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Yar’adua Has Separated The Reality From The Slogan On Rule Of Law By Barriter Aloy Ejimakor
Since the inception of organized constitutional democracy that brought government by dialog, nations and their leaders have tended to deploy plain old hypes, clichés or slogans as selling points aimed at igniting and sustaining public consciousness. Repeated often enough, slogans or the like help to psyche lackadaisical citizens and prepare them to accept difficult public policy shifts necessary to making a clean break from business as usual and prime the nation to embrace new cultural paradigms that a she must pass through to endure and prosper. One hazards that slogans worked, primarily because the words they bear are so hip and disarming that any coinage contrary to their meaning and import can only be laughable, if not downright bizarre. Another reason is that the nation or locale has come to such a sorry pass in that particular stage in its history that it has no other option than to embrace the radical message embodied in the that slogan if it must thrive as a dynamic entity. The key does not lie in the slogan but in measures employed to making it a reality. In motherland Nigeria of today, President Yar’Adua is making sure that Nigerians will not as soon forget that ‘rule of law’ is not only the slogan of the moment but a real policy choice upon which Nigeria can no longer afford any further hesitation. History indicates that Yar’Adua is right and Nigeria stands to benefit to boot.
From pre-Emancipation America to Africa’s struggles to rid itself of colonialism, sloganeering was the new art form that propelled societies to act and engage on a course that changed attitudes for good. Slogans were legion, attractive, and they often worked wonders. Desegregationist newspaper proprietors in America known then as pamphleteers, screamed the libertarian catchphrase: ‘desegregation now or never’ to whip up and help sustain America’s wavering interest in President Lincoln’s arduous anti-slavery or desegregationist agenda and as a subliminal incitement to blacks in the Jim Crow south to rise against their white slaveholders and racial supremacists. Later, Lincoln’s war effort against the Confederates succeeded more on that slogan than on any other that may have stressed the simultaneous need to prevail against rebellion and unify the colonies. Imagine the derision that would have greeted any attempt by the rebel south to coin the counter phrase: ‘segregation now and forever’. So, at the end, President Lincoln and his fellow Unionists carried the day with what most Americans had then been psyched to see as the only sensible thing to do at the moment. I figure that out of the many slogans bandied around at that time in America’s history, what might helped most to change America for good was the one that held promise of a desegregated continental United States, free from slavery and crass inequality between blacks and whites. A close second was the other one emanating from the first continental congress that declared that all men are created equal; or rule of law in so many words. Against the British, America’s push for emancipation was also beautifully wrapped around the slogan: give me liberty or give me death. Slogans or not, the important thing is that America did not rest on her oars on the vaunted temerity of slogans per se but actually went to war (or took other tangible measures) to prove that she meant business in taking them from mere public policy clichés or expressions of the popular will to making them a reality and a way of life.
Back home in colonial Nigeria, the rallying slogan of the time was ‘self-government’. It was so quaint that even songs were written with it and expectedly it prevailed against any colonialist slogan that purveyed the opposite connotation. Our nationalists made it real when Enahoro made a motion on the floor of the House for Nigeria’s independence, much to the admiration of Nigerians who have been successfully psyched by a robust anti-colonialism media not to accept anything less or in opposite. Today, an ordinary courtroom run-of-the mill but highly effectual slogan has been brought to bear on the mainstream polity by President Yar’Adua. Besides his many policy rollouts, mostly couched in simple slogans, the one that Yar’Adua loves most and which has taken root is ‘Rule of Law’. There is hardly any important public forum the President addresses without him lacing his speech with some reference to his iron-clad commitment to rule of law. And he does not do so with undue levity but with much gravity and poise. If it is the President’s intention (as a scientist) to psyche Nigerians to get used to this new order, he is succeeding because it is now hip for a vast majority of Nigerians to talk about rule of law as the most fundamental path to Nigeria’s redemption and match to modernity. From the talking heads on our morning television talk shows and Nigerian Diaspora internet discussion boards and blogs to the sidewalk parliaments or legislative chambers, one can see this admirable attitude on the part of Nigerians to be well disposed to the President’s prescriptions on rule of law. It is a win-win situation that is fast rising to a national groundswell. And the Supreme Court of Nigeria has risen to the occasion.
