Category: Columnists

So, they say the president could declare a state of emergency but leave the house members and the governor intact. What does that mean? It means rolling tanks and stamping jackboots on the streets of Port Harcourt. But the house members could go ahead and impeach Governor Sim Fubara?

But wait! These are the same people that say the house members should not impeach him, and that it would be an act of bad faith and a call to turmoil. What turmoil? Blowing up pipelines and blowing up houses, putting lives of political enemies and innocent civilians in peril. So, the president should send Nuhu Ribadu and his team to look out for those who want to turn the state over to the devil. Meanwhile, those in office still retain the resources and capacity for turbulence?

It is quite unfortunate that it is reason that is upside down. The state of emergency is to stave off violence, but what if the violence will remain a clear and present omen so long as those who would foment are in their ferment because they have the power and pocket?

Those who say this and call for constitutionalism were the same persons who prodded Fubara against the law. Against the same constitution, he set up a four-man legislature. They were the same television lawyers and commentators who kept mum when he blew up a legislative monument by way of the House of Assembly building. He also, against the constitution, passed a budget with four men. Also, against the constitution, he defied court order and organized a local government election.

The same persons, against the constitution, are saying the Supreme Court erred by maintaining that Fubara defied the constitution. If the top court ruled otherwise, then he  would have acted like Obasanjo when he asked a dawn cabal of about six men to impeach a governor. It was the same PDP that did it and hailed it at that time. Obi said nothing then. Atiku was in PDP then. They did not stand up to their guy.

They also, with intellectual mischief, refer to the Jonathan era when he slammed emergency on three states, Borno, Adamawa and Yobe. For those with truncated sense of the past, Jonathan was set to dismantle the democratic structure. This essayist joined the voices to restrain him. Why? The problem was not the political structure. The governors, including now Vice President Kashim Shettima, were not the fulcrum of the crisis. It was Boko Haram. In fact, Boko Haram menaced the political structure having mowed down and planted flags in local governments in most of the states. The state of emergency was needed to protect the political structures.

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In the Rivers State case, the threat was the political structure. The players, in both arms, were at loggerheads, and the victim was the common Riverian. The democratic structure was going to overthrow democracy in the state. So, what is the value when it precipitates anarchy?

The governor and the lawmakers were, in the words of Shakespeare, “both in either’s powers.”

We are a nation that denies history, even as recent as a month ago, especially if amnesia bestows profit.

We were witnesses when President Bola Tinubu called the warring parties, Nyesom Wike and Fuabra together with the state elders, and they signed a truce. And, on good authority, I report that the president had spoken to them individually and together many times. But they saw the truce as a piece of paper, a peace on paper and pissed on it. Each side did go rogue when they were not playing to the gallery. Sometimes, going rogue meant playing to the gallery.

After the Supreme Court verdict, elders, including PANDEF, started looking for ways to avert impeachment. It is naïve to expect that the lawmakers would not want to impeach Fubara. Fubara was acting like a born-again respecter of law when he visited the House to submit his budget. He was stooping to conquer and the lawmakers knew it, so they did not take the bait. If they did, they would have legitimized Fubara. And the same fellows who hailed him for breaking the law would now hail him for obeying it.

But his obedience was going to be a sacrifice. He would have enmeshed the lawmakers into his scheme, get his allocation, organize his local government elections, take over the state levers of power, cruise into 2027 with victory, and replace the 27 lawmakers with his own, and he would become all in all.

Wike and his men knew this. At that stage, it was a question of power. Those who expected both sides would tamp down their vitriol and work together did not understand the interstices of power. For them to work together would require what Chinua Achebe describes as “niceties and delicate refinements that belonged elsewhere.” In the same novel, A Man of The People, Achebe posed: “What is modesty but inverted pride.” These guys had no modesty, but they fought for the jugular.

There was no prospect other than a standoff and a standstill. If they were statesmen, we could expect both sides to wear off their malice and act as civilized men. But mutual suspicion brewed. If one man acted gentle, he would be the other’s fool. Hence, it was a zero-sum game. Novelist Bassie Head called it, “a question of power.” Thomas Hobbes wrote his Leviathan at a time England was a land of turmoil and standoffs. He proclaimed that “man is, by nature, selfish.” He knew that 17th century England did not abide the niceties and delicate refinement, but butchery.

The first state of emergency in this country, in 1962, is sometimes invoked. The Awolowo part of the Action Group and the Akintola renegades precipitated semblance of a stalemate, not a true stalemate. They wanted Akintola out. They had the numbers. Those who lionize the Awo group over that fraught era do so because Akintola was a traitor to the political society of Egbe Omo Oduduwa and the AG that gave birth to him. For him to continue was seen as asinine, and Akintola’s decency gave way to Machiavellian hubris. AG men enacted what  is called real politik.

Akintola could have finagled his way into power again and prevented Adegbenro from replacing him. He would rig his way in later. Tafawa Balewa, who had grudges against the Western Region and Awo over many issues, including its model governance, prosperity and the support of the Middle Belt Congress and the Calabar-Ogoja-Rivers State project, exploited an apparent turmoil to declare a state of emergency. Akintola was voted out with 66 votes out of 117. Akintola’s men would not relent, and were therefore planted by the centre. That state of emergency was an act of Akintola violence to nullify a democratic vote. The Privy Council in London endorsed his ouster. Was emergency a forgone conclusion? No. It was political machismo and machination.

What the Rivers State players on both sides provided was what historians often restrain themselves from saying: inevitability. Those who say it was hasty, or excessive have not provided any alternative? By definition, in a state of emergency, nothing is sacrosanct. That is why it is so called. Democracies have been known, since the time of Greece, to foment autocracies. We are even witnessing it today. Russia votes a tyrant every election cycle. In the United States, the people voted a convicted felon. Democrats installed a plutocracy. What Rivers State gave is what is called kakistocracy.

Section 305 reflects what philosophers refer to as hermeneutics, or reader-response theory. Everyone reads it from their own interest. The activist who must oppose government and the opposition will read it the way it likes. Remember they did the same to justify Fubara’s errors. They say, the section does not give the president powers to suspend the elected officers. It does not deny him the powers either. Soyinka responded a little hastily when he said it was “excessive” but he was still going to “go deeper and find out what was going on in Rivers State that led to what I consider an unfortunate step in our federalist journey.” No law covers every scenario. Hence, we have judges. The drafters often presume the good faith of its executors. That good faith was what President Tinubu exercised.

If a Bokassa was a governor and became an unchecked butcher, or if we had a person like Caligula or Nero as governor, and the people could not stop him, or if a governor starts a secessionist drive as we saw in the 19th century United States, shall we say the structure should remain? Shall we continue with the law so that sin may prevail? God forbid. The law was made for man. Lincoln knew this, hence, in a democracy, he suspended the habeas corpus, and he was supported by Congress. Many called him a despot then. But he needed to save the union first. Democracy must obey necessity.

Fubara told the youths that at the appropriate time, they would get instruction. A day after the lawmakers sent a misconduct note to Fubara, a pipeline hugged the skies with flames. As we say, a witch cried last night, and a child died this morning. Who does not know the connection? As my father Moses used to tell his children, quoting the scriptures, “If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself, but if thou scornest, thou alone shall bear it.” What happened was a warning this essayist has sounded in the past. It required no prophet, but just commonsense. But like Okonkwo of Things fall Apart and Sophocles’ Oedipus, the players saw the end but yielded to death wish.