Category: Idowu Akinlotan

By Idowu Akinlotan

During his end of year empowerment programme for his constituents in Surulere, Lagos, Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila appeared to speak tongue in cheek when he gave impetus to the popular impression that the 9th National Assembly had become a rubber stamp for the executive. Reports of the empowerment programme were not detailed enough to determine whether anyone had asked him what he thought of the allegation of ineffectiveness levelled against the 9th NASS, or whether he simply thought aloud, imagining that the allegation was widespread and worrisome enough to attract his view. So he probably spoke tongue in cheek; but to many critics it was either a gaffe or a Freudian slip.

“People, critics and members of other parties have said the 9th Assembly is a rubber stamp of the executive,” groaned Hon Gbajabiamila. “They may have told you that, too. You know what? It is better to be a rubber stamp and bring progress, than fight the executive without progress. When two elephants fight, the grass suffers. The fact is that the National Assembly is not a rubber stamp. This is a National Assembly that represents the interests of the people .The people of Surulere did not elect me to fight the executive, but to engage and collaborate with stakeholders to bring the dividends of democracy. This is a new dispensation. There will be checks and balances. There will be separation of powers. We will agree with the executive if we have to and we will disagree if we have to. Our watchword is to protect the interests of the Nigerian people. That is the oath that my colleagues and I swore to.”

The 9th NASS is about six months old. In that period, it has been dogged by accusations of ineffectiveness and deliberate subsumption and subordination to the executive. There is hardly any month that Senate President Ahmed Lawan himself has not responded to accusation of presiding over a rubber-stamp assembly. He has defended himself as robustly as he can manage, but it must be clear to even him that he has not been successful. And despite whatever feats the 9th NASS might accomplish in the future, it is doubtful whether they will not continue to be regarded as a rubber-stamp assembly. In fact his recent statements that whatever came from the president by way of bills would be deemed good and lawful, and that the $29.6bn loan desired by the executive would be approved even before debate, lend credence to the allegations of the 9th NASS being a weak and soulless assembly.

Obviously, Sen Lawan and Hon Gbajabiamila think critics are wrong to dismissively characterise the 9th NASS as soulless, and both legislators also unwisely equate robust oversight functions with conflict and obduracy. But Sen Lawan has made a poor job of defending the senate, not to talk of projecting the wrong ideas of what it means to cooperate with the executive, and incompetently defining what legislative independence means. Last Sunday, Hon Gabajabiamila added insult to injury when he, it seems, spoke tongue in cheek, and managed in the process to open a window into how his mind works on the controversy. By suggesting that if being a rubber stamp could nevertheless deliver progress and still be worth it, he gave alarming vent to a dangerous logic unworthy of both his profession and calling.

No, Mr Speaker, the end does not justify the means. Those who voted the 9th Assembly had no illusions about the poor democratic records of the executive; they, therefore, expect the parliament, which is the most powerful symbol of democracy, to help moderate and mitigate the inexorable excesses of the government. It is a great pity that neither Sen Lawan nor Hon Gbajabiamila understands the legislative nuances they have been called upon to inspire, and have in consequence both leapt imprudently into parliamentary nothingness and outsourced their responsibility to civil society groups and other eminent Nigerians like T.Y. Danjuma who recently tantalised Nigerians with tales of the political witchcraft enveloping the country.

By Idowu Akinlotan

The conclusion widely disseminated in many press reports last week suggesting that the Nigerian government had buckled under foreign pressures to release both Sambo Dasuki and Omoyele Sowore cut the Justice Minister, Abubakar Malami, to the quick. Neither foreign nor domestic pressures influenced the decision to release the duo, argued the minister.

According to him, it was purely a government decision taken despite the availability of other options. The other options, Mr Malami’s spokesman, Umar Gwandu, quoted him as saying, “include the right to appeal the said ruling, the right to ask the same court that issued an order to vary or review the terms of the order as well as the right to request for stay of execution of the order pending the hearing and determination of an appeal in that matter”.

Dr Gwandu further quoted the AGF as premising the release of the duo on two principal grounds. Said he: “The only reasons for the release of Omoyele Sowore and Sambo Dasuki revolved around our commitment to the rule of law, obedience to court orders and compassionate grounds. It is important to understand the fact that as far as the law is concerned and in relation to the Nigerian justice system, one has multiple options after a court has ruled on a matter… The individuals concerned were released out of compassion and mercy as well as obedience to the rule of law and not because of any extraneous consideration…The Federal Government has the right to keep detaining the suspects while challenging the order admitting them to bail up to the apex court.”

In other words, the government anchored the release of both detainees on the rule of law or the government’s obedience to court orders, and compassionate grounds. Mr Malami did not offer any explanation on why it took more than four years for the government to decide whether to obey court orders in the case of Col Sambo Dasuki (retd.), the former National Security Adviser (NSA) who had secured about five bail orders from the courts. Nor did the minister explain why compassionate considerations were needed after the courts had unambiguously ordered the release of Col Dasuki (retd.) and Mr Sowore. Furthermore, the minister failed to explain why the government now rues the so-called other options available to them when for more than four years they did not as much as hint that those options were worth contemplating.

