Impeach Olusegun Obasanjo-Let the Heavens Fall
By
[CALIFORNIA]
Dr.
Ejike Onuogu’s latest piece on the Obasanjo impeachment saga is a breadth of
fresh air in today’s murky waters of doomsday prophesies.
The
president has consistently used the funding meant for other branches of
government and departments created by law as a strong-arm instrument. He funds
only those who are willing to play by his rules and starve those he disagrees
with. The President seems to miss the point that his is not a military
dictatorship. Democracy is a system of rules. A leader who is unable and
unwilling to play by the rules deserves to be removed.
The
President has deliberately frustrated INEC from discharging its constitutional
responsibility because it is not in the interest of his political future to
allow INEC to succeed. Up to this moment the President has refused to sign the
Electoral Bill into law since his clumsy machination to doctor the earlier Bill
blew up in his face. He will not sign the Bill because the Bill in its present
format will throw spanners into his re-election works. It is all about the
President and what will feather his personal nest. What is best for the nation
or the nascent democratic experience is immaterial unless it furthers his
interest in succeeding himself.
Nigeria
is spending billions of Naira constructing an unnecessary and over-priced
Stadium as a conduit to build a war chest for PDP in 2003. We are pouring a ton
of cash into a national identity program because some people think it would
improve their chances of beating the North in 2003. Nigeria’s privatization
program is only a pretext to sell off the nation to a few connected individuals,
their children and foreign fronts.
Throughout
the nation workers are not being paid, pensioners are not receiving their
pensions, unemployment has hit stratospheric heights and violent crimes are at
an all-time high. Meanwhile our president has spent 33% of his time in
government on a plane or on some foreign soil attending cocktail functions or
some meaningless international conference that our diplomats can cover. Lest
than 10% of Nigerians can identify Nigeria’s Ministers for External Affairs
because their responsibilities have been hijacked by our President. Yes we have
two of them.
The
government is unlawfully continuing to detain Mohammed Abacha without any
criminal charges filed against him in a court of law. Much as I detest the
Abacha clan for benefiting from their father’s kleptomania, the fact still
remains that in a society that operates by rule of law, you cannot detain a
citizen for months on end because he refuses to abide by a civil contract struck
with the government. If Mohammed Abacha is refusing to release the money he
agreed to release to the government in exchange for cessation of litigation over
his father’s loot, the government has a number of options. He can be sued in
civil court for specific performance. The government can re-open recovery
efforts that were terminated pursuant to the deal with Mohammed. By continuing
to detain him, the government is engaging in precisely the same brutal and
irresponsible practices that his late father is now famous for. Sani Abacha had
a reason for his brutality and his inclination to operate outside the norms of
decency; he was a dictator in a military regime. What is Obasanjo’s excuse?
The present posture of the government can only lose it the moral high
ground.
My thesis is that Impeachment is a valid and necessary tool in a democratic process and should be allowed to play itself out. The action Governor of Lagos state Senator Bola Tinubu said as much in a recent interview with the news media at Murtala Mohammed Airport in Ikeja. According to his Excellency:
“We
are bound to go through this experience and finally we are going to get our act
together, have an understanding and look at the two sides dispassionately.
People cannot just panic because of threat of impeachment and so forth. It is
not good. I have spoken that we cannot resort to all sorts of blackmail,
characterization and name-calling in this process.
There
is always the mechanism of checks and balances in the system. There will be
twists and turns in our democratic process, particularly the young ones. It has
happened in every civilized democracy. What is the panic about? People should
not even mention military or any sort of intervention. You don’t put ideas
into people’s head. Look at India. In one year they changed three heads of
state and there was no military intervention.”
Governor Tinubu’s words were re-echoed by Admiral Augustus Aikhomu. He said that:
“We
are too sentimental in this country. People are raising all kinds of sentiments.
But if you ask me, my honest view is that nobody is untouchable, and therefore,
the legislators should do their job. The law is very clear on these issues. Some
Nigerians should therefore stop expressing unnecessary sentiments.” I agree.
