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.
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| *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 Nigeria
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.
