By Obi Nwakanma
The minister for
justice just announced that judges found to be corrupt will be tried by
this administration. This is problematic. Though this sentiment is much shared,
it should not be left to the president and his administration to define
“corruption,” or determine which judge is corrupt. For the avoidance of doubt
the writ of this republic does not make the president the supreme authority of
the land.
*Buhari |
The constitution
is the governing authority of this republic, and the president is, as are all
Nigerians, governed by the Constitution. It would amount to overreach for the
president to break the thin glass boundaries that established the separation of
powers under the constitution. It would be power-grabbing, and the National
Assembly and the courts must keep an eye on this president. In fact, it is
about time that the National Assembly moved to reduce some of the powers
granted the president, because one of the great sources of corruption in Nigeria is the
enormous and almost limitless power granted the executive by this constitution
designed by the military. Let me advert the minds of Nigerians to January 1,
1984: a military coup had just sacked the democratically elected Government of
President Shehu Shagari. At the head of that coup was a tall, lean, unsmiling
General, who came across as a Spartan, no-nonsense, missionary soldier, out to
rescue Nigeria
from political and economic collapse.
Shagari had just
been re-elected in a very controversial election, which had the great Nnamdi
Azikiwe spewing fire in his very prophetic, as it turned out, post-election
letter to Nigerians, “History Will Vindicate the Just,”
published widely in the Nigerian Press. It was clear that the election was
riddled with irregularities. Yet, corruption in the politics of those years was
the bread and butter kind. It was confined mostly in the political parties. The
civil institutions were still intact: the public service; the judicial system;
the entire bureaucracy of state governance which could put to check to the
excesses of political leadership. And they were still all there in 1984. Then
came Buhari and his dark-browed praetorian guard, sacking the civil government,
and instituting a rule by decrees. The first order of business was to dismantle
the credibility of the elected political leaders the soldiers had sacked. In
very elaborate fashion General Buhari and his rubber-stamp Supreme Military
Council authorized the arrest, detention, and prosecution of the discredited
politicians. His Minister for Justice, Chike Ofodile quickly crafted decrees
that established extrajudicial tribunals that evacuated the powers of the civil
courts. Some of the trials were in-camera. But it soon became obvious that
these arrests and detentions were skewered mostly against politicians from the
South, particularly of the group that called itself the Progressive Peoples
Alliance (PPA) and by politicians from the Middle Belt. It might have been
inadvertent, but the impression it created was of a partisan, regionalist
witch-hunt of Southern politicians – some of them the most popular, and in
fact, the more credible in their visible achievements in the four years between
1979 and 1983.
*Buhari in 1984 |
One of the most
dangerous contributions of Buhari’s era as a military dictator was the erosion
of the credibility, dignity and the aura of impartiality of the Nigerian
judiciary, until then seen by Nigerians as the bulwark against tyranny; and
most credible of the three arms of government, particularly with the sack of
the parliament, and the seizure of executive power by military decree. The
judiciary lost its independence.
Malleable and
second-rate people were rapidly appointed to the bench. As the generation of
solid jurists began to leave the scene by the attrition of time, a new
generation of judges, the product of a corrupted judicature became more or less
judicial executioners of the mandate of anyone in power. The corruption of the
Nigerian judicial system, which had been subdued to military decrees began with
Muhammadu Buhari in 1984. The use to which he put the courts of the land was
corrupt. This is the fear that President Buhari’s opponents are currently
expressing in the current use of state power, in what is being increasingly
seen as a partisan witch-hunt to suppress a political opposition. Again, the
same method seems obvious: Buhari is arriving the scene of government again at
a time when oil prices have dipped very dangerously, and perhaps more
dangerously is that the era of hydrocarbon is rapidly coming to an end, which
means, even more financial instability for nations like Nigeria that have long
depended on oil to fuel their national economies. To all intents and purposes,
as like in October 1984, Nigeria
is broke.
Buhari has
suddenly discovered that he is unable to meet the lofty promises of his
campaign, and his political strategy now is to beat the drum of corruption ad nauseam, and blame his old political
opponents for his own increasingly apparent inabilities to revive the economy,
or lead. For a man who spent twelve years seeking the office he now occupies,
this president does not seem to have any clear, alternative strategies, or able
to deliver on the promises he made.
Now, here is my
worry: the arrest of the PDP National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Olisa Metuh, and
his arraignment in handcuffs give negative optics to this government. Yes,
Buhari claims to be fighting corruption, and Olisa Metuh is accused of
receiving N400 million from Colonel Sambo Dasuki, allegedly from the $2.1
billion approved for the NSA for arms procurement, the question most Nigerians
are now asking is: was Olisa Metuh awarded an arms contract which he didn’t
deliver, or is it just about receiving money from Dasuki. Why lock him up, and
bring him to court in handcuffs, when not even Sambo Dasuki was brought to
court in handcuffs? Is this a ploy to intimidate, humiliate, and ultimately
punish and silence the PDP’s spokesman who has so far been engaging the current
regime and calling some of their assertions to question?
Because even people
like Olu Falae received money, and have publicly declared that they’d not
return it because it has nothing to do with arms procurement, and they have not
been locked up or brought to the court in chains. While every Nigerian supports
the president and his administration’s apparent resolve to investigate,
prosecute, and retrieve Nigeria’s stolen funds from whoever embezzled such
funds, we must continue to insist that unless it is all for show, the process
must not degenerate into illegality of its own. It is both sad and distressing
hearing distinguished scholars of the law like Itsay Sagay, and the
Criminologist, Professor Femi Odekunle arguing in support of a “limited rule of
law,” these days. It points exactly to what went wrong with Nigeria : a
shiftless and inferior elite incapable of the hard, long view. If the argument
were to be made about a limited rule of law, Sani Abacha would have hanged
Odekunle who was brought before a military tribunal accused with Oladipo Diya
of plotting a coup.
But in the
convenience of his current elation, the good professor has forgotten. Buhari is
not fighting corruption. He is enabling corruption by interfering in the
judicial process. If he were fighting corruption he would have addressed the
following questions: how did the system fail so much that Sambo Dasuki as the
NSA could appropriate and dispose of state fund as though it were personal
funds without oversight? What happened to the old system of financial control
that required a vast and complex system of inter-departmental coordination?
What happened to
the public tenders system? How come the police services, charged with crime
prevention, did not anticipate and prevent this financial crime before it
happened through its own police intelligence?
How come the EFCC
is only just showing interest after the facts? How did the disbursement of this
money escape the Federal Audit Department, the government’s official
inspectorate arm, which ought to report all transactions and irregularities to
both the National Assembly and the Executive, and if need be, to the police, in
the event that any government agency is misappropriating state fund. What this
president has been unable to do is understand that what happened here is beyond
Dasuki, it is systemic failure. It is in part the result of some of the forces
Buhari himself unleashed against the system in 1984. Corruption is not only the
“looting” of public funds, it is the corruption of the institutions when they
are turned to the private, and convenient tools of people in power – and they
lose legitimacy and capacity.
*Obi Nwakanma,
a Nigerian poet and scholar, writes a weekly column in the Vanguard Newspaper.
No comments:
Post a Comment