USELESS AND MEANINGLESS JUDGEMENT: The Speed of Impunity vs. The Slowness of Justice in the Rivers State Emergency Declaration Case -By Prof. John Egbeazien Oshodi

The Supreme Court ruling of December 15, 2025, affirming the President’s authority to declare a state of emergency in Rivers State, cannot be understood as a neutral exercise in constitutional interpretation. Its true meaning lies not in its citations or procedural language, but in its timing.

Delivered nine months after the crisis began and three months after the emergency period had already expired, the judgment arrived only after executive power had fully achieved its objective. By the time the court spoke, the constitutional injury had already been absorbed into political reality, normalized through governance, and rendered immune to correction.

This was not justice delayed.

It was justice neutralized.

The ruling performed no restraining function. It restored no democratic balance. It reversed no abuse. Instead, it confirmed a dangerous governing principle now hardening within Nigerian public life: time, not law, has become the most reliable instrument of power.

WHEN COURTS MOVE FAST, DEMOCRACY IS PROTECTED

In functioning constitutional democracies, courts are judged not only by what they decide, but by how quickly they intervene when democratic harm is unfolding. Urgency is not a procedural preference in constitutional disputes; it is the very substance of judicial responsibility.

The most instructive global example remains the 2000 United States presidential election dispute, Bush v. Gore. Faced with a contested election that threatened to paralyze the transfer of power, the U.S. Supreme Court acted with extraordinary speed. Within weeks, it heard arguments, rendered judgment, and imposed finality on a crisis that could have spiraled into institutional chaos.

That ruling remains controversial. Its timing does not.

The court understood a fundamental democratic truth: delay itself can destroy democracy. It did not wait for political exhaustion. It did not allow facts on the ground to determine outcomes by default. It intervened while intervention still mattered.

Speed, in that moment, was not recklessness. It was institutional courage.

WHEN COURTS DELAY, POWER GOVERNS BY DEFAULT

The Rivers State emergency declaration presented Nigeria’s Supreme Court with an equally urgent constitutional test. The governors filed their suit promptly in March, recognizing that emergency powers are inherently time-bound and that judicial delay would inevitably favor executive authority.

What followed was nine months of judicial silence.

The state of emergency in Rivers State was declared on March 18. Within days, around March 24, the affected governors approached the Supreme Court, fully aware that emergency powers are inherently time-bound and that delay would inevitably advantage executive authority. The constitutional alarm was raised early, while the injury was still alive and reversible.

What followed was not measured judicial reflection. It was prolonged silence.

For months, the case remained pending while executive power operated without interruption. Governance was altered, authority was exercised, security structures were reshaped, and political realities were allowed to harden into accepted fact. The court did not intervene while constitutional harm was active and capable of correction.

By September, the emergency was lifted—not because of judicial oversight or constitutional restraint, but because the executive had completed its mission. The crisis ended on executive terms, not judicial ones.

Yet even then, the court did not speak.

In October, the Supreme Court announced that it had reserved the case for judgment. In ordinary language, reservation sounds procedural and harmless. In institutional reality, it is far more dangerous. Reservation is a dark space in judicial time—a zone without deadlines, without transparency, and without accountability. Once a case is reserved, anything can happen. Or nothing can happen. The clock no longer belongs to the Constitution; it belongs to the court.

In constitutional emergencies, reservation becomes a strategic pause that favors power. It freezes scrutiny while allowing political consequences to settle permanently. It gives the appearance of engagement while guaranteeing irrelevance.

When judgment was eventually delivered on December 15, the emergency had been over for three months. The constitutional question had long been overtaken by events deliberately allowed to mature without interruption. At that point, no ruling—however elegantly reasoned—could reverse what had already been done.

By the time the court spoke, power no longer required validation. It had already acted, governed, and withdrawn on its own timetable.

This stands in stark contrast to Bush v. Gore, where the United States Supreme Court understood that time itself was the battlefield. There, the court raced against the clock to prevent democratic paralysis. Here, Nigeria’s Supreme Court surrendered the clock entirely, allowing executive authority to govern uninterrupted while the judiciary remained procedurally distant.

This was not judicial caution.

It was institutional abdication.

Where some courts treat time as a constitutional emergency, others reduce it to a scheduling convenience. In Nigeria’s case, delay did not preserve neutrality or restraint. It preserved impunity—and taught power that waiting out the law is often more effective than confronting it.

