Destroying the Last Hope of the Common Man in Nigeria

By

Dr. Wunmi Akintide

WUMIONE@aol.com

 

In "periscoping" the world today, I want to explore the very essence and foundation of orderliness in every civilized society. I am talking about the Rule of Law and the place of the Judiciary of every nation in making that happen. I don't have to be a learned man with a wig and gown to express this opinion. Nigeria is the only country we have, and we must do everything in our power to protect her as good citizens. 

 

The presidential system we have now, or the defunct Westminster model Nigeria had before, were all predicated on the Rule of Law as practiced in the United States or in Great Britain. If you discount the Rule of Law in those two countries, everything else falls apart. That is precisely why the most fundamental acid test for any one who would be President in America or a Prime Minister in Britain  is to respect the Rule of Law in and out of office. Whether or not a President or a Prime Minister is adjudged good or bad is all tied to how much the individual has defied or respected the Rule of Law. The Law should be no respecter of persons, and every citizen, high or low, should reserve the right to know they are equally protected, come rain or shine.

 

President Richard Nixon could easily have gone down in American History as a great President, but for his role in the Watergate scandal . His Napoleonic fall from grace to grass was determined by his deliberate attempt to break the Law and to cause individuals working for him to do the same in the name of executive privilege. The beauty of America and why America is so different from a developing country like Nigeria, was that America is blessed with individuals who believe that their first loyalty is to their nation, first and foremost, and not to the President who appointed them.

 

Richard Nixon's Attorney-general during the Watergate scandal had found himself on a collision course with his President when he refused to go along with what Richard Nixon was asking him to do to cover his behind. The man had adamantly refused to play ball and was ready to resign from the job in a heartbeat. In the end it was the President himself that had to be forced to resign when he could no longer take the heat. Once again the Rule of Law  triumphed and the nation and the union were the better for it. Nigeria as a nation must learn useful lessons from the episode and take necessary steps to protect our Judiciary and insist on the separation of powers for the ultimate benefit of our people, most especially the downtrodden and the less privileged in our country.

 

Based on that prism alone, I would totally agree with General Theophillus Danjuma, the right hand man of Obasanjo  and one of the brains behind his second coming, when he defiantly declared in a recent lecture that President Obasanjo's Government was a total failure. In doing so, the General did not spare himself. He admitted he was a part of that Government and did not exonerate himself from blame because he was Obasanjo's Defense Minister for all of Obasanjo first term and for much of his second term. What was important was that the General did serve the President notice time and again he wanted to bail out, but was persuaded to stay on against his better judgment. He finally pulled out before the end of their second term and he has been speaking up ever since, because all that is needed for evil to triumph, is for good people to see evil, and look the other way.

 

The General did not do that and he paid a heavy price for that as the Emperor turned against him with vengeance revoking his license for some of the oil blocks already assigned to his Company before the President came on board. The whole idea was to clip Danjuma's wings and to put the General in a box, so to speak to keep him quiet. Obasanjo broke the Law again by using the powers of his office to wreak vengeance, oppress and intimidate people who have had the effrontery or courage to disagree with him either openly or behind closed doors. In many ways, President Obasanjo was an outlaw who frequently broke the Law and he believed that the Judiciary and the Legislature were there to do his biddings. We all can recall the number of times he had to defrock the Senate President or have the Speaker of the House sent parking for refusing to dance to his tune. He frequently took out provisions he did not like in bills sent out to him for signature without the courtesy of letting the Legislature know what he has done. He believes he has the power to do that because his name is Obasanjo. 

 

Obasanjo was a disaster in that regard in and out of office. He is disaster out of office because even though he is no longer President today, he has managed, while in office, to get the one Party system he has forced on the nation to wily nilly anoint him as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the PDP as the outgoing President. He wanted to be in a position where he would continue to micro manage and exercise far more powers than the incumbent President by putting the new President in a box, from the "get go".

 

If anyone ever doubted that Obasanjo had never wanted to leave office, to begin with, the way he has positioned himself after losing his disgraceful third term bid, is a clear vindication of those who fought him to a standstill on his ambition and plan to stay put on the pretence he wanted to complete the reforms he had started, forgetting that his mandate had a time frame. His pretence was a smoking mirror.

 

The nation now knows, for a fact, why Obasanjo did not want to leave office, and why he could not stand the prospects of another Party defeating the PDP despite its tragic and abysmal record of performance as a Party all out to ruin the nation while serving their own selfish interest. Can you imagine 31 Governors out of 36 being under one cloud of investigation or another under Obasanjo? It was a show of shame as the Alamis of this world, the Iboris of this world, the Dariyes of this world and the Orji Uzor Kalus and so many others who came to office riding on the coattail of the PDP, were all exposed as plundering  their States, putting all their state allocation from the Federal into their own pockets, and pretending that all is well.

 

I can tell you that the few of the PDP Governors who were rigged back into office on April 14, 2007 including our own Agagu in Ondo State, are equally as guilty, if not more guilty than those already convicted. Blessed are those whose sins are covered. Many of those Governors were hell bent on rigging their ways back into office, by all means, because they wanted to continue to enjoy their undeserved and reckless immunity from prosecution which is the "fons et origo" of dishonesty and corruption in Nigeria till tomorrow. They all had enough money to bribe Professor Iwu and his gangsters who conducted those elections with active support of the Police which the whole nation knows is irredeemably corrupt and useless. 

