Tag: impunity

First Guarantee Pension Limited, one of the country’s leading pension fund administrators, was categorised as Nigeria’s most improved Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) in 2011 by the National Pension Commission (PenCom). Barely a month later, PenCom took over of the management of FGPL – all in disregard of court rulings. Despite several court verdicts nullifying the takeover, FGPL has remained in the hands of the regulatory body for more than five years, reports Assistant Editor ADEKUNLE YUSUF

Has Nigeria plummeted to a banana republic; a jungle where impunity reigns? That is a million dollar question to which Nze Chidi Duru, a two-term House of Representatives member (1999-2007), is frantically seeking an answer. For over five years, the former federal lawmaker has traversed the nation’s temple of justice, seeking refuge in the sanctuary of the courts. However, despite court verdicts in his favour, Duru still remains in the lurch. His worries stem from the travails of First Guarantee Pension Limited (FGPL), a pension fund administrator (PFA) firm, which he founded in 2004. Like a script with complex sub-plots, trouble started for FGPL on a minor scale in 2011 before it snowballed into a hydra-headed crisis that has stripped Duru and other original shareholders of ownership of their firm. Now, as a last resort, the former legislator has petitioned President Muhammadu Buhari, asking him to intervene in his plight, since favourable court verdicts have not brought him respite.

Fortuitous road

to FGPL’s birth

His foray into pension administration business came by chance. A brilliant lawyer, Duru, who served as chairman of influential committees in the House of Representatives between 1999 and 2007, was among the crop of few fortunate Nigerians who designed the framework and the legal backbone for the successful takeoff of privatisation and commercialisation as well as pension initiatives of former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Therefore, in recognition of invaluable services he rendered in helping to see to the passage of the Pension Reform Act of 2004, he was awarded the licence of FGPL. An unassuming personality to the core, the former federal lawmaker gave the credit of the birth of FGPL to Fola Adeola, then the chairman of the steering committee of the National Pensions Committee, who encouraged him to consider the possibility of also being a player in the new industry. Although there are basically two arms that he could participate in – the Pension Custodian,  which required about N1 billion or a Pension Fund Administrator, which required about  N150 million. He chose the latter, thus bringing forth FGPL that is now mired in crisis.

With 37 shareholders, which Duru painstakingly brought together to promote FGPL as a thriving business, operations started in earnest in 2004. According to documents detailing the company’s provenance and birth history, FGPL started off with five names, with Duru as the promoter, Nnamdi Anama, Mrs. Opara (wife of Austin Opara), Dr Abba Aji (then chairman of Senate Committee on Establishment and Labour), and finally Tsegba Terngu. But because Aji did not eventually invest in the business, others carried on until the next generation of shareholders increased the number to 31; while the third generation of shareholders took the number of shareholders to 37. As some of the company’s original shareholders acknowledged, it was not rosy at the start, but there were enough reasons not to quit the race. As for them, the new corporate baby would not only ward off all the teething challenges, it would also surely outlast them and mature steadily into a business entity that would be the pride of all. While the projection did come to pass, the concomitant price was indeed debilitating.

The perils of success

After about six years in business, problem began to rear its ugly head. By 2010, FGPL, which used to struggle to stay afloat because of lack of required asset under management, had become a profitable business. In its line of business, asset under management is what it takes to receive the necessary returns on commission for managing the assets. Before 2010, Duru explained to The Nation that FGPL had endured a long process of having a large pool of assets under management to be able to become profitable, which was not forthcoming in time as initially planned. Undaunted, the astute businessmen behind FGPL returned to the drawing board and expounded their dragnet, reaching a point that the business had to invite Novare, a group from South Africa, to invest in FGPL. As fate would have it, this proved to be the much-needed magic wand for the company. After carrying out all necessary due diligence, Novare invested a total sum of N224 million, staggered over a period, including its repertoire of abundant technical skills into FGPL. Indeed, the strategic move was the elixir FGPL was waiting for to attain the next level, which instantly put the business on a profitable path, making it pay its first dividends in 2010.

Perhaps it was the same turnaround, which FGPL embarked upon in 2010, that later attracted the positive attention of the regulatory body, National Pension Commission (PenCom). On February 23, 2011, PenCom categorized FGPL as the most improved pension fund administrator (PFA) for the preceding year. In its annual report, which was presented to FGPL board meeting, PenCom detailed its annual view of the performances of all PFAs in the country and singled out FGPL for a thumb up. To all the promoters of FGPL, it was a piece of good news that was music to their ears. Expectedly, they rolled out the drums and celebrated to no end; so happy that they took the glad tiding to the shareholders that the business, which was paying dividends for the first time, was also adjudged as an industry leader by the regulatory commission.

