Impeachment And Recalls In Adamawa State

Impeachment And Recalls In Adamawa State: Goofy Instruments Of Conflict Management

Umar G. Pella

A drama is unfolding in Adamawa State. The stage, poorly laid; the theatre amusing; the play, nauseating and the actors, jaundiced. This perhaps, is the only best way to describe the accumulated show of shame currently being exhibited in Adamwa State.

Politically, things are no longer at ease in this part of the country. A battle line is drawn. The Nyako led executive is at war with the Barka led legislature. The bond of contention is many and varied; contending and contradictory; historic and contemporary; remote and immediate.

Governor Murtala Nyako must be impeached. So it seems is the collective position of the legislators. Yes, Nyako must be crucified. He is cruel; he is corrupt; an abuser of due process; he awards over-inflated contracts; he has rendered the state bankrupt and subjected her to the suffocating burden of indebtedness. Above all, he is a dictator who has personalized the state ruling party machinery and hijacked the Local Government party primaries. These and many more are the offences of the governor which the hitherto slumping legislators are suddenly waking up to realize.

There are only two deductions from this sudden belated realization. It is either the legislators were busy feasting on the alleged ill gotten booty of the state with the governor and were so engrossed that they consigned their watchdog constitutional responsibility of checking executive excesses to the dustbin or they are being hypocritical and mischievous. There is indeed nothing new in the allegations they are peddling. Ordinary mai ruwa (water hawker) in the state sees the allegations as stale. They were issues raised by the oppositions during the May re-run electioneering campaign. They were especially the major arsenals in the vouch of the leading opposition party – the Action Congress (A.C.).

The peak of this hypocrisy is symbolized by the fact that during the re-run electioneering campaign, Nyako was with all these honorable members crisscrossing the state horizontally and vertically, from the creeks of Toungo to the marshlands of Maiha and from the swamps of Shelleng to the near- sahel of Madagali, countering the allegations of the AC opposition as false and unfounded. None of these honorable members ever had the honour to say in any of the numerous rallies that the opposition’s allegations are by any chance close to the truth. Perhaps, if any of them had done that at that deciding moment, that person might have provided the electorates with a golden opportunity to use the only weapon of democratic change available to them (their votes) wisely and save the legislature from the present display of infamy and what looks like politics of blackmail.

The insincere silence of the legislators was instrumental to the electorates’ conclusion that Governor Nyako was not after all the demon that the oppositions were painting him to be. The strength of this conclusion can be seen in the overwhelming support the electorate accorded him and his party at the May re-run. Men of honour are expected to speak with honour at the right time. And if by any chance they see the gold in silence, they should follow it to the latter. After all, the sermon of the clergy when consummating a wedding in a cathedral has always been – for those who cannot speak their mind and say the truth at the right time, let them keep their silence or forever hold their peace.

Yes, somebody said the silence was informed by party discipline. The most quizzical questions to ask are: what is suddenly happening to the discipline? Is it undergoing erosion? Or have the legislators just realized that the so-called discipline does not anymore attract reward? Whatever might be the answers to these questions, one thing is certain; there is fundamental institutional failure. Both the executive and the legislature and even the PDP as a political party are sick. And the worse-off for it all are Adamawa state and perhaps, Nigeria’s nascent democracy.

How can democracy thrive well where there are no democrats? How can there be democratic development amidst legislative – executive feud? How can there be legislative –executive harmony when personal interest rather than collective party interest is the driving motive for political participation? How can mutual constitutional regard be guaranteed where blackmail and name-dropping, instead of lobbying are the chips for political bargaining? How can there be party discipline where the parties are to say the least, incapable of conducting satisfactorily the simplest task in a democratic process – party congresses and primaries?

The most amusing part of the theatre while it lasts is the legislators’ clamour for genuine democratic process in the party’s local government primaries in the state. How does a breach of party’s constitution constitute an impeachable offence? The procedure for the impeachment of a state governor is a straight forward one in Nigeria’s constitution. Once elected, a governor is above any other obligation bound by the country’s constitution, not his party’s constitution. Thus, it is very clear to all except the willfully blind that governor Nyako can only be impeached for breach of the nation’s constitution and not PDP’s constitution.

Assuming Nyako is that superimposing (which he doubtedly is), that he had the wherewithal to hijack the leadership of his party and single handedly deliver the tickets of the party to his candidates at the last local government primaries in the state; are the members whose majority are in the PDP, creating the impression that this is the first time they are experiencing such undemocratic action in the PDP? How many times have they questioned the ways and manner the party conducts its congresses from the ward to the national levels? How were they themselves handed the tickets of their party in their various constituencies? Except if they are poor students of history, it is supposed to dawn on them that the process has not changed. When the local governments were illegally manned by the unconstitutional contraption called Care-taker committee which these same members foisted unto the people, were the honourables cooling in their graves? A rotten system should remain condemned whether one is favoured by it or not.

Now, the most nauseating part of the drama is the instrument adopted by both groups in managing the conflict. The methodology is to say the least an exhibition of intellectual poverty. How can a party be against itself? A situation where impeachment becomes a ready weapon in the hands of a house, whose membership is dominated by a ruling party, against a governor, who is without doubt a leader of the same party, is indeed alarming. And the biggest goof that cannot be stomached by any civilized political being is the executive propaganda of recall. The gloomy sights of rented thugs on the streets of Yola - the state capital, masquerading as demonstrators, calling for the recall of their members is disgusting. The Nigerian constitution is not in anyway ambiguous on the position of recall of representatives; the procedure is straight forward. One does not need to rent a crowd and stage a demonstration in his state capital to recall the representative of his constituency. Our democracy is supposed to have matured beyond that level.

The situation is really saddening. Perhaps, the only person that can joyfully celebrate it is Atiku Abubakar and his Action Congress (AC). And the greatest loser is of course Adamawa state, which unfortunately, exhausted the first one year of Governor Nyako’s administration fighting a court battle and seems set to be a sad victim of another four years of unending legislative – executive feud. May there be divine intervention. Amin.

Umar G. Pella teaches politics at the Department of Public Administration, Adamawa State University, Mubi.