Ondo Redemption Front (ORF) raises grave alarm over the total collapse of the judicial system in Ondo State, occasioned by the ongoing indefinite strike embarked upon by the Coalition of Magistrates, Presidents of Grade ‘A’ Customary Courts, and the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN).
What is unfolding in Ondo State is no longer a labour dispute. It is a constitutional emergency.
As of January 2026, the Sunshine state stands at the edge of institutional darkness. The light of the law has been deliberately extinguished, plunging the state into constitutional freefall. By persistently denying the judiciary its constitutionally guaranteed financial autonomy, the Executive arm of government has effectively crippled the third arm of government and declared war on the rights, liberties, and safety of its own citizens.
This judicial paralysis is not accidental; it is manufactured.
THE ARCHITECTS OF INSTITUTIONAL DECAY
We have identified an unholy trinity responsible for this calculated assault on justice:
1. Governor Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa, the Chief Security Officer of Ondo State, whose alarming indifference to the suffering of the people, combined with alleged extravagant spending on personal and political interests, betrays a troubling disconnect from governance and recalls historical excesses marked by arrogance and lack of empathy.
2. The Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Dr. Kayode Ajulo, SAN, who has emerged not as the defender of justice but as the chief executor of executive strangulation of the judiciary, deploying misinformation, prevarication, and stakeholder placation to frustrate genuine resolution.
3. The Commissioner for Finance, Mrs. Omowumi Isaac, deployed as the spearhead of obstruction—rescinding approvals, delaying files, altering disbursement protocols, and projecting a false narrative of state penury to justify executive abdication of constitutional responsibilities.
THE HUMAN COST OF JUDICIAL CAPTURE
The consequences of this executive lawlessness are dire and immediate:
Mass Incarceration Without Justice (The Gulag Effect): Hundreds of citizens now languish in overcrowded police cells and correctional facilities across Akure and other parts of the state, denied arraignment, bail, or trial. This is not due process; it is state-sanctioned incarceration.
Abandonment of the Vulnerable:
Survivors of sexual and gender-based violence, victims of domestic abuse, and other vulnerable persons are left without protection. With no magistrates sitting to issue protection orders, the state has effectively handed them back to their abusers.
ECONOMIC SABOTAGE AND MANUFACTURED POVERTY
The refusal of the Aiyedatiwa-led administration to respect judicial financial independence is a direct assault on the state’s economy:
Commercial Paralysis: Contract enforcement has collapsed. Land disputes, probate matters, real estate transactions, customary law cases, and debt recoveries are frozen, creating a climate of uncertainty that repels investment and invites chaos.
Impoverishment of the Bar: Thousands of legal practitioners whose livelihoods depend on active litigation have been pushed into sudden poverty. This is not incidental hardship, it is manufactured poverty, imposed by executive intransigence.
THE HYPOCRISY OF POWER
It is deeply ironic, and morally repugnant, that an Executive whose own political survival was secured through judicial intervention now presides over the humiliation and degradation of the same institution. Magistrates reduced to commuting via commercial motorcycles or public transport alongside litigants they are meant to adjudicate over is not just indignity, it is the systematic erosion of judicial sanctity.
A DIRECT PATH TO ANARCHY
A state without functional courts is not a democracy. It is a lawless terrain where might replaces right and mob justice flourishes. Every day the courts remain shut is another day the social contract is shredded.
Ondo Redemption Front therefore demands:
The immediate and unconditional implementation of full financial autonomy for the Ondo State Judiciary, not as a concession, but as a non-negotiable constitutional obligation.
The courts are not political bargaining chips. They are prerequisites for the survival of the state.
History teaches that when leaders are intoxicated by power and ambition, institutions perish first. A governor entrusted with power must never attempt to play God. Allegations of reckless diversion of state resources towards unachievable personal ambitions and the appeasement of a narrow political class, while core institutions collapse, amount to a betrayal of public trust and a moral crime against humanity.
Ondo State must not be allowed to descend into an abyss.
Justice delayed has now become justice denied.
Signed:
For: Ondo Redemption Front (ORF)
Comr. Ayodeji Ologun, PhD, Chairman
Comr. Mogbojuri Kayode Esq, Co- Chairman
Comr. Adedotun Ajulo Esq., Secretary