Not only does it seem that Mr Malami, to whom the unpleasant job of explaining the government’s tardiness in releasing the detainees fall, regrets the somewhat compelled release of Col Dasuki and Mr Sowore, he also seems to give the impression by his pained expressions that the hand of the government was forced. Whether the force was as a result of external pressures, as typified by the letter addressed to him by six United States lawmakers, which letter he claimed not to have received, or as a result of domestic pressures orchestrated through a few desultory protests and animated verbal bashing on electronic and print media, is difficult to guess at the moment. But the government Mr Malami serves has a reputation for coveting foreign approbation and being cagey about foreign threats. Officials are, however, smart enough to know that the government is not so politically invulnerable or the country economically impregnable as to defy the world without consequences.

Mr Malami and some other cabinet members and government aides will continue to argue that the detainees were released for the reasons they cited in their official statements. But Nigerians appear reluctant to buy the government’s explanations, citing, for instance, the defiance of the rule of law and disobedience to court orders in the incarceration and prosecution of the Shiite leader, Ibrahim El-Zakzaky.

Though the government has argued that the Shiite leader’s case is different, considering that it is a case being prosecuted by another tier of government, in this case, Kaduna State, they will find it hard to convince the public that the obsequious and tyrannical Kaduna State governor could not be persuaded to let the rule of law determine the course and outcome of the case. Surely, the irony could not be lost on anyone, least of all the Justice minister, that a governor who should be on trial, and will still be prosecuted sometime in the future, for the state murder of 347 Shiite members should be the one to turn the case on its head and determine who should be called to account for the massacre of hundreds of men, women and children accused of barricading the road against the Chief of Army Staff.

No, it is unlikely that Mr Malami is telling the truth in respect of the detainees’ cases. For instance, take the case of Col Dasuki (retd.) who was locked up for four years, together with the five or so bail orders he secured in the first of those years. There is no plausible reason for the Justice minister to argue that his eventual release in compliance with court order was a reflection of the government’s respect for the rule of law.

It must be strange indeed that the government needed about four years to determine just how to obey the courts, or whether to subordinate national security to the rule of law, contrary to their long-held position on the controversy over which takes precedence: the law or national security. It seems more likely that the about four years delay in complying with court orders was deliberate because the AGF and other like-minded officials in government had a peculiar and unfathomable interpretation of the constitution and the rule of law.

The AGF and other government officials have argued that keeping the former NSA in detention for so long in disobedience to court orders had nothing to do with any personal vendetta by anyone in government. Perhaps. It is even possible that the government had security information it was unwilling or unable to share with the courts. Unfortunately for them, the constitution does not envisage their dilemma, and the government could thus not insinuate it into the law and the constitution.

After the courts determined the status of Col Dasuki (retd.), and the state did not appeal for years, it was the end of the matter. Mr Malami could not now open a fresh argument about whether the government had options or not, or suggest that the eventual release of the former NSA was on compassionate grounds. Surely not after four years, and definitely not after bail had been granted. Compassion comes only after conviction or in consideration of health challenges, not after the courts had ruled. There was no compassion in the undertaking at all.

Col Dasuki must consider himself fortunate to have got entangled in the political and adversarial flurry epitomised by the more dramatic Mr Sowore, just as Sheikh El-Zakzaky has been less fortunate to fall into the hands of the more unscrupulous and conscienceless Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai. Mr Sowore alone could not be released in such a manner as to amply illustrate to the censorious world the government’s tenuous adherence to the rule of law. It needed a perfect accompaniment — to which the more connected (by marriage and other social and monarchical ties) Col Dasuki fits, and to which the more radical and irreverent Sheikh El-Zakzaky does not fit at all. In the case of the former NSA, was this perhaps the compassion which the government had in mind? If so, where was the compassion in the case of Mr Sowore whom they regard as a failed politician and upstart?

Indeed, in the case of Mr Sowore, the court case was messier for the government. By clever ploys and artifices, the secret service, which had assumed responsibility for defanging Mr Sowore, simply kept the protester locked up, and was eager to keep him so for as long as their whims carried them. Like Mr Malami who is unable to draw the line between national security and the law, and who frequently offers arguments that subordinate the law to government caprices and regards government’s views as transcending the constitution, the Department of State Service (DSS) also strikes a pose that elevates the Service above the law.

The secret service personifies state power of repression, and is often willing to promote that tendency to the chagrin of detainees, their lawyers and civil society. Since institutions in Nigeria are not as strong as democracy presupposes, and there has been a consistent and deliberate effort to negate their influence or castrate them altogether, the DSS had often managed boldly to avoid censure over their excesses.

