PARALLAX SNAPS: Why an Illiterate Woman Wanted High Court Judge Promoted to Magistrate — and Why I Support Her

By Tony Okafor

On Friday, October 31, I found myself inside a Magistrate Court in Anambra State (name withheld), accompanying a friend who was standing trial for a case of criminal defamation.

It was my closest encounter with the raw workings of that level of the judiciary, and what I witnessed left me stunned.

The moment the court clerk announced my friend’s case, the magistrate did not ask for the details or the merits of the charge. Instead, her first question was chillingly direct: “Does he have anyone to bail him?”

I was surprised.

I had expected the magistrate to at least summarize the allegations or entertain preliminary arguments before moving to procedural matters like bail. But I was quickly corrected by someone in court — that’s how the Magistrate Court operates. Everything is swift, practical, and unceremonious.

It dawned on me that if my friend had not come prepared with someone to stand surety, he would have been whisked away straight from the dock — either to a police cell or a correctional facility. Just like that, in a matter of minutes, a free man could become a detainee.

That experience reminded me of a story from the colonial days, when an illiterate woman once begged a visiting governor to “promote” her kinsman from a High Court judge to a Magistrate, out of ignorance. She had seen firsthand the kind of power magistrates wielded in her locality. It may sound amusing, but perhaps that woman understood something deeper than we give her credit for.

In truth, people should fear the Magistrate Court more than the Supreme Court — and with good reason. The Magistrate is the first point of contact between ordinary citizens and the law.

It is where the police take suspects, where landlords and tenants clash, and where petty offences are decided. The proceedings are fast, the consequences immediate, and the reach uncomfortably close.

The Supreme Court, on the other hand, feels distant — an arena for seasoned lawyers, constitutional debates, and protracted appeals. Its judgments may shape nations, but they rarely touch the daily lives of the poor, the hustlers, or the market women who can be arraigned and remanded before noon.

The Magistrate Court is where law meets life — and often, fear. It is the place where justice becomes tangible enough to change a person’s freedom in minutes.

Perhaps that’s why, for many Nigerians, the real power of the judiciary does not reside in the lofty chambers of the apex court in Abuja, but in the modest, overcrowded rooms where a magistrate’s gavel can determine whether a man walks home or walks to prison.

The Magistrate Court may be called “inferior” as a matter of constitutional creation or hierarchy — but certainly not in action.