NIGERIA’S FORGOTTEN STANDARD OF JUDICIAL URGENCY

This failure is especially disturbing because Nigeria’s judiciary once understood urgency as constitutional duty.

In the early 2000s, when President Olusegun Obasanjo interfered with local government tenure and withheld statutory allocations, the Supreme Court acted decisively. Its rulings in 2002 and 2004 were delivered while the violations were ongoing, not after they had expired.

Those decisions forced executive retreat. They mattered because they arrived in time.

The judiciary did not merely comment on constitutional abuse. It stopped it.

The Rivers State case represents a departure from that tradition. Here, the court waited until urgency evaporated. By the time it spoke, the Constitution had already been sidelined through delay.

This is not institutional evolution.

It is institutional regression.

WHAT THIS JUDGMENT TEACHES THE EXECUTIVE, THE PRESIDENCY, AND SECURITY AGENCIES

Judgments do not speak only to lawyers. They speak to power.

This ruling sent an unmistakable message to the executive, the presidency, the police, and the security apparatus: you may act first, stretch constitutional boundaries, consolidate control, and rely on time to protect you. Even if challenged, you will not be interrupted while the damage is ongoing. By the time the courts respond, your objective will already be complete.

This is how institutions train power without issuing commands.

Delay becomes permission.

Silence becomes consent.

Time becomes immunity.

For the presidency, the lesson is clear: emergency powers can be deployed aggressively with minimal fear of immediate judicial restraint. For the police and security agencies, the ruling reinforces a long-standing behavioral reality: enforcement decisions need not be constitutionally elegant if they are politically useful and temporally strategic.

Oversight, if it arrives at all, will arrive after consequences are irreversible.

In such an environment, legality ceases to be a boundary. It becomes an after-action explanation. Power does not wait for approval; it waits out resistance.

This is how democracies decay without coups. They decay through clocks.

THE TECHNICAL ESCAPE: HOW DELAY DID THE REAL WORK

After nine months of inaction, the Supreme Court struck out the case on grounds of want of competence. This procedural conclusion did not rescue constitutional order. It merely confirmed that delay had already accomplished what no ruling needed to say openly.

Technicality became a refuge after relevance had expired. Justice was not denied through confrontation; it was avoided through exhaustion.

This pattern is dangerous because it preserves the appearance of legality while emptying it of substance. The court could claim doctrinal purity precisely because time had rendered the case harmless.

Justice was not defeated.

It was outwaited.

THE MEDIA AS A SILENT PARTNER IN DEMOCRATIC EROSION

Nigeria’s mainstream media played a parallel and deeply complicit role.

Much of the press reported the ruling as routine legal news, focusing on abstract doctrine while avoiding sustained scrutiny of the nine-month delay. By ignoring timing, the media normalized the idea that justice can arrive long after relevance has expired.

This normalization is not accidental. It is functional.

When the media refuses to interrogate delay, it shields power without confrontation. It teaches citizens to look only at outcomes, not consequences; rulings, not realities.

Silence becomes narrative management.

Delay becomes invisibility.

HOW THE JUDICIARY AND MEDIA TREAT NIGERIANS AND DEMOCRACY AS CHILDREN

The combined behavior of the judiciary and the media reveals a deeper pathology: the systematic infantilization of Nigerians and of democracy itself.

By delivering a judgment long after its relevance had expired, and by reporting it without interrogating timing, institutions treated Nigerians as incapable of understanding urgency, consequence, and democratic harm. Citizens were expected to accept that a judgment exists, not to ask whether it mattered.

This is paternalism disguised as governance.

The public was positioned not as constitutional participants, but as spectators receiving explanations after decisions had already reshaped reality. Democracy was reduced to ceremony rather than agency.

In mature democracies, timing is accountability.

In infantilized democracies, timing is obscured so authority remains unquestioned.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE OF NORMALIZED DELAY

Over time, this pattern produces profound psychological harm.

Citizens learn helplessness. They internalize the belief that resistance is futile, that courts are distant, and that power is inevitable. Participation gives way to resignation. Engagement collapses into survival.

This is not accidental. It is institutionally useful.

When institutions behave as though Nigerians cannot process complexity or demand urgency, they lower democratic expectations. Accountability weakens. Governance becomes something done to people, not with them.

This is how democracy is not only weakened, but emotionally abandoned.

