Law Without Justice: A Futile Venture in The Nigerian Socio-Political Arena

Abstract

The constant yearning for justice through the application of the rule of law in Nigeria has been an issue of great concern as it battles with the problems of extrajudicial killings, jungle justice, violation of rule of law, outright negligence of checks and balance among others, leaves much to be desired in the judicial system. The judiciary that should have been the last bastion of the common man is often hijacked by the influential in government, thereby bringing to disrepute the system, where law, instead of protecting the individual, ends up exposing same: hence the futility of law devoid of justice. This article, Law without Justice: A Futile Venture in the Nigerian Socio-Political Arena, gave a contextual analysis that connects legal theory with contemporary Nigerian realities. Law without justice is not merely ineffective but morally void and futile, thereby questioning the Nigerian legal system in crisis, not solely as structural but also fundamentally ethically-rooted in a disconnection between legal formality and moral accountability in matters pertaining to justice. The harmony of legal, philosophical, and moral perspectives to justice, in the long run, must serve as the animating spirit of the law. Through this interdisciplinary lens, amidst judicial crisis in Nigeria, it proposed that legal reform in Nigeria must begin with moral renewal and civic reorientation in observing, in theory and practice, the tenets inherent in rule of law and checks and balances in building a just and lawful society. Only then can justice be seen not as an abstract concept but as a living soul of law and democracy.