Impeachment: National Assembly Missed the Mark
By
We expend a lot of effort in extolling the virtues of democratic governance without letting everyone understand that it is the responsibility of the average citizen to ensure that it actually works the way it is intended to. For reasons that are yet not clearly understood, Nigeria had jettisoned the parliamentary system of governance in preference for the presidential version since the Second Republic. Military dictatorship had not only stunted the evolutionary development of Nigerian democracy, but also it has inculcated into the polity the notion that the nation’s constitution can be manipulated when necessary or discarded altogether at the wish of the junta at the helm of affairs. After decades of arbitrary rule by those who claim the monopoly of know-how on nation building, the average citizen now expects this democratic dispensation to begin to lay the foundation for stability so as to create a conducive environment for accelerated national socioeconomic development. No one expects a miracle to happen overnight. In fact, this modest expectation of the citizenry may have informed the eventual emergence of a former Head of State, General Obasanjo, to lead the first government of the Fourth Republic. Those who opposed his candidacy reluctantly acquiesced to his leadership with the understanding that his administration could be regarded as a transitional one.
Those who had expected much out of the Obasanjo presidency may be disappointed by a lackluster performance by all arms of government since he took office. Obasanjo is the head of an administration that has not met many people’s expectations in the past three years. But there are other components of national governance which have performed equally poorly or even worse. Members of the National Assembly have been a great disappointment to many because they have woefully failed to perform their constitutional duties for which they were elected. Our National Assembly spent a big chunk of its time in internal squabbles for leadership in both Houses. Whatever skirmishes that occurred between the legislators and the executive branch of government had more to do with disagreement over money than anything else. One could argue that the honorable members of the National Assembly should not be put in a situation where they would have to prostrate in front of the President’s desk before they can get their normal entitlements. Rather than taking a comprehensive review of the mechanism that should transform the flow of nation’s finances, our legislators sought the easy way out by accepting periodic handouts from the presidency. Some went even further to compromise the institution they represent by soliciting for and receiving funds, to which they are not entitled, from the presidency. These same lawmakers often turn around and blame others for teleguiding their affairs through the backdoor.
The nation’s judiciary has not recovered from the state of somnolence in which it was immersed throughout the high-handed rule of military strongmen. Traditionally, the judiciary tends to take a backseat in the day-to-day management of affairs of the nation. The judiciary functions more like an umpire that ensures that citizens as well as all the other arms of government abide by the spirit of the constitution. The sloth in our jurisprudence poses little challenge to the nation’s apex court because it takes almost forever for disputed cases to wind their way up to the Supreme Court. For the past 3 years, the only issue of substance that the Nigerian Supreme Court has dealt with is the controversial judgment on control of offshore resources by littoral states. The judiciary should have been of unique help to those who question the constitutionality of introducing the Sharia legal systems in some Northern states. If we had a vibrant judiciary, many citizens would have had the opportunity to use the legal framework to address aspects of this vexatious matter. In absence of such facility, the often utilized recourse is raw politics, with all its attendant deleterious consequences.
There is too much hot air in the National Assembly at the moment revolving around the desire of members of the legislature to impeach the incumbent Head of State. Many reasons have been proffered for their choice of action but the most outstanding appears to be the President’s reluctance to dispense yearly expenditure as delineated in the approved budgetary allocations for the period. Other charges on alleged presidential malfeasance included the use of the Army to quell civil unrests in Odi and Zaki Biam as well as spurious monetary transfers in Nigeria’s foreign bank accounts. The National Assembly members have the constitutional right to maintain an oversight over all aspects of national governance on behalf of the electorate who sent them to Abuja as lawmakers. More important, legislators are supposed to make new and imaginative laws that will help to ensure that the best interest of the average citizen is protected at all times. Most would agree that the issues raised by the leadership of the National Assembly in highlighting inadequacies in the nation’s Chief Executive are relevant and consistent with its constitutional role. It is, however, disingenuous for the lawmakers to come to the far-reaching conclusion that impeaching the President is the best way to carry out this aspect of their duty to the electorate. Most would agree that impeachment ought to be the end of a road in any legislative enquiry, not the beginning.