I
do not intend to go into the legal basis for and ramifications of impeachment
under the current Constitution. A lot of other knowledgeable pundits have done
enough work on that. Suffice it to say that there is nothing illegal or
unconstitutional about impeachment. I will therefore restrict my comments on the
political aspects of the current impeachment saga.
Should
the National Assembly find the President guilty of the charges laid against him,
he ought to be impeached. All these doomsday noisemakers that are screaming
themselves hoarse about the Armageddon that will descend on Nigeria should
Obasanjo be impeached deserve only contempt. Believe me the heavens will not
fall if the President is impeached. These charlatans that are now hurling
threats and accusations of conspiracy will quietly crawl into the rocks from
which they emerged. His Excellency obviously understands that which is why he
made his Sunday national broadcast to calm nerves and possibly persuade the
assemblymen to soft pedal.
The accusation by some people that the National Assembly will scuttle the nascent democratic exercise if they proceed with the impeachment is nothing but desperate blackmail tactic. Nigeria’s democracy does not rest on any one individual. It will survive with or without any one player. Hon. Nya Asuquo made a valid point in a recent interview. He said:
“Let
me say that this impeachment is a constitutional provision and nobody should
scare us. Heavens will not fall if we impeach the president provided we do so
out of altruistic reasons…. We hope the president takes urgent steps to
address the issues raised. People must stop reading tribal meanings into all
these.
Recall
that Alhaji Balarabe Musa was impeached in the second republic; Kaduna State did
not go up in flames. Several speakers of the various State Houses of Assembly
have been removed and replaced, but those states survived. The National Assembly
had weathered the removal of one speaker and two senate presidents. The heavens
did not fall on Abuja. Obasanjo’s impeachment will only make newspaper
headlines and gossip columns and nothing more. And it would be business as usual
the Monday after his impeachment.
What
troubles me is that some people are making this impeachment exercise a tribal
issue. It is not a coincidence that a disproportionate number of the people
lining up behind the theory that Nigeria will disintegrate if Obasanjo is
impeached come from a particular section of the country. What is even more
sickening with this tribal slant is the fact that in the recent past
Obasanjo’s present “attorneys” accused him of precisely the very same
misdeeds that the National Assembly laid against him. Some of his present
apologists in the recent past even called for his removal. What has changed?
Nothing has changed. It is simply the same old tribal instinct to protect
one’s own, even if he is a tribal reject. When Dr. Chuba Okadigbo was hounded
out of office, none of these prophets of doom spoke out for him. He was not of
the right parentage and was therefore expendable. None of these people said
anything for the past three years that the Presidency spent millions of Naira
and thousands of man-hours attempting unsuccessfully to topple Ghali Umar
Na’abba.
The
allegation by a certain governor that those seeking to impeach the President
were working in concert with elements in the armed forces is pathetic. It is a
gross exhibition of irresponsibility for somebody who holds the distinguished
post of a state Governor. It shows how desperate politicians are and how low
they can crawl just to come up ahead. This Governor claims he was alerted of the
plot by House members with elements in the armed forces to topple the presidency
by Olusegun Obasanjo. This kind of reckless claim by the President is
reminiscent of the monarch in Chief Osadebe’s song. This king was in the habit
of raising false alarm just to amuse himself at the expense of his loyal
subjects. When eventually a lion appeared none of his subjects bothered to heed
his cries for help and the beast devoured him. Enough said. People like Chief
Gani Fawehinmi and Senator Bola Tinubu will continue to enjoy the respect and
admiration of Nigerians for their abilities to continue to call a fair play. One
hopes that some of the traditional rulers, politicians and activists from a
certain section of the country would borrow a leaf from Chief Fawehinmi.
We
should not allow Nigeria to be led to the brink by an insensitive and totally
unteachable leader simply because of his tribesmen’s maternal instinct to
protect their own. Rather than make empty and irresponsible threats, they should
sit their son down and give him a pep talk. They should arrange an apparatus to
engage the National Assembly in a meaningful dialogue so as to work out a deal
for him. Threats and scare tactics cannot cut it. Abacha-like trumped up
accusation of coup attempts and reckless accusation of conspiratorial liaison
with elements in the armed forces will only be counter-productive.
Dozie
Ikem Ezeife, Esq.
Attorney-At-Law
Oakland,
California