This was why the DSS invasion of the courts occurred in the first instance, and why many analysts bought the canard that no invasion took place and that the courtroom melee seen on video that went viral was orchestrated by Mr Sowore’s theatrical friends. But it was in fact the court invasion that substantially internationalised the case, drew attention to the government’s consistent disobedience to court orders, and helped exposed the plight of the former NSA who his sympathisers say was languishing in detention.

Col Dasuki and Mr Sowore may have been released, supposedly on the grounds of the rule of law, but there are other Nigerians detained for frivolous reasons and trumped-up charges, some filed by intemperate governors. It is not clear whether the government’s contrition is only skin deep. But if it is as persuasive as they try to suggest, if indeed Mr Malami, despite his sustained illogic, means what he says, then Nigerians must expect the imperial custodians of the law to have a change of heart.

However, it does appear like there is little conviction behind the release of the two detainees, for if there are no further acts of legal generosities, or effusion of compassion as the government puts it, the Justice minister cannot hope to advance the thesis that the government has encountered a new and noble perspective of the rule of law. As ecstatic as he was over the eventual release of the detainees, Mr Malami must know that Nigerians recall his self-proclaimed helplessness over the Sowore case, when he initially disclosed that he had no power to order the detainee’s release without recourse to the courts, only to turn round less than two weeks later to compose his panegyric on the rule of law.

By Idowu Akinlotan

While it is true that many Nigerians had tittle-tattled over the future of the All Progressives Congress (APC), it was in fact President Muhammadu Buhari who first drew the most attention to fears that the ruling party could be destined for implosion. It is strange; but he was actually honest in expressing his premonitions about his party’s survivability, a party he has done precious little to imbue with life and a philosophical core, as the first part of this piece amply explained last week. If the president does not, however, climb down from his high horse and be the party’s, and more crucially the country’s, unifier and conscience, the APC will be unable to avoid a bad crash. The party possesses all the ingredients for a crash, as it harbours ambitious, undisciplined and unprincipled politicians who are as much an asset to the party as they are a liability.

The first part of this piece was an exposition of how, by their performance, the president and his party have engendered the fear of party implosion after President Buhari’s second term, especially seeing how his first term virtually crippled democracy, mindlessly exploited the people’s feelings, and left the country destitute of lasting social, political and economic structures. The piece looked at four yardsticks to measure the survivability of the party, to wit, national and party unity; the economy; democracy and the rule of law; and partisan politics and elections. National and party unity as well as democracy and the rule of law were discussed in this place last week.

Partisan politics has presented Africans with a tough bone to chew. For President Buhari, who has had a problematic relationship with the opposition and critics since he ventured into politics to principally redress decades-long injury to his pride, it is an even harder bone. Nigeria has two living Fourth Republic presidents pining away in regret over how they managed the country. They did not of course demonstrate the extreme parochialism that has taken root today, and they did their best to act like they understood the complexities of governing a country of about 200 million people and about 250 ethnic groups. In appointments, they also bent over backwards to engage people they were not familiar with, whether for cabinet positions or electoral commission management duties. In fact, believing that optics were even more crucial than verbal declarations, they took care to appoint people of other ethnic groups to manage elections and found officers of diverse backgrounds spread across the entire country to secure the polity. Despite their best intentions, however, they probably still regret that democracy and the rule of law, not to say governance principles, were not deeply and irreversibly entrenched. They have thus have to battle their successors’ revisionism.

Read Also: APC and post-Buhari presidency (1)

Indeed, in just one term, President Buhari upturned a feeble system that at least manageably welded the country together and replaced it with something worse. Almost as soon as he assumed office, he jettisoned the idea of appointing election managers from ethnic groups different from the president’s, coalesced the security agencies around his section of the country, frowned at debates and those who might dare to question his bona fides, rode roughshod over rights constitutionally vouchsafed the people, and appeared bemused by critics who accuse him of being sectional and nepotistic. He has since remained largely indifferent to the groaning of his countrymen. Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo conducted largely illegitimate federal elections but left state polls unattended, and treated the parliament with disdain, playing ducks and drakes with their rules and regulations. Ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, despite his failings and hesitations, improved on the electoral process; and though he squirmed considerably when he faced the unusual demands of the rule of law, he yielded grounds to the opposition and bore revilement with almost perfect equanimity when compelled by judicial and electoral circumstances.

The politics and elections superintended by the two past presidents achieved little success, but a liberal atmosphere still pervaded the country, and politicians and their supporters revelled in the limited glory accorded by the constitution. But since the Buhari ascendancy, that liberal atmosphere has vanished; and though he has done precious little to endear himself to the country, he insists on not being criticised and abhors being despised. If he could not overcome the temptation to specially select some of those close to him for electoral commission jobs, and could not resist peopling his security services and paramilitary agencies with those from his part of the country whom he claimed to know or trust, how could he be trusted to understand the principles of federalism, appreciate the difficult concept of democracy, bow willingly and honourably to the demanding, if not sometimes insufferable, strictures of the rule of law, let alone enable a liberal atmosphere in which his party and other parties could flourish?