This is not the first time Nigerians or our previous governments have expressed a commitment to rule of law. But this is the first time Nigerians have seen a credible presidential effort geared to converting rule of law from a mere populist slogan to a cultural revolution of sorts. Therefore, the difference is that previous attempts failed to take hold because they remained mere slogans, sadly lacking in any bonafide and concrete measures on the party of the government of the time to make it a way of life for Nigerians and our institutions. Today, President Yar’Adua seems to have departed from that tradition as amply demonstrated by some of his actions to date. Think Yar’Adua’s executive order that enforced the Supreme Court ruling on Obi versus Uba to the letter, Attorney-General’s position on EFCC versus Orji Uzor Kalu, and the President’s admirable reluctance to intervene in, not to talk of manipulating the House contract scandal. In all of these situations, the President did not pussy-foot or leave anyone in doubt that he meant business and you don’t have to look far to notice the gathering diplomatic windfalls for Nigeria, coming from even the most cynical of nations.
Those who have been haranguing the President for some of his bold strides on making rule of law a reality may be doing so on the unawareness that there are precedents everywhere to support the President’s proactive mien. Again, in America, during the civil rights struggle, President Kennedy ordered the National Guard to enforce the controversial judgment of the US Supreme Court declaring segregation inherently unequal and unconstitutional in the United States. Kennedy used the National Guard because under the 11th Amendment to the US Constitution, Kennedy had no authority over the white-led police establishments in the states, most of which were at that time notoriously resistant to the new order. A non-serious or merely sloganeering Kennedy would have done nothing and still be able to take umbrage on some stretch of the constitutional restrictions found in the said 11th Amendment. And I reckon that Kennedy’s eagerness to enforce federal court orders energized activist US judges to dismantle an entire body of law comprised of America’s half a millennium official condonation of racism. Yar’Adua’s immediate order to the Inspector-General to enforce the judgment in Obi versus Uba is in pari materia to Kennedy’s rapid deployment of the National Guard to enforce court orders. No pun is intended by this writer to Dr. Uba or the Supreme Court since this matter is again subjudice. Yet, my guess is that Yar’Adua’s focused leadership on adherence to rule of law may be the new tunic that has emboldened the Nigerian Supreme Court to issue the recent ruling it did on Amaechi versus Omehia, if not for the many bold rulings issuing from the various Election Tribunals around the country. There is nothing that ignites a court to issue gutsy rulings on difficult questions of law than an executive branch led by a President standing at the ready to enforce those rulings even when some may be detrimental to his narrow partisan interest.
When Trent Lott, the powerful Republican Speaker of US House of Representatives denigrated America’s blacks, the nation was in uproar and demands for his resignation crossed party and racial lines. The President of the United States resisted every pressure to be drawn into the matter much like Yar’Adua is now doing in Etteh’s case. The more extreme example was when Kennedy courted danger to his personal safety by ordering his younger brother, Robert, the Attorney-General to crack down on the Mafia, despite America’s duplicitous romantic view of the Mafia. He took such bold step because he believed that until then America had merely paid lip service to riding itself of organized crime and he found that laxity to be inconsistent with the country’s avowed commitment to rule of law. President Yar’Adua courted danger of being mistrusted or misunderstood by anyone not accustomed to the bittersweet pill of rule of law in action when he directed the Attorney-General to obey subsisting court orders that barred prosecution of Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu; and the ire of partisan apparatchiks when he showed no hesitation or bias in enforcing the judgment in Obi versus Uba, if not also for his ramrod aloofness from the contract scandal in the House. In other words, taking rule of law from a mere policy slogan to the level of reality requires mettle and can sometimes be unpopular and dicey, but as above examples indicate, it also takes focus and exceptional presidential temperament to stay the course and Yar’Adua seems to be equal to the task. Consider that entire military formations propped up on the motto (or slogan): forward ever, backward never, are known to have capitulated and scampered for safety at the first sight of big enemy cannons arrayed against them. Chances are that Yar’Adua is made of a sterner stuff. Thus, by his actions so far, there is no doubt that the President understands that separating the reality from the slogan on rule of law is the only option when you are serious about building a well-ordered society. He deserves a pat on the back from any one or nation that wants to see Nigeria succeed.
Aloy Ejimakor is on the board of Habitat & Health International Fund and on the Team of Alcalde-Fay, Lichfield Group & Law Group. Washington, DC alloylaw@yahoo.com |