Is the President Really that Vulnerable?
By
Mike Ikhariale
In this critical season of impeachment and general recrimination in the land, it is perhaps apt that we pause for a moment to ask the question: How vulnerable is President Olusegun Obasanjo or any Nigerian democratically elected president for that matter? This question arose simply because of late, the man presently at Aso Rock has become the punching bag of every five kobo politician, especially those who think that it is time already for the man whom they had thought was theirs for a zombie-like remote control manipulation to vacate the office they offered him ex gratia in May 1999? Is it to prove that they are indeed the sovereign kingmakers of Nigeria – the powers to anoint and dethrone any one at will or what? Even if indeed they are in such a position, is the impeachment mechanism the most appropriate one available to them? Time will tell.
For reasons of objectivity, let me, ab initio, make my personal position clear. Like most other concerned Nigerians, I do not have great respect for the current National Assembly. This is due largely to its extremely low moral credentials and the gross inefficiency and unpatriotic disposition it has manifested right from its inauguration. I am not too sure I have any reason to hold the President in any greater respect either. But this is a time that calls for our capacity to see beyond the haze of personal interests, ideological posturing or convenient name-calling and try and make sense out of the nonsense. This is the time to stand for ones beliefs about a united Nigeria because if we do not handle this matter with the diligence it deserves, my fear is that we may all live to regret its aftermath like the ancient spectators in the Roman amphitheaters who cheered their gladiators to their death and by implication, their Empire, to its ultimate ruin. I am pretty sure that many others also see the logical endgame of this mounting imbroglio.
I have sufficiently made the point that, under the constitution, any president can be impeached 1) if the situation calls for it and 2) if the opportunity is right and 3) if national interests, rather than petty ego clash, justify it. I am glad that inspite of the obviously infantile infatuation with the impeachment process by some myopic merchants of hate and intolerance in the country, certain well meaning citizens have also been sounding some warning notes over the overtly presumptuous stance of some politicians and their cronies who have arrogated to themselves the private ownership of the country. One of the elements in their obnoxious claim is the power to decide who becomes a president in Nigeria and who continues to remain so even after inauguration. These people talk and do things without any thought about how such arrogant dispositions resonate with the rest of us. From all indications, they just don’t care about how you and I feel about this obvious insult on our collective nationality and its implications on the integrity of the nation. They gleefully make it plain that political powers belong to them and anyone who seeks it must recognize that fact and worship at their altar of power.
It is this kind of reasoning that made some people to arrogate to themselves the sole responsibility of installing Obasanjo over the rest of Nigeria and had in fact gone as far as accusing their previously ‘anointed son’ of ungratefulness and for daring to veer off the narrow subservient path which defines the scope of his obligations to those ‘who made him president’ as if the rest of Nigeria is their private fiefdom. I should have thought that a president is more culpable under the law about how he offends the entire nation than how he has offended a few people because the obligations of the president to uphold the constitution must be that which will benefit the entire nation as against that of a very narrow special interest which has assume the annoying responsibility of thinking for the rest of us. Many people tend to think that Speaker Na Abba and his men are only the voice and that the hands actually lay elsewhere; none of which really care about respect for the constitution, which they are now holding up as a facade for their hidden agenda. Again, time will tell.
What ever may be the truth in all of these theories, our worry is that in the morbid and hasty attempt to bring down the President whom they have routinely boasted that they alone created, they have unwittingly polarized the country along ethnic and sectarian lines, thereby elevating the persona of the former chicken farmer to a much higher pedestal over and above what was imaginable for him only a few months ago. In this their nefarious exercise, the political party system, the national interest and the image of Nigerian do not feature in their calculus of vendetta. While it is true that legislators from all corners of Nigeria were involved in the impeachment plot, an unfortunate indelible ethnic dimension has now been introduced into the debate, which, no doubt, will vitiate the momentum and ultimate direction of the whole drama. Given the nature of our divisive politics, it is most likely that not many who showed initial enthusiasm over the matter would be able to identify with it to the end, especially now that election is around the corner and party nomination remains one of the very high hurdles some of them would have to pass and the position each person takes now would no doubt be a remarkable factor in the re-nomination bid.
I noticed that it has suddenly become convenient allegorizing Abacha and Obasanjo as being complementary sides of the same coin featuring Hausa/Fulani versus the Yoruba in the contest of who among these groups are the better managers of national affairs. The multitude of rabid ethnicists now on the prowl fail to understand that while Abacha’s rulership was anchored on brute force and falsehood, that of Obasanjo, as faulty and burdensome as it may now be for us, is supposedly anchored on a democratic foundation that embodies the will of those who voted him to power – the electorate. What we have now is definitely not the outcome of our democractic aspiration, but it is certainly a step forward from military dictatorship and all its attendant deficiencies.
