T is indeed astonishing how Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, wears ‘the other shoe’ very comfortably while ventilating his views on the constitution, rule of law, the obligations of government, and the personal freedoms of Nigerian citizens. Two Saturdays ago, during the 10th edition of the Lai Mohammed Ramadan Lecture Series held in his hometown, Oro, Kwara State, the minister simply put what he described as exigent national security issues far above the constitution of the Federal Republic. Mr Mohammed is a lawyer, some sort of activist, and a huge figure in the opposition during the Goddluck Jonathan presidency. Yet, he is apparently quite capable of arguing plausibly and engagingly both sides of an issue.
His controversial view on the unending detention of both the former National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, a retired colonel, and the leader of the Shi’a Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, gives a disturbing picture of Mr Mohammed as a politician, and paints a far more unflattering portrait of the Nigerian public/appointed official. The Information minister had been asked why the government he represents, and which he claims respects the rule of law, should continue to hold on to both Col Dasuki (retd.) and El-Zakzaky. His answer is a model for serving government officials, an answer he is certain to be reminded of many years after he has left office and resumed private life.
Beginning with a specious comparison with the American democratic experience, Mr Mohammed argues that, “At every point in time, a government will make a hard decision between your personal liberty and national security. In the wake of 911, the US came with regulations that breached the personal rights of Americans and all of us because of national security.” It did not occur to Mr Mohammed that America anchored those responses on regulations backed by law, and that even then whatever laws and regulations proved inconsistent with the American constitution in any legal or security exigencies, no matter how deeply ramifying, were often successfully challenged in court.
But Mr Mohammed was not through. Said he copiously, without mincing words: “In the case of both El Zakzaky and Dasuki, we are (also) talking about national security. Since the government would take responsibility for its actions, it cannot guarantee whether the former National Security Adviser will still stay in the country if granted bail…It is because the court order said we must release him (El-Zakzaky) within 45 days, rebuild his house, and there is nobody today within Kaduna State or anywhere else that wants to accept El-Zakzaky as a neighbour. So who do you release him to? For him to be killed? So, he is in protective custody with his family and this is one thing people don’t say. Like I said, a government faced with this kind of dilemma, so how much rule of law do you want to balance with national security? In the case of Dasuki, he transferred $1.2 billion in a day and he has refused to say where that money is (or who was) given, and as we speak today he has refused to tell.
“Now, $1.2 billion is a lot of money. Who can guarantee that if he is released today he will not abscond? And with $1.2 billion at his disposal, is any government safe? It is good when people start talking about human rights and rule of law, but as a government that is responsible for the territorial integrity of this country, at times you have to take the heat because you want to ask yourself, if such an accused person were to disappear — and this is a country that we are still battling with terrorism, this is a country that we’re still battling with insurgency — and he links up with other enemies of government with an arsenal of $1.2 billion, would the people not blame us? So, I think these are high profile cases. On the surface it appears like a government that violates rule of law, but in reality it is a dilemma for government because we must balance individual freedom with national security. But I will say overall that we’re not a government of impunity.”
Not only is the government Mr Mohammed serving a government of impunity, contrary to his assertions, it is also one that violates the rule of law whether lightly or significantly. It is, however, clear that the Information minister was unable to convince even himself, and he had had to squirm considerably to justify the government’s flagrant lawlessness. In the same interview, he had suggested that the government was not engaged in media trial of suspects, arguing that the media were just performing their duties in reporting the government’s side of the story. That may be true; but by attempting to persuade the public as to the culpability of the suspects when the prosecution could not convince the courts amounts dangerously to self-help and media trial.
In the case of Col. Dasuki (retd.), Mr Mohammed talks of a certain amount of money spent by the accused in a day, insinuating that the money could still be in his possession, perhaps for treasonable reasons. The accused is of course unable to respond. His lawyers had made their presentations before the courts and had secured bail for their client. Unable to halt that process, the government, as Mr Mohammed has said, prefers to present its case to the public directly via a one-sided appeal. In short, for the minister, it is in Nigeria’s security interest to keep the former NSA locked up, regardless of what the constitution and the courts say.
But in the case of Sheikh El-Zakzaky, the Information minister was even less persuasive. He forgets that the case is on appeal, and he goes on to make other arguments. The Shiite leader is in protective custody, he says, because no state in Nigeria nor any neighbourhood is willing to co-exist with him. He, of course, dismisses the offer of some Shiite members to have him in their neighbourhoods. In announcing that the Shiite leader could be killed by unnamed enemies, the Information minister refuses to substantiate his suspicion and prefers to downplay the responsibility of the law enforcement agencies to protect citizens, no matter their vexing convictions. Nobody, not even Mr Mohammed himself, could have suspected that he was capable of that alarming ideological volte face.
Irrespective of the spin he puts on these two frequently cited examples of the Buhari government’s arbitrariness, even the most ardent supporter of the president cannot help but argue that the federal government is indeed undermining the constitution. However, all the government is saying is that the constitutional subversion is justified. But whether justified or not, it would have been more interesting to ask Mr Mohammed what he thought of the 347 Shiite members killed by security forces in December 2015 and hastily and secretly buried in two mass graves. Mr Mohammed has proved his adeptness at defending anything, including the most atrocious assault on the rule of law — breaches both he and his party attacked vehemently before the last general elections — but it does not seem that even he would be capable of defending the mass killings of two Decembers ago. Perhaps, this column misjudges him badly.
If the Information minister spoke out of conviction in defending some of the indefensible policies of the Buhari presidency, as a lawyer and activist, especially one who tended in those days to symbolise the best progressivism Nigeria could offer, then it would truly be tragic. But if he spoke out of duty to a government he schemed fervently to install in office and craved to serve, the tragedy is no less mitigated by the enthusiasm and passion with which he underscored his futile arguments. He ought to have been evasive at worst, or philosophical at best. More, as a minister, had he brought the courage and effrontery he has shown in supporting impunity to the service of his recanted moral and ideological convictions, and helped persuade his government to first make the requisite laws to undergird their anti-graft war, perhaps the opposition to their irresponsible methods would have been more restrained.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) will not be in government for ever. Its current divisive and unconstitutional policies, which are being executed without a care in the world as if there is no tomorrow, will in the years to come return to haunt the party’s leaders. When that history catches up with them, as indeed it will sooner or later, they must remember that the other shoe is simply falling, and that they are lying on a bed of thorns they helped egregiously to make.