Lack of specific information about lawmakers’ charges makes it extremely difficult for the average citizen to arrive at any judgment as to the culpability or innocence of the accused. This writer had a chance encounter with one of the committee chairmen of the House of Representatives recently during which the subject of reported threat of presidential impeachment came up. It was amazing to listen through this honorable gentleman’s animated lecture on the iniquities of the Obasanjo administration. His disdain for the incumbent Head of State transcended the latter’s official functions to encompass trivialities that were obviously inconsequential to the core charges that his colleagues were planning to bring against the President. I was flabbergasted when he opined that the situation in which the presidency has plunged the country was so dire that the only redeeming force would be summary removal of President Obasanjo from office by any means, including a military coup d’etat. The legislator belongs to the same party with the President. The thread that links all his remarks was the unwillingness of the Head of State to release funds as well as his penchant for awarding contracts and patronage to his people and lackeys. It was obvious, by listening to the lawmaker, that Obasanjo’s romance with international travels was a major irritant to legislators who feel that such profligacy was orchestrated at their expense, in particular, because they are always handicapped with shortage of operational funds.
The National Assembly, by threatening to impeach the President, is actually alerting the nation that their members have come to their wits’ end. The legislators have obviously failed woefully to justify all the expense made so far to keep them at Abuja, at taxpayers’ expense, for the past 3 years. It is hard to see how pointing accusing fingers at the presidency would be enough to exculpate them from being labeled as incompetent legislators. President Obasanjo has myriad of problems, so do the lawmakers, particularly the National Assembly leadership. If their clamor to impeach the President prevailed, then some of us would like to know when the lawmakers themselves will face their own judgment day. The way our honorable representatives bandy about the notion of impeachment clearly shows that even the members of our National Assembly don’t really comprehend the constitutional system under which this political dispensation operates. Most would agree that impeachment, by itself, is more of a political process than judicial one. The National Assembly needs to make its case before the public at large before taking on the presidency since the two institutions derive their mandates from different segments of the polity. Presidential mandate is derived at the national level while members of the National Assembly represent their specified constituencies.
Someone needs to make it clear to members of the National Assembly that gross incompetence on the part of the Head of State is not a reason to invoke the impeachment powers entrusted to them by the nation’s constitution. An incompetent President shall have his chance to face the electorate at the termination of his mandate if he desires to ask for a new tenure in office. The same renewal of mandate awaits the honorable members of the House and Senators too. What makes the members of the National assembly feel that they have a special right to preempt the electorate’s chore of deciding who stays or is removed from office? After more than 2 centuries of operating their version of presidential democracy, the US Congress has wielded the impeachment tool against an incumbent President only twice. If our National assembly is allowed to have its way at this very first outing, only heaven knows how many more episodes of impeachment will await Nigeria’s future Heads of State before our brand of democracy hits the quarter-century mark. It is clear to see that the National Assembly has missed the mark by a wide margin. Our elected representatives need to be called to order before they drift further afield. It is pertinent here to ask whose interests they think that they are serving by utilizing these types of puerile pranks and gimmicks in attending to their solemn duties. This joke is no longer funny and must be terminated before the murky political waters of Nigeria become further sullied by this impeachment craze.
