Tag: Nyako

It was a farce that was doomed ab initio. No bouquets, then, that a Court of Appeal sitting in Yola the upper week voided the impeachment and removal of Murtala Nyako as Adamawa State Governor in July 2014. Nyako was removed by the State House of Assembly after 17 legislators in the 25-member house adopted the report of a panel that was raised to investigate him for alleged gross financial misconduct. The panel found him guilty of motley allegations, for which he had been served an impeachment notice signed by 19 members of the state legislature. Deputy Governor Bala James Ngilari also got an impeachment notice along with his principal. But neither Nyako nor his deputy put in appearance to defend themselves before the investigative panel, which was widely perceived as predetermined to return a guilty verdict against the duo. Ngilari was subsequently alleged to have resigned as Deputy Governor, while the investigative panel, true to billing, found Nyako guilty of all counts against him. The assembly, barely 24 hours after the investigative panel turned in its report on 14th July 2014, summarily removed Nyako as Governor.

The Court of Appeal, in its verdict penultimate Thursday, did not address the accusations against Nyako, but rather the propriety of the procedure by which he was removed from office. The panel of judges held that the removal was not done in accordance with the provisions of law, and that Nyako was not given a fair hearing in the impeachment proceedings, while his right was violated. Their lordships unanimously ruled the impeachment null and void, and ordered that Nyako be accorded all rights of the office of Governor and be paid all due entitlements for the duration of his tenure. They, however, declined restoring Nyako to office as he had sought because his tenure as Governor had elapsed.

I believe that any objective analysis of the impeachment saga would not fail to reach the same conclusion that the legislative process was a kangaroo exercise and barefaced partisan circus. It was actually a turf battle between the All Progressives Congress (APC), to which Nyako belonged, and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDC) that wholly controlled the state legislature at the time. Many observers would cite Nyako’s open letter to former President Goodluck Jonathan earlier in 2014, accusing him of abetting the Boko Haram insurgency and fomenting genocide in the Northeast, as the trigger point of his battle with the Adamawa legislators, who left no one in doubt of their party loyalty in those heady days leading up to the 2015 general election. But no one would deny either that the seed of discord was sown in 2013 when the former Governor defected from then ruling PDP to the opposition APC. By the impeachment project, the Adamawa lawmakers were not just on a vendetta mission against a perceived turncoat, they wanted to recover the governorship for their party by plain crook.

A Yola high court had in June 2014 granted a couple of injunctions restraining the assembly from proceeding with its inquisition against Nyako. The assembly ignored those injunctions, which the Court of Appeal cited penultimate Thursday in blaming the legislature for “impunity and arrogance” in how it went about the impeachment. Nyako too, in desperation for survival while the process lasted, took the exercise of executive powers to reckless heights. He fled the state and left governance on autopilot to evade service of the impeachment notice by the house. Then, he arbitrarily declared Monday, 07th July, and Tuesday, 08th July 2014, as work free days in his state avowedly to “enable the people…to reflect on current happenings in the country and to use the period to offer special prayers for peace in the state and the country.” In reality though, the work-free declaration was a preemptive strike by the embattled Governor to stall the impeachment proceedings against him. Another court had just given a verdict compelling the state’s Acting Chief Judge to raise an investigate panel as the legislature had wanted, and it was widely expected that the panel would be inaugurated on 07th July and would commence sitting immediately. The work-free declaration was obviously to derail all that.

A most unruly tack by the legislature, which another court subsequently invalidated, was its declaration that Ngilari had quit as Deputy Governor to avoid impeachment. His purported letter of resignation was read on the floor of the assembly and approved by members just before the purported impeachment of Nyako. This had paved the way for House Speaker Umaru Fintiri to take office as Acting Governor. Ngilari’s letter of resignation was apparently extorted from him, and it was addressed to the Speaker of the house, contrary to the provisions of Section 306 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution requiring that such letter be addressed to the Governor. Fintiri thereafter had his time in the saddle as Acting Governor, and subsequently secured nomination as his party’s candidate for a by-election that was scheduled by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in line with statutory requirement that a vacancy in the governorship must be filled within 90 days of the office being declared vacant. Ngilari, meanwhile, had filed a suit in court to deny that he resigned, and to demand that he be sworn in as Governor in place of the ‘impeached’ Nyako. He succeeded in convincing the Federal High Court, Abuja, which on 08th October 2014 pronounced that Ngilari did not resign from office as Adamawa’s Deputy Governor and should therefore be sworn in as Nyako’s successor. The court also restrained INEC from conducting any by-election to fill the office of Governor.

INEC had fixed the governorship by-election for 11th October 2014, and had fully mobilised and deployed in readiness when the Abuja court halted the process. I happened to be in the electoral commission at the time and witnessed first hand the sheer waste that this entailed. The commission typically held a location stakeholder meeting ahead of every governorship poll, and it was on the morning of such a meeting that the judgment was delivered. INEC Chairman at the time, Professor Attahiru Jega, was in Yola with many senior officials for the crucial parley. Few hours to its commencement, chieftains of registered political parties, governorship candidates and other stakeholders were seated at the venue. Many domestic and foreign election observers were in town and had joined in for the meeting. The INEC boss was set to preside over the meeting, and was only awaiting the arrival of then Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Suleiman Abba, who was already airborne from Abuja en route to Yola.

By the time the IGP landed in Yola, judgment had been delivered stopping the by-election, and the police chief had to make a swift return to Abuja. The commission called off the stakeholder meeting, with its officials frantically reaching out to stop already mobilised poll personnel from getting to Adamawa State if they were not already inland. Many personnel that were in transit were turned back en route, while those yet to leave their base were directed to remain where they were: huge sums were already expended on logistical operations regarding the poll, but whatever could yet be salvaged was worth the effort.

Later that day, the commission issued a statement suspending the by-election. Personnel and materials that had been mobilised had to be demobilised, nearly at the same cost of their mobilisation. It was a still-birthed project that never should have been conceived in the first place. But when politicians play their games, INEC gets caught in the middle, and scarce resources of the country get needlessly wasted.