Memories of Justice Mamman Nasir

During the Gowon era, when Nigeria had only 12 states, state
commissioners were much more prominent than they are today. Many
commissioners’ portrait pictures appeared in the newspapers every
day. So many, indeed, that during my primary and secondary school
days I made an album of military governors and their commissioners
for every state.

One of the most prominent commissioners then was Malam Mamman
Nasir, Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice of North
Central State [present Kaduna and Katsina states]. His picture,
wearing a black coat and white wig, often featured in New Nigerian.
I soon made a connection because the songs of Dan Kwairo and Ali
Dan Saraki made many references to “Minister Nasiru,” who was very
close to the Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello,
Sardaunan Sokoto. In 1975, not long after the Gowon regime was
overthrown and Nasir lost his job as Attorney General, New Nigerian
featured a front-page picture of him, announcing his appointment as
a Justice of the Supreme Court. It was the only case I ever read of
in Nigeria, of a man going straight to the Supreme Court from the
bar.

In 1978, Justice Mamman Nasir made another career first when he
stepped down from the Supreme Court and became President of the
Court of Appeal in succession to Justice Dan Ibekwe, who passed
away. He remained in that position until 1992 when he retired early
in order to become the Galadiman Katsina and District Head of
Malumfashi in Katsina State. As it happened, over the previous
year, I got to hear many stories up close about Justice Mamman
Nasir because my first cousin, Justice Abubakar Jega [now sadly
deceased], became the Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal in
1991 and was working very closely with its President. As it
happened, Justice Nasir was my father’s classmate at Government
College, Kaduna in 1943-47. He however told Justice Jega after his
appointment as Chief Registrar that even though he was his son, he
came first in the interview and he did not slant matters in his
favor.

The Chief Registrar became highly devoted to Justice Nasir and
he told many stories about him, including that the Appeal Court
President almost never drank the tea supplied to his office. After
a year, so much tea, sugar, milk and biscuit had accumulated in his
office, so the Chief Registrar sent it to the President’s house.
When Nasir heard, he scolded the CR for sending packets of tea and
sugar to his house and ordered him to go and retrieve it. The stuff
that old judges were made of.

For some reasons of family history, the then Emir of Katsina,
Muhammadu Kabir Usman, did not want Nasir as Galadiman Katsina. It
was a tough tug-of-war and the military ruler General Babangida
apparently intervened to force the emirate council’s hand, from
what we heard at the time. I also saw him up close at his
Malumfashi palace that year when our brother Aliyu Kardi married
his daughter.

It was in July 1993, in the heat of the June 12 crisis, that I
got a chance to sit down with Justice Mamman Nasir at his home
opposite the Kasuwar Barci market in Kaduna. I accompanied my boss
at Citizen magazine, Mohammed Haruna to the house. We asked him if
what General Babangida said was true, that judges ridiculed
themselves by giving contradictory rulings in the June 12 case. The
old judge said, “Judges did not ridicule themselves but politicians
tried to ridicule the judiciary.” He said [referring to Arthur
Nzeribe and his notorious Association for Better Nigeria, ABN] that
no one should have gone to court and asked for an election to be
stopped since the Constitution provided for election.

Secondly, Justice Nasir was angry that instead of going to the
Appeal Court, many people instead went to High Courts of coordinate
jurisdiction in order to upturn the FCT High Court’s order to NEC
not to announce the June 12 election results. He said given the
gravity of the situation, the Appeal Court could even sit in the
night to hear the case. He told us a story of what happened when a
student whose name did not appear on the graduation list obtained a
High Court order to stop the University of Ibadan’s convocation on
Friday afternoon, hours before it held. He said UI’s management
panicked but they were told to quickly go to the Appeal Court’s
Ibadan Division. The judges sat at midnight and discharged the
injunction.

We also asked Justice Nasir why he stepped down from the Supreme
Court to the Appeal Court. First, he said he saw no difference
between courts at different levels. He said in England, there are
magistrates who do not want to become high court judges; they serve
out their entire career as magistrates. As to the 1978 case,
Justice Dan Ibekwe died just when the Constituent Assembly that
produced the 1979 Constitution was badly split over the issue of
Shari’a. A compromise had been struck to create a Shari’a Division
in the Appeal Court instead of creating a Shari’a Court of Appeal,
and military Head of State General Olusegun Obasanjo sweetened the
deal by convincing Nasir to step down from the Supreme Court and
head the Appeal Court. He however retained his seniority as a
Supreme Court judge.

Galadiman Katsina also told us many stories about Sardauna,
including how he was appointed the Northern Region Minister of
Justice in 1961. He was a Senior Crown Counsel in Jos, under the
Attorney General, when he was summoned to Sardauna’s house. When he
got there at 7am, Sardauna was having the first of his two daily
Cabinet meetings. Straight away, Nasir was told that he was to be
appointed the Minister of Justice but should first go and resign
from the civil service by paying a month’s salary in lieu of
notice. His monthly salary was 33 pounds and he was asked if he had
the money to pay. He said he didn’t, so Sardauna dipped his hand in
his pocket and brought 5 pounds. He then asked all the ministers to
contribute. They all dipped their hands in their pockets and soon
collected the 33 pounds. Mamman Nasir went to the Treasury, paid it
and collected the receipt. During Sardauna’s second Cabinet meeting
at 2pm, he brought the receipt, which Sardauna gave to Minister of
Finance Alhaji Aliyu Makaman Bidda to confirm if it was genuine.
When Makama confirmed it, Mamman Nasir was immediately sworn in as
Minister of Justice [in those days, the Attorney General’s post was
separate].

No wonder that Galadiman Katsina was the father of Gamji Clubs
all over the North, in memory of Sardauna. I saw him quite often in
1993-94, when he headed the Northern Elders Forum together with
Alhaji Abdurrahman Okene. They held many seminars to prepare the
Northern position ahead of the Abacha Constitutional Conference of
1994-95. Nasir ended up as the conference’s Deputy Chairman.
Afterwards, he headed one of the Abacha transitional agencies.

I last saw Justice Mamman Nasir in 2015, when my brother Justice
Abubakar Jega died in the Hajj stampede. He was still agile but had
virtually lost his voice. Still, he went to the house many times to
accept condolences. Galadiman Katsina was a very good man, a great
jurist, an astute administrator and politician, who labored very
hard to keep Sardauna’s memory alive, one of the pioneers of the
legal profession in the North and who devoted his entire life to
national service in many different capacities. May Allah reward him
with Aljannat Firdaus.