Unfortunately, 29 days after the endorsement from the regulatory outfit, the partying became a fleeting joy. Much to the chagrin of FGPL management, on March 22, 2011, PenCom, which had complimented FGPL a month earlier, indicated its willingness to undertake a “target examination.”Although Duru and his colleagues considered the PenCom’s decision to be both strange and curious, especially coming barely one month after it had commended FGPL, they welcomed target examination idea with both arms. However, as it turned out eventually, it was a decision Duru and his fellow business partners rue till today, for it signaled the beginning of a long night and a never-ending horror for FGPL and its original owners.

A peep into the

contentious target report

By the time PenCom released the findings of its target examination, Duru said the FGPL management considered it as a classic volte-face. In the report, which was presented to the FGPL board in June 2011, PenCom was critical of FGPL’s operational and management style. Besides querying how FGPL was being run, it also chided the company that one of the committees, Executive Management Committee, which the board used to oversight the management of the company, was one committee too many. In more specific terms, the report was livid that the committee was getting more involved in the oversight of the company – an allegation Duru and his colleagues fiercely refuted as untrue. As Duru explained it, the oversight function of the Committee, which attracted the ire of the regulatory body, was to help the management become profitable, better organised and more efficient. And as far as he was concerned, it was even chiefly on the strength of this strategic move that the company became profitable for the first time in 2010 and was categorized as the country’s most improved PFA a year later.

Another kernel of dispute was that the meetings of the board (six in all) were said to be too many. Also, PenCom was unhappy that the chairman of FGPL should not have occupied the position. His only sin: he had insignificant shares, according to PenCom. This did not go down well with FGPL, whose board explained that the chairman, who had well over N20 million worth of shares invested in the company, could not be said to be a chairman with insignificant shares. Besides, FGPL’s article and memorandum of association didn’t provide for a share qualification to even be on the board not to talk of a share qualification to be the chairman.

Among other issues, the regulator also alleged in the report that there was a diversion of equity contribution of Novare, FGPL’s South African partner, for the purchase of a personal property in Lagos. It went further to allege that N16.12 million, which formed part of the equity contribution of Novare to FGPL, was diverted to another business. Despite explanations backed with documents that the fund in question was paid into FGPL account and was indeed utilised for the purpose for which it was meant (that is, payment of Novare equity contribution in FGPL), PenCom did not rescind its stand. The report also catalogued how FGPL allegedly paid unapproved service charges amounting to $285,102.40 to Novare. Going by the minutes of FGPL board meetings, the allegation by PenCom was baseless, for the payment was duly ratified and approved during the 27th board of directors meeting. “Management to agree with the external auditors on the appropriate classification of the monies paid to Novare Holdings Limited. This was reported as done. The meeting was informed that it was being classified as normal expenses of the company. It was noted that it should be classified as normal expenses in the management account,” parts of the minutes concerning the equity contribution read.

Perhaps suspecting something was fishy, FGPL questioned the report, bringing it to the attention of the regulatory body that the dictates of the due process under the circumstance had been breached. Under the Pension Reform Act, the procedure stipulates that if there is a regulatory report, it should be submitted to the directors, who also bound under the law to submit it to the shareholders who will vote on the report. By the same token, the shareholders’ vote becomes the decision that will determine the fate of the company. But all these observations and legal procedures notwithstanding, PenCom relied only on its own report to axe the business. “They (PenCom) didn’t allow us to go through that process. They wanted to ram the target report down the throat of the shareholders,” Duru protested.

Determined to get justice and left with no other option, FGPL sought judicial intervention into its brewing plight. According to Duru, all actions of PenCom at the time seemed to suggest that the national commission had made up its mind on only one thing: take over the business by all means. Therefore, on August 2011, Justice D.U. Okorowo of the Federal High Court, Abuja, stated in his ex-parte order that PenCom and the Attorney General of the Federation “are restrained either acting by themselves or through their agents, servants, privies however otherwise described from instigating, taking and or directing the taking of any action, sanctions, measures and or direction of nay nature or type flowing from or preponderant to the document entitled, “Draft First Guarantee Pension Limited Target Examination” and or sanction, measures, and or direction (that) may culminate in and/or is likely to result in the implementation of any of the recommendation, sanctions and/or penalties in the Draft First Guarantee Pension Limited Target Examination report pending the determination of the applicants motion on notice for interlocutory injunctions.”