A cursory overview of the allegations of presidential impropriety as itemized by members of the National Assembly shows that those charges lack merit as compelling reasons for seeking a major disruption in national governance. Fiscal responsibility and proper management of the country’s financial resources must be preeminent in the mind of whoever is the ultimate gatekeeper of the national vault. An import-dependent economy like ours cannot afford to engage in unrestrained minting and spending of our local currency at drop of the hat. It is fact that the Chief Executive is bound by law to disburse approved funds as allocated in the annual budget. But it is equally important that whoever controls the nation’s purse strings must show sensitivity to the pressure that that the national currency faces at all times against the currencies of creditor nations from where the bulk of our essential imports originate. From my vantage point, the issue should not be just making perfunctory annual budgetary allocations. Our National Assembly and the presidency must begin to collaborate in imaginative ways to create more efficient conduits for channeling our scarce resources so as to create new jobs while improving crucial aspects of the economy like the communications infrastructure, for example. If the presidency is clearly the obdurate partner in such an endeavor, members of the National Assembly should take their agenda to the public realm in order to pressure the executive arm of government to play ball or else.
The executive President of Nigeria is also the Commander-in-Chief of the nation’s armed forces. The deployment of units of the armed forces for both external and internal security of the country is part of the job description of the office. It makes sense for the presidency to seek support of the National Assembly and the public at large before any major deployment of the armed forces outside Nigeria’s sovereign territory for obvious reasons. The charge that President Obasanjo erred by deploying the army to assist the Nigeria Police in restoring order in parts of Bayelsa and Benue states makes little sense. The army was clearly deployed to those areas to assist the Nigeria Police which was confronted with situations that it was ill-equipped to handle. Could the alternative course of action have been to convene a national debate on whether to send military re-enforcement to assist in restoring order as well as protect lives and properties of innocent citizens who are often entrapped in such major upheavals? What if there is a filibuster by any contending side in the ensuing debate? The maintenance of internal security requires prompt and resolute action in order to avert disaster and possible greater crisis. President Obasanjo may be faulted if there is any misapplication of his powers as the Commander-in-Chief. The National Assembly could make its case more substantive if such abuse of powers were evident during the referenced incidents.
The politics behind the current impeachment craze in the National Assembly should not escape anyone’s attention. President Obasanjo has since declared his intent to seek another term of office in the 2003 general elections. Up till date, there appears to be no visible credible threat to his chances of securing a renomination by his party, the PDP. Could it then be that the impeachment threat is an indirect way of scuttling Obasanjo’s second-term bid now that it is obvious that his defeat during the party primaries is unlikely if conventional politics of the PDP is allowed to play itself out? This question is relevant since the bulk of the members of the National Assembly pushing for the President’s impeachment belong to the same PDP. If the above scenario is the case, one could assert that the PDP legislators in the National Assembly are indeed trying to orchestrate a kind of non-military coup d’etat. If the incumbent President’s ways are too bad and inimical to national survival and interests, why should the PDP legislators in the National Assembly not pool their weight together to ensure that Obasanjo will lose out in his bid to secure his party’s nomination since the primaries are due in only a few months from now? Nigerians will continue to have an aversion to any new military coup d’etat for the foreseeable future. In like manner, any legislative coup d’etat must equally be forcefully repudiated.
I tend to agree with the viewpoint that this impeachment brouhaha is nothing more than an internal PDP squabble gone wild and out of control. Nigerians must not allow the average citizen to be taken hostage by any political party. The PDP must demonstrate that it has control over the politicians that it sponsors for political offices at all levels of government or be rejected resoundingly in the upcoming general elections. There are reports that the PDP is now attempting to handle the impeachment fracas in-house. Whatever the outcome of this exercise, the average Nigerian must have a chance to register his disgust with the ruling party that has not only failed to perform but also has thrust upon the polity a bunch of incoherent and dissonant politicians at such a critical juncture of our collective history. President Obasanjo has openly declared his intent to seek another term at Aso Rock. If the PDP endorses his candidacy again, then the 2003 general elections must be seen as the vote of confidence for his type of leadership and the competence of the party that fronts him. It is the prerogative of the electorate to make that determination through the ballot box a few months from now. In the meantime, the PDP must endeavor to rein in its runaway legislators in the National Assembly whose antics are aimed at depriving the average Nigerian of his constitutional right to choose who will become the next executive Head of State of Nigeria in 2003.
OKENWA R. NWOSU, M.D.
Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
U.S.A.