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By Jibrin Okutepa

One of the greatest tragedies of the Nigerian state is not merely the prevalence of wrongdoing, corruption, impunity and abuse of power, but also the dangerous culture of rationalising and accepting these evils as normal. We have gradually built a society where wrongdoing is defended, illegality is justified, dishonesty is celebrated, and those who dare to speak out against injustice are often condemned as enemies of progress. When a nation begins to lose its moral compass, its laws become mere ornaments, and its institutions become instruments for protecting personal and partisan interests.

Even more disturbing, this culture of normalising wrongdoing has infiltrated the legal profession. The legal profession ought to stand as the foremost guardian of justice, constitutionalism and due process. It is alarming when lawyers, trained to distinguish legality from illegality, justice from injustice, and truth from falsehood, begin to justify manifest wrongdoing simply because it serves their clients, political interests, professional alliances or personal ambitions. The law must never become a convenient instrument for legitimising injustice or providing intellectual cover for illegality.

The greatest danger to our society is not simply the existence of those who violate the law, but the emergence of those who defend, excuse and celebrate such violations. When due process is sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, when court orders are obeyed selectively, when public officials abuse their offices without accountability, and when lawyers abandon professional conscience for partisan loyalty, the very foundation of constitutional democracy is threatened. A society cannot make meaningful progress when its citizens measure right and wrong by who benefits rather than by what the law demands.

Neither political power nor professional status should confer immunity from accountability. Justice must be impartial, and the law must bind the powerful and the powerless alike. The Nigerian legal system cannot develop jurisprudentially in an atmosphere where legal arguments are designed to defend the indefensible, where judicial pronouncements are respected only when convenient, and where procedural safeguards are dismissed whenever they stand in the way of desired outcomes. Jurisprudential development demands intellectual honesty, courage, principled advocacy and an unwavering commitment to justice. It requires lawyers and judges who are prepared to confront uncomfortable truths rather than surrender to the pressure of prevailing interests.

We must understand that due process is not a technical obstacle to justice. It is one of justice’s most essential safeguards. It protects individual rights, restrains arbitrary power and ensures that the pursuit of justice does not itself become an instrument of oppression. Nigeria’s failure to achieve its full potential is inseparable from our collective tolerance of wrongdoing and our reluctance to demand accountability. We cannot build a just, prosperous and progressive nation on a foundation of moral compromise, institutional indiscipline and selective obedience to the law. The time has come for Nigerians, particularly members of the legal profession, to rediscover the courage to call wrongdoing by its proper name, irrespective of who is responsible or who stands to benefit.

Silence in the face of injustice is dangerous, but deliberately justifying wrongdoing is even more destructive. A nation that normalises illegality eventually destroys the very institutions upon which its survival depends. If we must rescue Nigeria, we must first rescue our conscience. Justice must become our national culture, not a slogan for public speeches or a weapon of convenience. Until we learn to condemn wrongdoing even when it benefits us, justice will remain elusive, jurisprudential development will stagnate, and national progress will remain a distant dream. Our ability to accept wrongs as right is our bane.

• Jibrin Okutepa, SAN, tweeted on his X @sanjsokutepa