 

Obasanjo knew it going in as President for 8 years but he decided to look the other way. Not once did he craft or sponsor a bill to a Legislature heavily controlled by his own ruling Party both at the federal and state levels. All that it needed to change that obnoxious provision in our military crafted and smuggled 1999 Constitution was just the will power to do so. But President Obasanjo would not touch the provision with a ten foot pole because he himself was as corrupt as they come, and he wanted to hide under his messianic pretences  as  a foremost believer in keeping Nigeria one, and as the best thing to ever happen to Nigeria since the amalgamation in 1914.

 

In Obasanjo's mind and psyche, he is really above the Law in Nigeria because without him the nation could not have survived the Biafran War talk less of reaching the end of the last Millennium

 

Obasanjo working in tandem with some of his die hard supporters have always tried to sidetrack the law many times. He is beginning to do it again by trying to teleguide Yar Adua and by encouraging Andy Uba, the defrocked Governor of Anambra to believe that the last verdict of the Supreme Court. with regard to the re-instatement of Governor Obi, can still be reviewed, and set aside. The pretender Governor Uba passionately believes it could be done, if the price is right. He is prepared to spend billions of his ill-gotten gains from Obasanjo's patronage, to finance the project, bribe current members of the Supreme Court who are open or willing to dance to his tune. Only in Nigeria would a case that has been decided by the highest Court in the land be made subject again to a review  like the one being sought by Andy Uba and his cohorts. Unbelievable! Andy Uba is able to do that because no question is being asked as to the source of his present wealth, because Obasanjo would not allow a sacred cow to be so humiliated.

 

Few people will take it past Obasanjo who, in his total disregard for the Rule of Law, has many times refused to implement Court decisions that did not favor his Government or position. He did it when he refused to fund the 20 new Local Governments legitimately created under the rule of law by Governor Ahmed Tinubu. Obasanjo simply refused to let the Accountant-general release the revenues due to Lagos State because he did not like the Court verdict. He simply sat on the money and refused to budge. In more civilized societies what he did was egregious enough to earn him an impeachment, but Obasanjo got away with it, because he was running a one party dictatorship at the federal level and in many of the states controlled by his PDP.

 

The same Obasanjo had no qualms declaring a public holiday on a day that a Court would have sat to render a verdict he did not like or welcome. He simply returned to his military and dictatorial mode and caused the whole nation to take a hike or go a public holiday  on a pretence that he wanted voters to be able to travel to their homes and states of origin for the purpose of casting their votes in an election that he knew was going to be rigged anyway. The results of how many votes each candidate was going to get was already decided long before the first vote was cast. Obasanjo knew that, and the whole nation knows it now.

 

Right now a new whirlwind of change that could potentially change the dynamics of the verdicts of the various election Tribunals across the nation, has just taken off in Ado Ekiti of all places. It is a very powerful trend to watch. A judge has just ruled that forensic experts should be allowed to test the validity and the identity of all of the thumb-printed ballots papers used in the April 14 governorship election in Ekiti State.

 

That, to me, was Daniel come to judgment. The AC candidate Dr. Fayemi who strongly believed he won that election, has had a few pictures of some overzealous traditional rulers and political operatives in Ekiti having ballot papers thrum-printed in their Palaces or homes and having ballot boxes stuffed in favor of the ruling Party. That was a serious charge that no serious Court of Law can overlook. Even though the PDP counsel had tried to dissuade the Court from ordering a forensic examination of those ballots to determine whether or not a good number of them were thumb-printed by the same person, in their rush to blatantly rig elections in Ekiti State or in deed in other states of Nigeria where allegations of massive election rigging have been alleged, and are now subject to litigation nation-wide.

 

Whatever verdict comes out of Ekiti becomes binding in other states of Nigeria based on the "Case Law" precept. If forensic examination is allowed in Ekiti State, it cannot be denied in Ondo, Edo, Osun, Katsina, Kogi. Bornu, Kano, Delta, Bayelsa  and other places. Maurice Iwu and President Obasanjo and Yar Adua who have  pleaded that INEC has conducted the most credible elections in the History of Nigeria, might now have to swallow their own vomit, so to speak, when the rubber meets the road. It is a development that cannot be swept under the carpet. The only danger I see is that the forensic experts, if they are Nigerians, are also subject to bribe and corruption that could see them making false predictions or analysis. But that a Court would rule in favor of having  some forensic experts look at the ballots is a step in the right direction.

  I guess my point is that the Judiciary has remained the last hope of the common man, if it will live the true meaning of its creed under Chief Justice Kutigi  who has so far offered a dynamic and dedicated leadership by standing firm and maintaining his independence and the separation of Powers which is so sacred under our democratic system of Government. If the Judiciary fails in our country, nothing else matters. The whole edifice is going to fall like a pack of cards.

 

That is why our new President, despite the sword of Damocles hanging over his neck, is going to have to stand firm and stop being the Flip-Flopper-in-Chief  he has become in the last few weeks as he tried to defrock the EFCC by putting it under his Attorney General or by his hobnobbing with discredited ex-Governors who have been indicted and some of them found guilty and convicted of money laundering and heartless corruption and blatantly breaking the law to enrich themselves and their supporters across the board.

 

Yar Adua has lately been sending the wrong messages about his goal and intention for our country. If he does not want to be condemned into the garbage heap of history like his anointer and kingmaker, he must recognize that the Rule of Law is about the last hope of our country. He must steer clear of manipulating the Judiciary or letting any of his hatchet men do so in his name. He must resist the attempts by people in his big- for-nothing Party to destroy the last hope of the common man in our country.

  I rest my case.

Dr Wunmi Akintide