The day a law professor's own court case taught me why nobody is above the law

Court of Appeal just upheld the two-year jail term for the former Dean of Law at University of Calabar, Professor Cyril Ndifon. See ehn, when I saw that news this morning, I sat down on my chair and just looked at the wall for a minute.

A law professor. A man who taught other people the law for decades. And the same law he was teaching is the one that carried him to prison. I don dey tell you, in my 26 years at the High Court, one thing I have learned is that the law does not care about your title. It does not care that you have a PhD. It does not care that you know the sections better than the prosecutor. When your case is called, you stand there like everybody else.

Young lawyers come to my office sometimes and they think the system is about who sabi the books pass. No. The system is about character. You can know every section of the Criminal Code and still destroy yourself with one small decision. Ndifon's case is not really about the sentence. It is about the fact that we all have that one moment where nobody is watching and we decide who we really are.

My people, what do you do when you know the law so well that you believe it cannot touch you?