The incontestable fact is that Nigerians elected a man who was not convinced about democracy, regards the constitution as a Morse code, and displayed perfect contempt for the rule of law. Only last week, at a function in Abuja, the president once again sneered at the demands of the rule of law, indicating how he felt constrained and incommoded by its slow pace. If after getting a second term he still has not found the discipline and exposure to appreciate and be persuaded about the beauty of democracy and the ennobling services provided by the rule of law as a societal fulcrum to balance governmental power and people’s rights, then the country’s case is next to hopeless. There will perhaps be no end to the president’s whining about the constraining influence of the rule of law, considering that he perceives its relationship with national security as a zero-sum game. It in fact requires depth to appreciate democracy, rule of law and federalism.

So the country must confront what is obviously a looming disaster with patience and commonsense, and try to navigate around the Buhari presidency’s deliberate actions against peace and unity. They must recognise the dangerous precedents he is setting by his mistreatment of the constitution, by his appointments, and by his impossible temperament. They must know he is sowing dangerous seeds for future conflicts, turning the people against themselves, prejudicing one ethnic group against another, supplanting the rule of law with the rule of man, and virtually erasing the last vestiges of democracy. It is not in such illiberal environments that politics can prosper and elections can be well managed.

President Buhari may be in politics, but he is not a politician. He can’t seem to understand how integral the constitution and the rule of law are to politics. Now that Nigerians know that the APC is indistinguishable from the PDP, and having apparently held the party together by virtually the force of arms, it is strange that the president expects the APC to flourish after his exit. Chief Obasanjo, despite running the country far better than he did, and even ran a somewhat inclusive politics, could not guarantee the survival of the PDP beyond a few years, how does President Buhari hope to guarantee his party’s future, despite running a government and party of exclusion?

However, the president probably thinks that a good record in the economy might be enough to ensure his party’s survival. He is, for instance, building the railways. But Dr Jonathan also built railways, obviously with less cost to the economy as a whole. Yes, the former president took external loans; but President Buhari has taken much more, and has in fact become obsessed with loans as the only way of rebuilding infrastructure. His stock response to critics is that had thieves not taken the country’s money, there would be no need for a recourse to loan. So, having grown the debt portfolio by more than $10bn dollars in his first term, he is now set to take another $30bn, bringing the total external debt stock to some $57bn. It is unprecedented, but the president is unruffled, having been bitten by the demoniac bug of rebuilding infrastructure over a few dizzying years, regardless of the punishment it inflicts on future generations.

Then there is the ruinous land border closure issue which he has framed as a policy only smugglers and their sympathisers would dare to criticise. No one would object to the policy, he argued, except those who cared less about local rice production and petroleum import savings. In their propaganda rush, the government failed to understand that while critics support the ultimate goals, they object to the means, and they have a right to be heard regardless of the prevailing sentiments and the vaunted short-term benefits of higher revenue intake, increase in local rice production, and reduced fuel imports. Even if they shut the borders a million times, it will not be a permanent solution to smuggling until they find a better combination of effective and lasting policies to police Nigeria’s extensive and porous borders. It is not only neighbouring economies that are hurt by the closure; Nigeria’s economy is also suffocating, not to talk of the future consequences for regional trade and relationship.

But whether the president likes it or not, and despite the leakages that occurred under previous governments, the economy performed better under both Chief Obasanjo and Dr Jonathan. However, like the Buhari government, there were no permanent structures, and little attention was paid to the long term. Under the present government, policies are also eclectic, as indeed they were under previous governments, and no great economic paradigms and templates are being conceived and instituted for the long term, regardless of the effusive quotations from Chinese model of politics and economics. In the end, no one will link any short-term gains recorded by the Buhari presidency to the APC. He has, mercifully, made his desultory economic policy idiosyncratic, and kicked bad-temperedly at critics who denounce his cloudy macro-economic model. Indeed, if the APC is to survive at all, especially in the face of the great loathing for the Buhari presidency’s sectional policies, its best bet is to distance itself from the president.

Party chairman Adams Oshiomhole and other party leaders may be optimistic about retaining their hold on Edo and Ondo in next year’s governorship polls, and that a better tomorrow would be assured for their party. They are entitled to their optimism. But if they cannot rein in their president whose perverse policies and politics drive people up the wall, the party will be shocked by how quickly it will unravel. In the coming months, perhaps in a year or two, the president will be tempted to turn against his own party with a ferocity that guarantees self-destruction, probably to assure the continuation of the sectional domination programme many Nigerians now read into his presidency. Once that begins, however, it may be a sign of the end. What is not expected is for the president to suddenly turn a new leaf, promote reconciliation in the party, and facilitate inclusive politics in the country. He has gone too far to the other end to reverse his natural self.