The reality that no one group can validly claim to have “made a president” in a pluralistic society like Nigeria takes the wind out of the sail of those who would think that it is only what they decide for the country that holds. The truth is that what could not be made by one group alone can not be destroyed by another group all by itself. The troubles now besetting the Obasanjo regime is therefore better rationalized as one which is contrived within the framework of intra-class intolerance, greed, myopism and a deficient style on the part of the president himself as against the current ethnic and sectarian dimensions that have been smuggled into the debate by those who desperately want the man to go and those who do not want him to go. From all indications, this only proves that those currently fomenting troubles do not quite understand the deep consensual and fragile foundations upon which the nation’s social order is established. They still think in the illusory mode of some God forsaken conquistadors: “Mr. President, ya time is time up, pack and go!” Is it that simple?
I have heard those who think that because it was possible for an NPN-controlled legislature in Kaduna to impeach Gov. Balarabe Musa of the PRP in the second republic, it should also be easy to do the same thing at the national level. That is a capital error that must not be allowed to fester because the consequences of the mistake would be seismic. First, Obasanjo is not Balarabe Musa. One was a state governor; the other a national president with an eye on a second term. Second, Balarabe Musa was impeached by his fellow Hausa/Fulanis who were both inhabitants of Kaduna State and of the same religious family. Thirdly, principles hardly play any part in our current political process, so, we do not have much of rational or ideological platforms on which we make our political judgments. It is therefore impossible to agree on what is right and on what is wrong on the political arena as we habitually wear different convenient political masks while the instinct of survival and the intra-group predatory instincts propel our real motives more than the need for order and social justice for the whole.
More importantly, let us not forget that but for the support of the Shagari-led federal might weighing heavily in support of the Kaduna confusionists that wanted Balarabe Musa out, it would never had been possible. Beside, the weapon of Ghana-must-go was not yet in vogue then, and even if it were so, the poor and radical PRP governor simply did not have the material wherewithal and the political might to resist the centrally propelled hate-filled partisan political tsunami that hit him. Not so with Obasanjo. Even at that, it has since been revealed that the injustice of the Balarabe ouster partially led to the premature demise of that republic. At the end of the day, history records that both Balarabe Musa and those who impeached him were all to be thrown out of the political scene for a period in excess of 15 years by the military. Would it have been better if they had played it responsibly then instead of having their way on the impeachment gamble only to be rendered politically unemployed for that long? Well, you can make your own assessment of the scenario.
Those who are calling for the president’s unconditional removal, maliciously or genuinely, do not seem to understand that they are more vulnerable, in the final analysis than the ‘bad man’ they are trying hard to pull down. In terms of political mathematics, something which could be turned into a deadly political force, the office of the President is the kinetic equivalence of 36 governors plus the aggregate of the members of the two houses of the National Assembly because the possible electoral votes needed to elect a Nigerian president could easily go round for the election of all the other offices put together. So, those who have been spinning casually about the ease of impeachment must think twice and ask themselves why is it that in the more than 200 years of American constitutional history, that the impeachment process that we have copied has only been applied twice with one success (Nixon) who has just lost a major war in Vietnam while the other failed to unseat the president (Clinton) who even went on for a second term.
There is also the rather naive references being forcefully made to the ignominious exit of Okadigbo from the office of the Senate President and that of Salisu Buhari from the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives as the operational precedents for the success of impeachment in this dispensation? In both cases, these geographically zoned offices where conveniently refilled with members form the fallen officers homestead. So if Senator Okadigo replaced Senator Ewerem and Okadigbo is further thrown out for Senator Ayim, all Igbos, who cares? The same logic holds if a Kano homeboy, Ghali Na’Abba, fortuitously inherits the fallen mantle of his fellow Kano kin, Buhari. But it would be a different matter, for example, if you were to remove an Igbo speaker and replace him with an Edo man and vice versa. Not many people would readily understand the prevalence of that constitutional arrangement in the event of a president vacating office, which prescribes that the vice-president, steps in.