THE TERRIBLE LEGACY OF CJN KUDIRAT KEKERE-EKUN

This judgment cannot be separated from the leadership under which it was delivered.

Under Chief Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, the Supreme Court presided over a moment in which delay hardened into doctrine and silence evolved into institutional method. Her tenure is increasingly being defined not by judicial courage or constitutional urgency, but by a troubling retreat from the court’s historic role as an active guardian of democratic order.

A Chief Justice does not merely manage case files. She sets the court’s moral tempo. She determines whether urgency is treated as obligation or inconvenience. Under this leadership, the Supreme Court sent a clear and damaging message: constitutional emergencies may wait, democratic injury may mature unchecked, and relevance is optional so long as procedure is eventually observed.

This is a dangerous legacy.

What unfolded in the Rivers State emergency declaration case reflects an old and uncomfortable truth: burial comes after death, not before it. By the time the court delivered its judgment, the constitutional injury had already died through prolonged delay. The ruling did not prevent harm or restore democratic balance. It merely completed the formal ritual after life had already left the matter.

The court did not intervene while the injury was alive and reversible. It waited until time had done its work, then issued a judgment that could no longer change outcome or restore constitutional vitality. This is how institutions preserve the appearance of responsibility while abandoning its substance.

History will not remember how carefully this case was struck out or how technically sound the reasoning appeared on paper. It will remember that under Chief Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun, the Supreme Court watched a constitutional crisis expire before speaking.

In moments of democratic emergency, silence is not neutrality.

It is alignment with power.

And when a Supreme Court aligns with power through delay, it does not merely fail once. It teaches every other institution—the presidency, the police, and the security agencies—that the law will arrive only after their objectives have already been achieved.

That lesson, once taught, becomes precedent of the most dangerous kind.

GLOBAL PERCEPTION AND THE COST OF JUDICIAL SLUGGISHNESS

Judicial speed also shapes international perception. Only weeks before the ruling, former U.S. President Donald Trump described Nigeria as a disgraced country, citing failures of governance and insecurity.

Such remarks gain traction when institutions appear unable to act decisively. The Nigerian Supreme Court had an opportunity to counter that narrative through timely constitutional intervention. Instead, its delayed ruling reinforced doubts about whether democratic checks function when they are most needed.

Institutions earn respect through urgency.

Slowness signals weakness, not restraint.

THE FINAL DEMOCRATIC LESSON OF RIVERS STATE

The Rivers State emergency declaration case leaves Nigeria with a sobering lesson.

In modern governance, power no longer needs to defeat the courts. It only needs to outwait them.

Where courts act swiftly, democracy is stabilized even amid controversy. Where courts delay, power governs uninterrupted, and legality becomes commentary rather than constraint.

This judgment taught the executive that delay is strategy.

It taught security agencies that urgency favors power.

It taught the media that silence can be safer than scrutiny.

And it taught Nigerians that democracy will be explained to them after it has already been altered.

Because it arrived too late, the judgment was useless.

Because it surrendered time, it was meaningless.

About the Author

Prof. John Egbeazien Oshodi is an American psychologist and educator with expertise in forensic, legal, clinical, and cross-cultural psychology, including public ethical policy, policing, and prison science. A native of Uromi, Edo State, Nigeria, and son of a 37-year veteran of the Nigeria Police Force, he has long worked at the intersection of psychology, justice, and governance. In 2011, he helped introduce advanced forensic psychology to Nigeria through the National Universities Commission and Nasarawa State University, where he served as Associate Professor of Psychology.

He teaches in the Doctorate in Clinical and School Psychology at Nova Southeastern University; the Doctorate Clinical Psychology, BS Psychology, and BS Tempo Criminal Justice programs at Walden University; and lectures virtually in Management and Leadership Studies at Weldios University and ISCOM University. He is also the President and Chief Psychologist at the Oshodi Foundation, Center for Psychological and Forensic Services, United States.

Prof. Oshodi is a Black Republican in the United States but belongs to no political party in Nigeria—his work is guided solely by justice, good governance, democracy, and Africa’s development. He is the founder of Psychoafricalysis (Psychoafricalytic Psychology), a culturally grounded framework that integrates African sociocultural realities, historical awareness, and future-oriented identity. He has authored more than 500 articles, multiple books, and numerous peer-reviewed works on Africentric psychology, higher education reform, forensic and correctional psychology, African democracy, and decolonized models of clinical and community engagement.