• Concluded

By Idowu Akinlotan

Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad is a beneficiary of the ruthless judicial upheaval authored by the Buhari government. With the clumsy dispatch of the former CJN, Walter Onnoghen, using methods and measures that have been described as despicable, not to say downright inimical to the survival and independence of the judiciary, Justice Muhammad simply stepped in, damned the pangs of conscience, and has presided over the affairs of the third arm of government  as spectrally silent as cynics had long predicted.

It is not clear what atrocious level of desecration of the judiciary, beyond the abominable level Nigerians have been witnesses to in recent months, would be enough to rouse his holy but silent ire.

His responses to pertinent judicial issues of the day have been difficult to decipher. The senate confirmed him despite his lack of clarity and conciseness on iconic judicial issues, especially seeing how he mixed up terms, used inappropriate labels, and indicated just how unrepentantly conservative and inured to judicial independence he would be.

The National Assembly served notice early in the day that the ninth parliament would be reactionary and subservient to the executive.

But few expected it to sheepishly gloss over the screening of Justice Muhammad who almost from the beginning began to arm cynics with doubts about his relevance and composure.

On the Department of State Service (DSS) invasion of the courts to needlessly re-arrest Omoyele Sowore, convener of the revolution now protest, Justice Muhammad has been largely silent.

Speaking recently at the annual conference of the justices of the Court of Appeal, the CJN sidestepped the grave issue of appointing wrong persons to appellate courts and foreclosed that possibility in an argument that was full of emotional bilge water and incomprehensible logic.

There would be no crossing from the bar to the appellate courts, he argued, because it would discourage those on the bench who had been trained from magistracy upwards. He failed to address the increasing patchiness of the courts, not to talk of the appellate courts, and does not seem to appreciate the nexus between mediocre judges and bastardisation of judicial norms and ethics.

Like President Buhari whose overarching position as president seems to escape his presidency, the CJN also cannot seem to recognise that as the number one judicial authority in Nigeria he ought to be careful around the issue of religion. He obviously didn’t see any need for caution. In short, the CJN forgot himself. Thus, speaking at the annual judges’ conference at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Justice Muhammad declared: “As we all know, there are sections of the constitution that allow the implementation of Sharia personal law, and apart from that, we cannot do more. However, we have the numbers to amend the constitution to suit our own position as Muslims.” We? The statement shocked only those who continue to deny that President Buhari’s skewed administration is not anchored on a hidden agenda. The CJN can clearly not help but see himself more as Muslim and northerner than a Nigerian and jurist.

Justice Muhammad is at peace with his own appointment, winced only at the gross violation of judicial sanctity by the DSS, wants full Sharia in the constitution, and can’t seem to recognise the mediocrity on full display in the courts. Just as few expect anything great and noble from the executive and the parliament, Nigerians must now become accustomed to expecting nothing significant from the judiciary.

Idowu Akinlotan

The problem with the Buhari presidency is not whether it sometimes makes mistakes or whether officials often embark on foolish antidemocratic adventures, but that it lacks the depth, consistency and conviction to manage them.

In 2018, the Department of State Service (DSS) invaded the National Assembly and laid siege to it during one of President Buhari’s frequent absences. Acting President Yemi Osinbajo promptly sacked the DSS director general, Lawal Daura, an action that was later falsely sold to the public as either emanating from the absent president or that he sanctioned it. His return and brutal defenestration of Mr Daura’s successor, the Bayelsan, Matthew Seiyefa, showed in bold relief the president’s conservatism and lack of concern for the broader issues and dimensions of national unity and inclusiveness.

Mistakes have been made serially, and the presidency has almost always doubled down on them, often baiting the people, engaging in narrow interpretation of the law and constitution, and stretching the frontiers of antidemocratic practices to its elastic limit. Exasperated by these anomalies, and alarmed that Nigerians were lackadaisical in responding to this clear subversion of the constitution and the rule of law, The Punch newspaper indicated its resolve to prefix the president’s name with a designation that affirms his antidemocratic proclivities. Henceforth, said the paper, the president, while still retaining his official title as president, would be referred to as a major-general, the last rank he held as a military dictator. It was a largely harmless resolution, but it was nonetheless a powerfully symbolic resistance to the gradual but consistent erosion of Nigerian democracy orchestrated by the Buhari presidency.

The Punch resolution is unlikely to catch on. But it does not even need to, for the initiative is strong enough in its aloneness to ably carry the message to distant peaks and make it resonate with those who care and worry about the apocalyptic direction President Buhari is carrying Nigeria. Given its detachment from reality and its obsessive display of power, it is surprising that the Buhari presidency appears bothered about the change of title foisted on the president. The presidency’s online denizens have been hysterical, and the president’s own spokesmen have been confused and epileptic in their responses. Femi Adesina made a facetious remark about the president’s Punch-inspired new nom de guerre, describing it as nothing more than semantic wrestling, for after all, many media professionals themselves have noms de plume. In any case, said he with dubious syllogism, the public should look on the bright side: if The Punch could irreverently foist a title on the president, it indirectly emblematises President Buhari’s democratic credentials.

