then, in January 2019, I was cross-examined. It was a strange session.
Their lawyer pulled out a document and claimed I had received it and signed for it. I looked at it and said, “No. I’ve never seen this document, and I never signed it.”
He withdrew it. Then, casually asked me, “How many signatures do you use?” I told him, “Two.” He gave me a blank sheet of paper and asked me to sign both versions. I didn’t know what he was planning to do with it, but I signed.
Unbeknownst to me, that blank sheet — with nothing on it but two fresh examples of my signature — was immediately tendered as an exhibit. The court admitted it.
Still, no defence had been filed at that time. Then, two weeks later, on February 2, 2019, the defendant finally submitted its defence. I didn’t think much of it — until recently, when I finally obtained the full case file and the CTC of the court proceedings.
That’s when the pieces came together — and the forgery revealed itself.
Attached to the defendant’s belated statement of defence was a photocopy of the very document I had denied under oath. But this time, it had my name on it — or at least something resembling it. “Odilim Enwegbaram”.
Not Enwegbara. It was misspelled. Worse, it had been inserted over a visibly tippexed line — the only part of the document with correction fluid.
Then came the signature. It wasn’t quite mine, but close — close enough to raise questions.
That’s when it hit me: they had lifted my signature from the blank sheet I signed in court. They had fabricated the document after the cross-examination, then quietly attached it to their court filings, and waited.
How did the court allow this?
As I read through the CTC, I discovered what really happened during the tendering of that document — something I wasn’t even fully aware of at the time.
When the defence attempted to present the forged document through their witness (DW1), my lawyer raised a strong objection. He cited Sections 88 and 89 of the Evidence Act: a photocopy is not admissible unless the original is lost or destroyed and that loss must be properly established.
The judge asked the obvious question: “Where is the original?”
DW1 said, “It got lost in my office.”
Then the defence counsel stood up — and directly contradicted him. He told the court: “No, the original isn’t lost. The Claimant has it.”
Think about that. One says it’s lost. The other says it’s with me. But the document is a forged photocopy. The original was never produced — likely because it never existed.
Yet, the judge overruled the objection and admitted the document. She said she would decide later how much “weight” to give it. It was marked as an exhibit.
No one questioned the misspelling, the tippex, or the fact that the document was smuggled in after my signatures had been harvested under cross-examination.
Years passed. Then, on June 30, 2025, DW1 was cross-examined again — this time by my new counsel. Under oath, he admitted clearly: “there was no contract between the Defendant and me”
Finally, I thought. The truth has landed.
But when I received the CTC of the judgment on July 28, 2025, that admission was no longer there.
It had been replaced by this sentence: “There is a contract… by signage of the guide.”
That “guide” was the same forged, tippexed document. The one I never signed. The one bearing a spelling of my name I’ve never used. The one cobbled together using signatures I gave on a plain sheet in court — with no context and no warning.
So now, years later, I’m left with a legal judgment based on a document I never saw, never signed, and only discovered through forensic reading of the CTC.
This isn’t just about my case.
This is about how easily the truth can be rewritten in Nigeria’s courtrooms. How the law — and even sworn testimony — can be bent to accommodate fraud. And how a litigant can sit through an entire trial, not knowing that a false record has already been smuggled into evidence.
The lesson is simple: you must be involved. Deeply. Personally. Painfully.
Your lawyer might mean well, but they’re juggling ten other cases. You’re juggling only one — your own. And if you don’t read every document, get every transcript, and demand every record, you may find that the truth of your case has been changed — and nobody told you.
Cry or laugh, depending on which you prefer. But this is what our judiciary has been reduced to.
Winning the Judgment, Losing the Nation
I never planned to immerse myself in the tangled undergrowth of Nigerian jurisprudence. My life’s compass was set toward the frontiers of human possibility — human immortality, cellular neovsis, and the permanent cure for cancer. Yet, here I am, drawn unwillingly into the crumbling temple of justice, because you cannot live in a burning house and pretend the flames belong to someone else.
Is it too late to think deeply about jurisprudence and the public good? No — because when a society loses its moral and legal direction, all other progress becomes an illusion.
Plato was right: “Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.”
Consider Nnamdi Kanu. Kenya’s High Court has already declared his abduction unlawful, inhumane, and a violation of international norms.
Yet in Nigeria, the same case — already decided in another sovereign court — staggers on as if the foreign judgment were a rumour. This is not merely legal defiance; it is judicial terrorism by the state itself.
The corrosion is systemic. Section 174(1)(c) of Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution empowers the Attorney-General to “discontinue at any stage before judgment is delivered any such criminal proceedings instituted or undertaken by him or any other authority or person.”
Section 211(1)(c) mirrors this power for states. Both require, in subsection (3), that the power be exercised in the public interest, in the interest of justice, and to prevent abuse of legal process.
In theory, this is a noble safeguard. In practice, it too often becomes a political escape hatch.
In Anambra State, the Attorney-General moved to terminate criminal proceedings, and the President of the Nigerian Bar Association rushed to defend him, invoking the constitutional imperative while ignoring the political convenience. The law was cited, but the “public interest” — the reason the power exists — was conveniently absent.
Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote: “The foundations of justice are that no one shall suffer wrong; then, that the public good be promoted.”
Justinian defined justice as “the constant and perpetual wish to render every man his due.” By these standards, selective justice is not justice at all — it is politics in robes.
The Nigerian Supreme Court, in _State v. Ilori once described the Attorney-General as “a master unto himself… under no control whatsoever” in exercising these powers. Without moral restraint, such unbridled discretion becomes an instrument of state capture, not state service.
History warns us. Rome began as a republic of laws but rotted into an empire of men when those entrusted with justice served power instead of truth. Nigeria is edging toward that same precipice.
It is not too late to resist. But the clock is not generous. A nation that manipulates justice to suit political ends may win its cases — but it will lose its soul.