Those who think Obasanjo symbolizes their own idea of ‘power shit’ are bound to want to have their own ‘son of the soil’ on the saddle to complete their unexhausted term. Since possession is half the law, how do we expect these people “whose turn” is it in the ‘leadership conveyor belt’ of Nigeria to go down quietly? If 1962-64 is any guide, I think there is something to ponder about here. In any case, do we have a stand-by Yoruba man, another spineless Shonekan, willing and able to complete Obasanjo’s term, assuming indeed the impeachment were to succeed? Certainly not, at least constitutionally, and this reality must necessarily moderate the temper of the hawks, because not all that glitters is gold.
One thing should be made abundantly clear. That is the fact that any president, including Obasanjo, can be impeached because that is the stipulation of the constitution. But it is well beyond the prescription of the constitution to want to impeach a president on wholly trump up charges or on the basis of basically fraudulent accusations and intra-elite treachery or political vendetta. Only people who are insincere with the situation on the ground or do not understand its full ramifications that would want to push the point that there are any valid and sufficient constitutional bases so far articulated for the impeachment of the president. Until that it is done, many of us shall continue to hold the impeachment matter with a great deal of contempt.
I tend to agree with the President, at least on this matter, and for a different reason though, that the whole impeachment talk is a bad joke carried too far because that is what it is. Obasanjo may be incompetent and crude, even brash, but these are not legitimate allegations upon which impeachment charges are based. It requires something of grave moral turpitude, a gross violation of the constitution which touches on the substratum of the constitutional order such as planning to unlawfully destroy the very principles upon which the federation is established such as federalism, constitutional democracy, etc., or other acts of grave moral infamy like the collection of bribes and the subversion of the constitutional process mala fide. None of these, I regret to say, is yet in the card.
Nigerians were expecting to see serious charges about how the President refused to allow the legislators to make laws that were intended to enable us produce more foods for the starving people; how he has obstructed the passage of laws that would create more jobs for the millions of unemployed Nigeria or how much of Nigeria’s money he has secretly stashed away abroad, etc., etc. None of these. That these guys expect the nation to accept, issues that are only inconveniencing to them and their personal interests as “constitutional misconduct” for which section 143 would be evoked must be a classical case of the abuse of the legislative process. Those who devised the impeachment and recall processes intended them to be used as a means, an instrument of last resort, for sanitizing the constitutional process whenever there are horrendous abuses, the so-called High Crimes and not as an instrument for inter-departmental political maneuverings by ill-motivated legislators. The paramount consideration should always be what is in the national interest and, quite unfortunately, no one has been able to prove that to me beyond the litany of how much uncooperative and tactless the president is.
All the counts so far marshaled against the president as the bases for the impeachment move by those who want this nation to degenerate into an empire of hate and bitterness can be readily reduced to one big charge, namely - money, money and money! They say the man has been too stingy with public funds. They want to run the budget by themselves, demands that are by themselves flagrant subversions of the constitution. That is what they want to impeach the president over. In search for justifications, they say the man invaded Odi, when indeed they all clapped for him then while others cried foul. Odi people and other victims of the brutal abuses of police/military powers in Nigeria are wise enough to know that they are being attacked a second time by the legislators who now want to use their misfortune to fuel their ill-fated mission. Odi people have no friends in the National Assembly because they have cried for legislative intervention all this while without any response. To now list Odi as a ground for impeachment shows that these people have no legitimate reason for their nefarious enterprise. What laws have they passed to remedy the Odi havoc all these years? What is the position of the national legislators on Resources Control and Revenue Allocation Formula, Off Shore oil exploration, internal Self-determination, etc., over which Odi people and other communities are being needlessly massacred by the government?
Holding the nation hostage just to fulfill the evil design of a few people is not what should amuse Nigerians and the civilized world in general. The moment some opinionists started to justify the whole impeachment project as designed to prove that indolence and incompetence are not an exclusive preserve of some people, then it became apparent, that rather than Obasanjo been rattled, or diminished in the process, they were indeed strengthening his hands in the so-called contest between “good and evil”, a titanic “clash of civilizations”, apologies to President Bush. Now, if indeed impeachment was possible, it is quite likely that the last and devastating card Obasanjo would pull out is that of ethnicity and sectional/sectarian persecution because that escape valve has been unwittingly opened to him by those who have reduced impeachment to the status of a tool for inter-ethnic warfare.