But to show how badly jolted the presidency was by that punchian audacity, the second spokesman, Mr Shehu, issued a more vitriolic and copious response moments later, castigating The Punch and lampooning their effrontery in foisting a title on the president that is illegitimate, contemptuous and unconstitutional. Said he: “The Punch newspaper should separate journalism from partisan politics. What it is embarking upon is purely political and it is designed to play to the gallery and cause confusion. Punch Newspaper’s double standards in cuddling some of our past dictators and their open contempt for President Buhari clearly show that the paper has sinister motives for its current curious editorial judgment. Its personal hatred for and animus towards President Buhari should not be allowed to becloud its good judgment.”

Mr Shehu must be adept at finding a needle in a haystack to read partisan politics to The Punch initiative. Instead of fishing for motives, and presuming that everyone who attacked the president before the 2019 elections played the PDP card, should the Buhari presidency not see this forced title change and the way it has attracted good reviews as a reminder to help the president reorder his politics and priorities? Should they not engage in self-examination to find out just how poorly they had practiced democracy and how, sadly, it seems President Buhari’s unflattering political epitaph is being written while he is still alive and in office? The president and his team should be worried that instead of dismantling their presidential monarchy they have continued to foster presidential obfuscation.

Idowu Akinlotan

At least three newspapers and most online media quoted President Muhammadu Buhari’s admonition to his party during the last All Progressives Congress (APC) National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting as suggesting that he could henceforth afford to be reckless since he would not be seeking a third term. Other newspapers, this newspaper included, quoted him as saying he could not afford to be reckless. It is not clear who was right, or whether the president’s elocutionary difficulties were responsible for what many thought was a gaffe.

Here is how this newspaper, in one breath, quoted him from his November 22, 2019 statement to his party’s NEC: “I’m not going to make the mistake of attempting a third term. Besides age, I swore by the holy book that I would go by the constitution, and the constitution said two terms. I know that I’m in my last term and I cannot afford to be reckless because I’m not going to ask for anybody’s vote.”

On the other hand, The Cable online, The Guardian and many other media outfits quoted the president as saying he could afford to be reckless, while The Nation and Daily Trust were, in another breath, undecided, even ingenious. On November 22, Trust quoted the president as saying he could not afford to be reckless, while Nation quoted him as saying he could. But on November 23, Trust quoted him online as saying he could afford to be reckless, while Nation on the same date quoted him as saying he couldn’t. Perhaps this is all due to elocutionary difficulties, or maybe it has nothing to do with any difficulty. Indeed, putting the statement in context, it is inconceivable that he said he could not afford to be reckless. It had to be that he said he could. In any case, his media team has not alleged contradictory or inaccurate reports. Like The Nation and Daily Trust, they prefer to leave the reader puzzled.

This column will, however, not guess. The president, by his actions years before and weeks after the NEC meeting in question has shown a contradictory, unenviable and unhealthy view of his party’s politics in office. He wonders whether the party can survive him, whether it will continue to be strong, and whether it can last for a very long time. He probably has the fate that befell the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in mind, a party which held sway for 16 years and thought it would last for at least another five decades, only to implode spectacularly in 2015. The scale of the defeat, not to say its unexpectedness, has so traumatised the former ruling party that its politics and bureaucracy have become deeply stultified. President Buhari is, therefore, right, like Nebuchadnezzar, to wonder what would happen after his tenure. It is a legitimate concern, and the president must be applauded for thinking aloud.

But any applause ends there. The president’s instincts are sometimes flawless, it must be admitted. For instance, he knows instinctively that corruption stymies development, and that Boko Haram should be defeated. What he lacks in effecting his purpose are discipline, despite his military background, depth, and intuition to enunciate the right panaceas for many of the problems Nigeria is contending with. At 77, it is pointless expecting him to acquire some of those virtues when most of his adult life and the two periods he has ruled Nigeria were almost completely shorn of those desperately needed qualities. Indeed, in the light of the Department of State Service (DSS) invasion of the Federal High Court in Abuja on December 6, and despite his team’s desultory explanations and his own comments during his party’s last NEC meeting, it may be time to ponder what fate awaits the APC after President Buhari’s second term.

Four major planks will determine the party’s life and survival after the Buhari presidency. Already the presidency is wobbling very badly, is completely ideologically vacuous, and is increasingly despised locally and doubted internationally. It may be too early to say it is unravelling, but it is clear that more observers are beginning to understand that the Buhari presidency as well as his party lack finesse, discipline, and vision. By pondering whether his party could survive him or not, the president was merely giving expression to his fears. He knows that all is not well with his party; but why he does not equally appreciate that he is largely responsible for the problem is hard to explain. The problem is not the party’s chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, regardless of what those close to him say; and the problem is also not the party itself, for it was strong, cohesive and imaginative enough to deliver the presidency to him, despite being unqualified to win a pan-Nigerian mandate to lead a secular and multiethnic country.