Impunity incorporated;

court rulings ignored

But all pleas not to effect a forceful takeover of the company fell on deaf ears. Despite being served a copy of Justice Okorowo’s ex-parte order restraining PenCom from implementing the controversial target report pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit, hell was let loose on FGPL. Four days after the ex-parte order, precisely on August 15, 2011, PenCom dissolved the board of FGPL and appointed an interim management, which still runs FGPL till now. Fuming over PenCom’s seeming disdain for judicial process, FGPL shareholders, including the South Africans, petitioned Mohammed Bello Adoke, then Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice (AGF), to use his good offices to prevail on the then Muhammad Ahmad-led regulatory commission to toe the line of the rule of law.

In his two letters, dated August 17, 2011 and September 8, 2011, Adoke, who said he had carefully reviewed the case, directed PenCom to obey the subsisting court order, which asked it to revert to the status quo. “Unless it can be shown that the above court order has been vacated in which a copy should be forwarded to me for my record, I strongly advise that you reverse all decisions and actions already taken as outlined above and return to the status quo. This is to avoid being held in contempt of the court as your actions are clearly in violation of the subsisting court order. I also advise that you desist from further violation of the said court order until the hearing and determination of the motion on notice,” Adoke warned PenCom on August 17, 2011.

Perhaps after realising that his directive was not heeded, Adoke, in another letter dated September 8, 2011, reminded the regulatory body that the “constitution of the interim management committee of FGPL by PenCom on Monday, August 15, 2011, and all action(s) taken by the committee were in breach of the court order, which was duly served on PenCom on August 12, 2011.” But again, PenCom would have none of that.

The EFCC and police

as tools of persecution?

Luckily for FGPL, the court ruled in its favour on June 18, 2012. In a 132-page judgment, Justice Okorowo roundly reprimanded PenCom for acting above the law. He also ordered that the interim management foisted on FGPL by PenCom be dismantled with immediate effect. Ostensibly to give a potent bite to its bark, the court ordered the commissioners of police in both Lagos and Abuja, where the company’s offices are located, to help the board members take back their company. To Duru’s team, the storm was over, at last. However, rather than heave a sigh of relief, it was hell that was let loose on the board members shortly afterwards, as the hunters quickly became the hunted in a game of intrigues that began to bare its fangs with brutish ferocity.

Before the judgment, specifically on October 3, 2011, operatives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had swooped on Duru. He was picked up in his residence in Abuja on the grounds that Kashim Ibrahim-Imam, one of the company’s shareholders that had joined hands with eight out of 27 shareholders, had petitioned the anti-graft body to implement PenCom’s target report. The EFCC swooped on Duru, who spent the night in the commission’s gulag before his sister, Christy Ekwonu, a director in the Federal Ministry of Justice, and Ken Nwanze, bailed him the following day. All this took place despite the fact that the same petitioner, in cahoots with five other shareholders out of 37, had approached a Federal High Court in Abuja seeking an order of mandamus to compel the anti-graft outfit to investigate the target report. The court subsequently threw out the application, dubbing it an abuse of court process, since there was a subsisting judgment on the matter.

Complainants

becoming the accused

Not done yet, traducers of FGPL upped the ante. Immediately after the court delivered judgment in 2012, which quashed the target report and ordered PenCom to return the business to the original directors and shareholders, the police invited the shareholders asking them to explain why they were disturbing the peace of FGPL. Suddenly, the complainants became the accused. The matter became worse when the police preferred charges against Duru before a Magistrate Court in Abuja bordering on theft and forgery. Like other plans, the new game plan also collapsed like a pack of cards when the magistrate court, after distilling all evidence before it, struck out the case on March 28, 2013. It described the exercise as an abuse of court process. The crisis still did not abate, as Duru narrated how the “police and EFCC kept on employing other avenues to nail me.” In January this year, thanks to a lawyer friend of Duru who was handling a brief in a Lagos high court, the former lawmaker’s name was sighted on the cause list. Unknown to Duru, on October 5, 2015, the EFCC had preferred another charge against him in the Lagos high court on the same contentious PenCom report, “without my knowledge and without serving me summons.”

