The appointment of Justice Aloma Mariam Muktar as the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) in July last year was greeted with as much applause as apprehension in response to the novelty of a female occupant of the exalted office. Given the remarkable career records of Justice Aloma Muktar in the judiciary however there was high expectation that she would be up to the task. A review of her career shows that she has requisite experience at various levels of the judicial service in the country, earning her a number of pioneering attainments as a woman in a profession dominated by men. It was a welcome development in many respects that overshadowed any concerns pertaining to her capacity to shoulder the challenging responsibilities of such an office.
It was therefore a foregone conclusion that she would effortlessly scale through the process of screening at the Senate and she apparently gave a good account of herself and impressed especially her fellow women who regarded her as an icon of the gender-assertive generation now in ascendance. The senators too got so carried away that they glossed over the unsettling matter of missing credentials which forced Her Lordship to submit an affidavit to cover the gap. Such acts of omission and commission should raise eyebrows coming from the 47-year career of a 69 year old judge, but no mention was made of this matter as she simply took a bow!
For whatever it was worth, this seemingly isolated lapse nevertheless raised more questions about other unmentioned grey areas of the life and times of Justice Aloma Mariam Muktar that have been haunting her career for decades. These include Sierra-Leonian origin, a phantom marital status that saw her bearing an uncle’s name while “officially” a Mrs, a wig and gown tango of romance and the resulting birth of a love-child which are in the distinct memories of her close acquaintances.
These other-side episodes had repercussions on her personal and career records, even leading to a face-saving detour from the bench to the registry and disqualification from appointment as Chief Judge in her adopted Kano State. The burden of moral mishaps is one handicap Justice Aloma Muktar has been living and working with in a profession that prides itself as the epitome of honour and rectitude. It has also demonstrably affected her psyche as a woman who may yet attain the hallowed hallmarks of womanhood routinely attained by her peers.
The facade of an illustrious career and motherly mannerism that ushered Nigeria’s pioneer female chief justice into the limelight of professional accomplishment lasted barely five months before succumbing to Her Lordship’s underlying human foibles and barely concealed complexes. Even her most ardent admirers were shocked beyond belief by the public display of disorderly conduct against a fellow woman judge in November last year. That was when Justice Aloma Mariam Muktar clumsily declined to swear in Justice Uche Jombo-Offor, one of twelve newly elevated judges who were ready and waiting to be sworn in as justices of the Court of Appeal at a ceremony in Abuja, to the rude embarrassment of everyone present. It was a slip of mind whose ripples significantly down-sized her estimation in public and before the majority of people who influenced her elevation to CJN and others who saw in her a woman of judicial substance.
In fact, the CJN was only acting true to type in the eyes of those familiar with her conceited whims and caprices, especially towards women who have had better experience of womanhood and family life and those who see her the way she is rather than the way she wants to be seen. It was so obvious that she had overplayed the instrumentality of a petition by “some Abians” that Justice Jombo-Ofor was not an indigene of Abia State. Justice Jombo-Ofor, though of Anambra state extraction, married an Abia indigene and has for 14 years served the Abia state judiciary as a judge, after transferring her services from Anambra state which was so satisfied with her competence that it recommended her for the Court of Appeal appointment.
That was how the CJN sought to settle unknown scores with another female colleague who had been short-listed for appointment into the National Industrial Court. Desperate to find a way to scuttle the appointment, Justice Aloma Muktar suddenly demanded that all candidates must produce their certificate of state of origin, surreptitiously scheming to disqualify the lady judge on the basis of claiming the state of origin of her husband-just as she did to Justice Jombo-Ofor! Her female colleagues usually steer clear of Justice Aloma at functions to avoid embarrassment. One of them who ventured to greet an isolated Aloma at a meeting of women judges got a rude rebuff just for addressing the Justice as “Your Ladyship”, a title Justice Aloma regarded as belittling to a Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. Incidentally, she was still not satisfied with her colleague’s effort to make amends by addressing her as “Your Lordship Sir” the next day, rejecting the masculine inference! Justice Aloma Muktar’s emotional hang-up and petty temperament always overcome her composure and mental balance making her to defy good conscience, wise counsel, official precedence and even simple manners as these incidents show beyond any doubt.
Unfortunately, these unflattering attitudinal excesses have been given an undesirable fillip with Justice Aloma Muktar’s elevation to the high and mighty position of CJN and she just cannot resist the temptation to flaunt her newly-acquired ego and authority with reckless abandon. In the case of the swearing-in fiasco, there was no alternative than for higher authorities to compel Her Lordship to climb off her high horse and eat her ego in the face of superior judgment and public condemnation, particularly from outraged women. Her humility is however not to be taken for granted during such fits of exaggerated self-importance even on highways, as she has reportedly gone to the extent of driving on the restricted Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) lane in Lagos on Sunday, October 14, 2012, allegedly breaking the Lagos State Traffic Law, as reported live on Lagos traffic radio 96.1 FM.
Bad as these episodes are for Nigeria’s Chief Justice, they represent only the simmering symptoms of her psychological complexes which have manifested in bouts of arbitrariness, high-handedness, vendetta, victimization and obstinate insistence on doing as she pleases that Justice Aloma Muktar has been unleashing on her colleagues and general staff under her superintendence. This is the regrettable result of her orchestrated promotion as the next best candidate for the highest judicial office in the land on the altar of gender sentiments. It has come as another rude shock to the community of colleagues and subordinates who expected Justice Aloma’s complexes to be mitigated by virtue of higher responsibility, if not a sense of maturity and humility now that she has risen to the apex.