The four planks are national and party unity; the economy; democracy and the rule of law; and partisan politics and elections. The problem of party and national unity is huge and, given the puny talents and weights of the presidency and party leaders, difficult to surmount. If the APC is to outlast the president’s meretricious influence, it must respond well to these props and gradually put ideas and structures in place to whittle down his influence and elevate the party to respectability within and outside its four corners. That will not be easy. Moments after winning the presidency in 2015, the president had indifferently placed the party in the hands of outsiders, a group of men whose talents and worldviews appear inimical to party growth and cohesion as well as national unity due to the extremeness of their insularity and machinations. To ask the president to retake the levers of control from the hands of these men, given his abjuration of his own talents and ability, is to force him to self-immolate. He is unlikely to contemplate any such revolutionary approach to power and politics.

To further muddle the hazy and abridged opinion of national unity enunciated and given wing by this small group of men is the president’s own fallacy about party and national unity. He fails to comprehend the dynamics of the personalities and ideas cobbled together to birth the APC, and still prefers to run or view the party from the perspective of how his former party, the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), was rendered ineffective. His excessive demand for deference, and his preference for operating like a camorra are at variance with the robustness, boisterousness and debates that hallmark successful political parties. The feisty Mr Oshiomhole is accustomed to the steroids that drive political parties; but the often distracted president is enervated by them — indeed he finds them repugnant. Peace within his party, like peace in the country, will come only through justice, compromise, principles and ideology. It will not come by diktat. And it will certainly not come by the enormous pressure being brought to bear on the president by his close friends who have various agenda to foist.

But far more than the crises in the APC, the president must find ways of dealing with his own intrinsic divisiveness and the centrifugal policies his government continues to enunciate and implement. Again, this will require his self-immolation. He has concentrated most security appointments to his own side of the country, almost as if his mind wanders back and forth to the past century, unwisely allows the setting up of needless and expensive universities by security agencies, again in his own part of the country, and seems very casually to be inured to social and economic policies that drive inclusiveness and unity. Can he make amends in the next two years before he becomes lame duck? Maybe the question to ask is whether he is persuaded that these problems even exist, and that they do not conduce to party and national unity?

On the question of democracy and the rule of law, the president fares much worse than on the subject of party and national unity. He wants the APC to survive him. Good. But what are his and his party’s opinions on democracy and the rule of law? He takes umbrage at a newspaper, The Punch, for describing him as trapped in dictatorship, and prefixing his name with his military title. But has he asked himself whether he fits the mould of a democratic president? In nearly five years of the Buhari presidency, the president has neither said one genuinely kind word about democracy nor isolated the subject of the rule of law to embellish it. Instead he has repeatedly sought ways, including nebulous and dishonest interpretations of the law, to subordinate the rule of law and democracy to extreme reactionary interpretation of national security, and encouraged security agencies to treat both concepts disdainfully through court invasions, disobedience to court orders, mistreatment of travellers at checkpoints, and the institutionalisation of a climate of fear at state and federal levels. The atmosphere is so bad and stifling that the president now seems to be increasingly uniting the people against his person, party and government. How he expects his party to survive this bad image is hard to see.

The APC itself has taken a cue from the president and has spoken only briefly and incoherently about democracy and the rule of law. Nobody remembers where they stand on both subjects. Instead, the party is now viewed with suspicion for its replication of PDP-style politics and governance, a style pockmarked by misgoverned states, extreme castration of state legislatures, imperial governorship, weakened judiciary, and cowed populace. Neither the president nor the party has answers to these anomalies. In fact, within the APC itself, a battle is still raging. Until that battle is fought and won, it will be difficult for them to speak one way or the other of what they think of democracy or the rule of law, or whether their positions on both subjects are qualitatively different from those of the party they edged out of office in 2015. It is also doubtful whether in three years the president and his party can get democracy and the rule of law exhumed and entrenched. If they had started in 2015, perhaps there would be a ray of hope. But now, after they appear set in their ways, and after they have been rewarded with a fresh term despite their loathing and mistreatment of both concepts, there is little or no incentive for them to foster any democratic virtue. As the president himself said, and has begun to practicalise, he could afford to be reckless. Yes, he can; but he must not also hope that the party would survive him after not having imbued it with anything virtuous or lasting.

• To be continued

Idowu Akinlotan

In the early part of President Muhammdu Buhari’s first term, this column foresaw how contemptuously the government began to treat the rule of law, and warned that it was a harbinger of more repression to come, incipient fascism, and eventually the overthrow of democracy.

