PEOPLE & POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The Awka Whirlwind II

kugugana@yahoo.com

Regular visitors to the Gamji website are probably familiar with the way Dr. Bolaji Aluko, a satirical columnist on the site, ends his articles any time he is puzzled by an   event : he paints a picture of himself either shaking his head, or scratching it – or both. Wherever he is right now, I have little doubt that the recent movie-like events happening along the Awka-Enugu axis have him shaking his head and scratching it at the same time.

If he is, Aluko would certainly not be the only Nigerian shaking and scratching his head. Only a couple of days ago, the Daily Times reported a former Chief Judge of Enugu State, Justice Eze Ozobu as expressing his utter consternation at the order by a High Court judge in the state, Justice Stanley Nnaji, directing the Inspector-General of the Police, Alhaji Tafa Balogun, to remove the governor of Anambra State, Dr. Chris Ngige, from office. Nnaji had issued his strange order on January 2 following a prayer by a member of the Anambra House of Assembly, Nelson Achukwu, for the enforcement of his human rights which he said had been infringed upon by the governor of his state, when the governor ordered some thugs to beat him (Achukwu) up during the PDP zonal convention in Enugu, the capital of Enugu State, on December 6 last year.

“I can’t understand” said the former Enugu State Chief Judge, “or see the reason for Nnaji to have entertained the suit, more importantly on a matter that is on human rights infringements and (is) political...I just can’t understand it. Probably the law has changed since I retired in 1997, but even if it has, at least it is not in that area”. Like Justice Ozobu, and I suspect, the vast majority of Nigerians, I too can’t understand it. The goings-on in Anambra State have had me not only shaking and scratching my head, it is, indeed, in a complete tizzy.

As we all know, the background to the events following the January 2 court order,   was the truly amazing attempt, July 10 last year, to kidnap Ngige apparently on the orders of Chief Chris Uba, the so-called god-father of Anambra politics. Uba was reportedly angry that Governor Ngige had refused to deliver his own side of the deal through which Ngige was installed as governor.

The nation was scandalized by the bare-faced gangsterism of it all, especially as the Nigerian Police was implicated at the highest level in the attempt. There was universal condemnation of the entire sordid episode – except, of course, from the quarters that mattered most, namely the inner caucus of the ruling PDP.

“It’s all a family affair”, said such leading lights of the party like Chief Bode George, the Vice-President for the South-West, in the face of the universal condemnation of the kidnap attempt. Then after days of very strange silence from the president himself, he told an incredulous world that he did not have any foreknowledge of the kidnap attempt. The world’s incredulity increased when the president did absolutely nothing thereafter. Instead, he told the world how such a good and loyal member of the ruling party Uba  The Suspect was.

It was this official complicity in the episode and the blatant attempt to cover it up as “a family affair”, which led me to conclude that it may yet prove the whirlwind that the ruling party will reap for sowing the wind of April last year in the shape of its massive rigging of the general elections of the month. “What happened”, I said in my article on these pages on July 23, 2003, entitled The Awka Whirlwind, “was that in April the ruling party sowed the wind by thinking that it could use the foulest means possible to fix the general elections in its own favour and get away with it. But then as the saying goes, he who sows the wind, will reap the whirlwind. Awka, I dare say, is probably the first harvest those who sowed the wind of April are starting to reap”.

Despite these words, I must admit that the level of desperation for power grab by Uba and his godfathers has surpassed one’s wildest imagination. Nothing that these people have done prepared one to expect the desperate measures they took from January 2 to remove Ngige from office. Their desperation was the more shocking coming so soon after the “reconciliation” move between Uba and Ngige which took place on December 22, 2003 in Owerri. Some of us suspected it was all a charade, but few would have known, or even suspected, that it would be exposed as such so soon.

For me it seems there are two related explanations for The Awka Whirlwind II, namely, the culture of impunity we have witnessed in the last four years and a dog in a manger disposition of the powers that be to destroy what may not be theirs to keep.

Only the arrogance of power rooted in the culture of impunity exhibited by those in office could blind them to the illegality and unconstitutionality of trying to remove a governor solely through the courts. And only a dog-in-a-manager disposition to spoil things for one’s possible successors would push those already in power into conspiring to make the country look worse than an ungovernable banana republic.

I am not a lawyer, but you don’t have to be one to see that a court order is not one of the ways of removing a governor, or the president, or any public officer, for that matter. The 1999 Constitution is unambiguous about these ways. Sections 188 and189 list these ways as impeachment and permanent incapacity, respectively. The sections also outline the elaborate steps to be followed before a governor can be removed. In addition, Section 191 talks about death and resignation as circumstances in which a deputy governor can temporarily replace his boss. However, no where in this or other sections does it say the court of a state, never mind that of another state, can order the removal of a governor.

Clearly, it was the height of the arrogance of power for Uba and The Gang to imagine that they can remove a governor by simply resorting to a court of an entirely different state simply because the governor in question is alleged to have infringed on the fundamental rights of a co-conspirator in this other state. But then arrogance, as we know, has no time for the niceties of legality and constitutionality.

Obviously it is this same arrogance of power which explains the behaviour of the police in this matter. The same police which was more than willing to enforce the Enugu State High Court order against Ngige has now turned round to tell the world that they have to study the Anambra State High Court order contradicting the Enugu court order before they can enforce it. Apparently the double standards in treating the two court orders  differently  has completely escaped their minds.

Having exposed their desperation for power and control, it is obvious now that Uba and The Gang would stop at nothing until they remove Ngige as governor. Personally I have no sympathy for the governor. Anyone who would sign the devil’s pact Ngige signed just to be a governor or hold any office for that matter – and I don’t believe the nonsense that he signed it under duress – does not deserve to be anybody’s leader. Even then, Ngige’s desperation to be a governor does not justify the arrogance of power that has been on display in Anambra State since July last year. Such arrogance, it must be said again and again, is an ill-wind that would blow nobody any good. Those who arrogantly sowed the wind of April will certainly reap the Awka whirlwind with all its negative aftermath. Sadly, however, they won’t be the only ones to suffer this aftermath.

Re: Sharia and the West

A reader, Mallam Abubakar Alhassan, writing from Florida, U.S., has drawn my attention to a factual error in my article of last week which was on the subject of the West’s fear of Islam. In it, I said Peter Arnet was fired by CNN for saying that America’s plan for the invasion of Iraq was a failure. Arnet, said Abdallahi, was actually fired by CBS, another American global newsmedia, not CNN. Arnet, he said, had moved to CBS after a falling out with CNN.

 I stand corrected.