How does one explain the fact that it is the same National Assembly that wants Obasanjo impeached for what they maliciously termed “breaches of the constitution” that has just passed a motion designed to “pardon” their members who were found guilty of the high crimes of defrauding the people of Nigeria by unconstitutionally invading the national treasury and criminally dipping their hands into the till? A thief is a thief whether he is in the National Assembly or he is a robber on the highway. These people rather than dutifully uphold the national constitution and their oaths of office, and chastise themselves have opted to do the most despicable of all acts of unconstitutionality by purporting to pardon themselves of crimes against the Republic. Is that not usurping the sovereign power of the people of Nigeria on whose behalf they are supposed to be acting? Is that is not simply like playing God? If that is not an institutional disgrace, nothing again will be. These are the same people now mounting the high moral horse to condemn Obasanjo whose crime, inter alia, as far as they are deeply concerned, is that he has not allowed them a free-for-all access to the national treasury. People who could not remove the log lodged sorely in their eyes are evilly busying themselves to remove the dust in another man one's eye. What a piece of hypocrisy.
Like the old-time equity, those who want to impeach the president must come with clean hands. It will be nothing but a travesty of justice if legislators that are as corrupt to the marrow as the ones currently in Abuja should be adjudicating on another arm of government about probity. How on earth can a Senate that shamelessly “pardoned” its members “in the interests of reconciliation” who stole public money and were caught red-handed, tried and subsequently found guilt summon the moral courage to ever want to impeach a president for offenses that they alone contrived? I have always thought that the prerogative of mercy, the only constitutional power to pardon in Nigeria is exclusively reserved by Section 175 of the same constitution these legislators love to cite, to the President. Is this act of the senate is not itself a flagrant violation of the constitution?
Who can issue pardon in Nigeria is not in doubt but since our lawmakers have already embarked on the slippery path of lawlessness, they have thus usurped the lawful prerogative of the president and are purportedly pardoning themselves of their iniquities. Nigeria! If there is anything to learn from this drama, it is that some of our legislators are shameless people. Do they think Nigerians are all fools?
Kampeism aside, Obasanjo must be like a wounded lion. You don’t have to be a professional hunter in the African forest to know that wounded lions are not the best of companies. Many people do not seem to know that under the Constitution, the President of the Federation is, by virtue of section 305 (f), vested with the ominous power of “preemptive strike” to issue a proclamation of a state of emergency if among other things, it appear to him that there is any public danger which clearly constitutes a threat to the existence of the Federation and, of course, his government. He alone, under the law, knows what that “danger” could be. The only political force a president dares not ignore in Nigeria is that of the People, the electorate, on whose choice his presidency depends.
When Obafemi Awolowo criticized the presidential system of government in 1978 as being the very creation of an “imperial presidency” whose powers is so enormous and overbearing that we might have to pull off our shoes to approach him, many people thought that the late sage did not know what he was saying. While we count on the personal restraint of the president to allow sleeping dogs lie, it is also quite possible that he decides to run over his tormentors with the mammoth presidential machine. The constitution as we have now does make provisions for an ‘intimidated president’ or one who will be humbled by a vote of no confidence, no matter how legitimately derived. These are aspects of the constitution that must be revisited if we are not going to always have a Leviathan at Aso Rock. We only hope that a president does not have to do that because force without any moral authority is the very definition of dictatorship even though, by and large, the present system is nothing but a constitutional dictatorship.
Of course, those who still continue to put on the lenses of the Parliamentary system of government to analyze our ongoing presidential system are bound to continue to see a roving and rampaging monster in the presidency. And it will remain so until we have the courage to restructure the constitution from essentially a military document to a truly legitimate democratic document which should sufficiently reflects the Will of the People.
The last point we must make is that all those who think it is that easy to impeach a president who has not seen the need to go home yet under the present constitution must think again. That may be easy in the Westminster system while a vote of no confidence carry grave political consequences for the office holder. Under the presidential system, however, it is more or less a termly contractual affair, which is re-newable at each election season. Therefore, best way to get rid of our failing president is to vote him out at the next election. That would also be more salutary in the process of developing a culture of constitutionalism in our polity than the bumpy rise which impeachment process is all about. One good thing we must also do is to amend our constitution to limit the presidential term to one of a single 5 or 6 years. That we obviate the currently succession impossibility that threatens our common good. Looking for shortcuts as those now working the impeachment machine overtime are doing is only agonizing an already bemused nation.
A National Assembly like the one we have now has lost the moral and ethical rights right to want to censor a misbehaving president because those who come to equity must come with clean hands, more so, to the court of the People. If anyone thinks that a sitting president could be a vulnerable clay pigeon, as those currently pushing the impeachment cart seem to think, it is clearly mistaken. And a very costly one at that. Good luck to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.