Nigeria, the writer warned, would be fortunate to retain its democracy in one battered form or another by the end of the president’s second term, if he got it. Not only did he get that second term, almost to the letter, his presidency has done its utmost to bruise and batter the rule of law, relegate judges and the judiciary to serfdom, subordinate the parliament to vexatious plenary natter, and is proceeding speedily to castrate the public through a plethora of withering antidemocratic bills/laws and defiant extralegal and extra-constitutional practices.

Last Friday’s invasion of the Federal High Court in Abuja by the Department of State Service (DSS) to re-arrest Omoyele Sowore against the provisions of the law should by now have disabused the minds of sceptics who doubt this government’s antidemocratic credentials. The Buhari presidency has never felt comfortable with the checks and balances intrinsic to Nigeria’s warped variant of presidentialism, and has repeatedly and nostalgically whined about the ‘efficiency’ and ‘promptness’ of military culture and dictatorship. Now, by getting a second term, and not needing to go back to the electorate for revalidation, the government has thrown caution to the wind and is determined to mould Nigeria into one unwholesomely hegemonic and regimented whole.

Of course this unilateral approach to governance began in the president’s first term, as exemplified by the DSS’s botched invasion of the National Assembly last year probably to synchronise a plot to overthrow the intransigent and hostile leadership of the legislature at the time, and spending state funds and executing policies not authorised by parliament. Judges’ residences were raided, a chief justice was casually and unconstitutionally removed supposedly for corrupt practices, and critics and journalists routinely detained for long stretches in total defiance of the law. Now, the government has upped the ante by further humiliating Nigeria’s compliant and conniving judiciary and serving notice to activists that constitutional provisions safeguarding their rights were impotent in the face of a determined secret service eager to shape the narratives of ‘rebellion’ to suit predetermined purposes.

Before the court invasion, it is significant that both the government and the secret service reacted very badly and frantically to the warnings by a former Chief of Defence Staff, Gen Alexander Ogomudia (retd.), that Nigeria was prone to violent restructuring or balkanisation if it disallowed peacefully restructuring. First to respond was presidential spokesman Garba Shehu. Said he: “This vituperation, coming from a former military chief speaks volumes about the mindset of groups of citizens who have yet to accept democracy as a form of government. It is very important to stress that we, as a nation, are a constitutional democracy and changes to the country in structure, its systems, policy and politics must abide by the norms of democracy, otherwise they would be extrajudicial and therefore unconstitutional…”

Then the DSS followed suit with its own baleful warnings. According to its spokesman who announced that the DSS had discovered plots to destabilise the country, “These predetermined actions have been designed to take place simultaneously in the major cities across the geopolitical zones in the coming weeks. This is more so that the plotters are also targeting the yuletide seasons to accomplish their sinister motives. Considering the implications of these on public safety and national security, the Service wishes to warn the anti-democratic elements responsible for these heinous plots to desist forthwith from their inglorious acts.” It is an eerie reminder of the Abacha era.

Not only is it now established that Nigeria is not a constitutional democracy, contrary to Mr Shehu’s statement, it is also obvious from the DSS’s self-help measures, incarcerations, casual labelling of critics as subversives, and invasions that the greatest threat to democracy and the rule of law is the government itself. The plain fact is that the government is subverting democracy and trashing the constitution. The power to restore sanity is, therefore, in their hands. They know what to do if they are willing. Though there are no guarantees, Nigerians must soberly begin to hope that democracy, not the Chinese variety this government seems enamoured of, will survive till 2023.

Idowu Akinlotan

How peace can be restored between the Police Service Commission and the Nigeria Police Force should preoccupy the minds of senior officials of the Buhari presidency in the weeks ahead.

The cold war between the two organisations, both creations of the constitution, flared in September when the PSC took the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to court to get an interpretation of who has the final say over the recruitment of 10,000 police constables. But the court case merely brought into the open a furtive and probably long-standing struggle between the two organs regarding precedence. The case is yet to be decided, but the cold war continues.

Fortunately for everyone, the PSC has stuck to its guns and is forcing into the open a number of salient issues concerning the running of the Police Force and the need to urgently get an interpretation of the powers of the two institutions.

While the cold war was still simmering, the PSC again took the police authorities to task over the deployment of Commissioners of Police in the 36 states of the country. The PSC had in late October asked the IGP to follow certain procedures in the deployment of police commissioners, indicating that the PSC must have an input in the selection and deployment of the officers. The police reportedly ignored the PSC request, thus setting the stage for another round of disagreement between the two organs.

At the centre of the dispute is the interpretation of the functions and powers of the PSC as enshrined in Part II, Section 6 of the Police Service Commission (Establishment, etc) Act 2001, particularly subsection (a) which tasks the PSC with the responsibility of “the appointment and promotion of persons to offices (other than the office of the Inspector-General of Police) in the Nigeria Police Force”.

If the federal government finds it difficult to resolve the misunderstanding between the PSC and the police, and cannot prevail on the police to be transparent in deploying officers and performing their functions, perhaps a bill to the National Assembly scrapping the PSC would not be out of order. The police, it seems, want to act completely independently