Distressed by the messy state of affairs, on March 8, 2016, Duru petitioned the current AGF, Abubakar Malami (SAN) to intimate him of his travails in the hands of federal agencies. He also pointed out that Malami’s immediate predecessor had written two letters to the EFCC on the matter in the past. Pronto, the AGF wrote to the EFCC on April 6, requesting to have the case file with a view to reviewing it. Perhaps after waiting in vain, Malami wrote a reminder to the anti-graft agency on April 22. In the intervening time, on April 11, the lawyers of Duru and EFCC had argued on his preliminary objection, with the ruling fixed for May 11. But the court didn’t sit because the judge was reportedly indisposed, leaving the matter adjourned to June 8. Strangely enough, as Duru was exiting the court, it was a rude shock as he received a call from Mrs. Ekwuonu, his sister who bailed him in 2012, saying EFCC operatives had swooped on her in lieu of her brother “who jumped bail.”

Text of the paper delivered by The Nation Editorial Board Chairman SAM OMATSEYE as guest lecturer at the Post Graduate Hall, College of Humanities, Joseph Ayo Babalola University (JABU) in Ikeji-Arakeji, Osun State.

THE notion of the rule of law overwhelmed me when I was asked to deliver this lecture. At that time, a controversy had leapt on the nation’s front burner over the war on corruption. The argument of some was that no matter the rot woven around anybody’s name, and no matter how certain their culpability, we should not arrest anyone without fidelity to the law, and obedience to the courts of the land.

Prof Wole Soyinka was the first principal voice to intervene in this matter, and he weighed in on the side of the rule of law and subjection to the court.

On the other hand, the majority of Nigerians were aghast at the rapid-fire revelations of kleptomaniac filth issuing out of the vault of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Billions were ferreted out with impunity in the former President Goodluck Jonathan era.

In what may be daubed the impunity of the cookie jar, some so-called big men dipped their iniquitous hands freely and they stole freely. As the poor groveled in their carpetless hovels, and lightless homes at night, these men romped in nameless opulence. They soaredin private jets, while the poor choked in danfos that trundled on potholes. They had power from diesel-fueled, quietly whirring generators while the poor sweated at home in spite of their sputtering generators known as I better pass my neighbour.

Their children’s minds were nourished in the tony schools of the western world, while the average Nigerian could not pay fees to schools the quality of which education was sometimes only a little better than phony. And the fees the poor could not pay was a fraction of a fraction of the fees the big men hand out with flourish for their wards in Harvard, Oxford and Imperial College among others.

Between impunity

and rule of law

So, if these big men stole so much and advertised it with impunity, why not yank them from their purloined palaces, and squeeze them into the few centimeters-square apartments known as the jail room. Forget the law, because the thieves, in the first case, had contempt for the law when they committed the crimes. Former EFCC chief, Malam Nuhu Ribadu once evinced his contempt for the rule of law when asked why he leapt over procedures to prosecute persons of government. He often convicted his suspects before the law took its turns. His reply was unequivocal in its contempt for the rule of law. When they stole our money, he remarked with indignant scorn – did they follow the rule of law or due process?

So, people of his tribe of thinking had no patience. They had no respect for the judges who freed the thieves and the men who invoked the law. After all, the law had no life when they stole. Why should we breathe the law into life now that they want to defend themselves?

The place of religion, culture

That was one of the issues. Just about the same time, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) had a run-in with an Islamic group led by El Zak Zaky – Shiite. The group, with all its fiery religious fervour, had converged for one of its sacred events and blocked a major road. When they exercised their zeal in public, they mounted human stockades on roads and dared any outsider to interfere in the majestic holiness of their rites.

Well, there was the Army chief formidable with his convoy of men and arms, and he was denied his right of way. It was a parody of a religious rite against a constitutional right. There was also involved in this saga, the story of hubris. The hubris of the Army chief. The hubris of the ascetic leader. Temporal authority versus spiritual sovereignty. Spirit versus flesh. The result was a bloodbath in which the army could not yield to the subversive temerity of a mere group. The hubris of Nigeria’s army could not brook a public humiliation.

The story gained greater national attention when the President, Muhammadu Buhari, turned against the religious group in his presidential media chat, and lambasted the Shiite Islamic sect, for acting above the law. He lost his presidential detachment in his rhetoric and assumed the tainted aura of a partisan as a Sunni Muslim. His rhetoric could not disguise his partiality for the army. He projected himself as though he privileged the nobility of civil rights over an insular and sectarian rebellion. We know better.

There was a third development and it happened in Ibadan. The Olubadan in council and his chiefs had promoted some citizens as chiefs and they met a stone wall in Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi. The governor asserted that the chiefs had to undergo a particular process and he had to sign on before such elevations bore any legal imprimatur. The Olubadan and his chiefs balked, and a crisis singed the city. The chief, the governor insisted, ought to have undergone medical tests and other screenings, before they could become high chiefs.

Eventually though, elders intervened, and an understanding was reached.

Well, the fourth story involved a 14-year-old known as Ese Oruru, who was whisked north by an adult. Well, maybe not whisked in a physical sense since the girl probably travelled north out of her own volition. She was illegally whisked north, a supposed nubile who should still be under the control of her parents. She was taken north without her parents’ knowledge or consent. For about six months, the mother, Rose, and father, Charles, tried in vain to see their daughter. But she was locked inside the stockade of the caliphate.

Great Nigerian institutions and big men acted without reference to the rule of law. They included the police and the Inspector-General of Police (IGP), the Director of the Department of State Services (DSS), the Governor of Bayelsa State, the village chief of Tufa, the Sharia Commission.

In spite of the efforts by the parents and civil society organisations, the girl was still held hostage by the man with the connivance of the institutions against every instinct and letter of the law. It took the fulmination of the media for the Emir of Kano to erupt from his palace to “order” his subjects to release the girl to the police. All of the institutions thought there were colliding laws. The laws of the emirate, the Islamic law, the law of the republic. Where, in this instance, is the rule of law? It was decided in favour of the constitution, but it was not automatic. The interesting paradox of the narrative was that each party in this conflict could have claimed allegiance to the rule of law. The question is, what law? It was a case of conflicting “righteousnesses.” It was also the paradoxes of conflicting citizenships under a specific geographic construct.

When I wanted to title this paper, I was caught between calling it “The rule of law in an age of impunity” or, to flip it over and call it “impunity in an age of the rule of law.” I thought the latter was more expressive of the turbulent reality of our contemporary history. But, the former was more urbane. Since the university ambience is a haven of even temper and genteel culture, I chose the former. In reality though, impunity has preceded law, and we seem as a people to be more fascinated with subversion than subjection when applying the law.

Abuse of rules

I will start by interrogating the meaning of impunity. It means exemption from punishment or loss or escape from fines or taxes. It also means a sense of entitlement that makes a person or group defy law or order. It can also mean that an individual can decide arbitrarily what order is and impose it at will on others without consequence, of fear of it.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) defines impunity in the following words:

“The impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of violations to account  – whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings – since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and  to making reparations to their victims.”

The commission also explains that “impunity arises from a failure by states to meet their obligations to investigate violations; to take appropriate measures in respect of the perpetrators, particularly in the area of justice, by ensuring that those suspected of criminal responsibility are persecuted, tried and duly punished; to provide victims with effective remedies and to ensure that they receive reparation for the injuries suffered; to ensure the inalienable right to know the truth about violations; and to take necessary steps to prevent a recurrence of violations.”

Simply put, the rage of impunity implies the atrophy of the rule of law.

Rule of law

Now, what is the rule of law? On the surface, the phrase is very deceptive and apparently contradictory. When the word rule is put side by side with law, it inspires the image of a despot. But, it is the case of negative with negative giving us positive. So, the rule of law simply means, no one is above the law. Whatever the estate of the person or the majesty of their position, the president is equal to the door keeper.

The phrase rule of law was first used in a petition in England during the reign of James I in about 1610. But the man who popularised the phrase was the Scottish theologian, Samuel Rutherford. He used the phrase as a polemical onslaught against the old fortress of the divine rights of kings, which advanced the power of the individual monarch as coming from the diktat of the Almighty God.

But, the concept did not begin with him. Aristotle had earlier posited that the law should govern rather than men. Rutherford, who believed in the liberty of conscience, influenced John Locke’s “The Second treatise of government”, and Montesquieu’s “The spirit of the Laws”. Sometimes the argument for the rule of law could also be an advocacy for tyranny. If it is a monarchical or theocratic law, it could breach the liberty of conscience. It could enthrone the obsequiousness of a mass or the despotic insolence of a wayward prince.

Rutherford introduced what he called “Lex, Rex,” which meant the law is king, as against the phrase popular to the advocates of the Divine rights of King who brandished the phrase, “Rex, Lex,” which meant the king is law. We know that both in England and in France, the concept of monarchical superiority has given way to the supremacy of the law. From the times of the beheading of the Stuart King Charles I under the ruthless Cromwellian aegis and the surge of parliamentary democracy and the majesty of the prime minister, we have seen England evolve. This meant that the feudal bulwark would slide aside as the greater virtues of democracy take a prime of place. In France, the French Revolution turned a feudal state into a cauldron of riots and republican upheavals into the birth of democracy that has evolved over two centuries.

Even in France, the republic has continued to engage in self-doubts and internal wrangling that flirted almost inevitably with tyranny. In the Napoleonic era, France was the beach head of culture and war and politics. But, Napoleon, with all his swagger and imperial demons, had to quit the stage for the country to engage in the proper search for an equalitarian society fantasized by the revolutionaries. Robespierre, Danton and even Diderot all dreamed of the two E’s and F of the revolution: Equalite, fraternite, egalite. In reality though, what prevailed was eerie.

So, the rule of law does not necessarily mean the reign of democracy, but it implies it. That, however, depends on what the laws are and how they were made. If the laws are minted by the people’s representatives, then the concept of the rule of law becomes sustainable. But it also depends on the quality of the democracy. Democracy can be, as a writer described Poland’s parliament at one stage of its history, as a “divinely ordained confusion.”  If the law is made in a feudal setup, it means an oligarchy set the statutes and it implies the same aggressive few can change the laws. There will be no reference to the people. It is against this superior air that the French thinker Abbey Sieyes, whose phrase, “power from above, confidence from below,” cannot pass muster in a contemporary world.

Jean Jacque Rousseau coined the phrase, “collective will or general will.” It was romantic until the French saw how a sometimes simple phrase can put our imagination in the heavens but in reality, we are mere butchers of our fellow humans.

The communist era was a great example of such lost and fatal idealisms. Shakespeare in his play, King Lear coined the phrase, “that distribution undo excess and each man have enough.” That phrase in itself could have ushered in human equality. But, as we have seen in that play and in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the laws may be an excuse for a few to become lords over us.

One of America’s founding fathers, John Adams, expressed American sense of the rule of law in the following words – the United States (U.S.) ran “a government of laws and not of men.” In his popular pamphlet titled: “Commonsense”, Thomas Paine, wrote, “In America, the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries, the law ought to be the king; and there ought to be no other.”

Why application of rule

of law is problematic

In our society – Nigeria, the notion of the rule of law is problematic for historical reasons. One, we have had monarchy among us for centuries, and the monarchical sensibility is still resonant and potent. We have been reluctant to do away with the monarchs. In fact, we are unable to dispose of them because inside us grovels still a subject. We love our Obas, Olus, Emirs and Obis. The politicians need them for endorsement. The businessman needs them for chieftaincy titles. The villagers still want them for order, however dubious.

Two, we have had military dictatorship since independence, and its martial impulses are still undeniable in spite of our strong claims to the republican spirit.

Military incursion

The military came as a messianic institution but in the decades when they held us under their hold, we began to act like them. They (military personnel) imposed their lack of grace and impunity in our ways of life. We respected their laws. Children loved their power and craved to enlist in the army. There was something even romantic about their register. Murtala Muhammed’s “with immediate effect” haunted the nation as a kind of national refrain of sublime discipline. Idiagbon’s unsmiling visage was embraced as a sort of emblem of gravity. For a while, we mocked civilian democracy as the devil’s kingdom where uncouth, ununiformed men and women grinned like hyenas after dipping hands in our money pot.

When Gen. Yakubu Gowon was ousted as the Head of State, many mourned the exit of the meek general until we embraced the brash uprightness of a Murtala Muhammed. The President Ibrahim Babangida years were seductive for their false promise of a civilian-style ambience that masked the bestiality of a charming brute. All gloves were off when civilians knew that the repudiation of the June 12 election eventually exposed the lie of his high-handedness.

But, after the fall of Abacha, we became hostage to the IBB men and followers as well as other soldiers of influence who took special places in fashioning for us a democracy. It was hard for the democracy not to bear the marks of its makers.

Hence, we had an Olusegun Obasanjo as President presiding over a constitution fashioned under the shadow of the gun. Hence the 1999 Constitution became a sort of construct of a school master for a crowd of rascals.

The law still has to come to terms with some of the sources of law like faith, tribe and monarchy in a republican setting. The issue of individual liberties can still conflict with institutional headaches as we have demonstrated in some examples. Obasanjo presided in the executive and David Mark in the legislature. What followed in a society with weak institutions was that strong men dictated the course of history. They were soldiers who had not learned to subject themselves to democratic ethos. When soldiers took over in the western world, namely Britain as in Winston Churchill, or France as in Charles de Gaulle, or the U.S. as in Dwight Eisenhower, they met stout values of civil superiority over individual will.