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Earshot
365 days ago A year ago, the Bellview crash rudely reminded us of the rot in the aviation industry. But has anything changed? After Bellview, we have had the very painful Sosoliso plane crash involving kids and the beloved Bimbo Odukoya, a military plane crash involving some of the best and brightest of the Nigerian army, and a private plane crash involving the son of Ahmadu Ali, the PDP chairman. Is the Nigerian government doing anything to curtail these embarrassing air crashes or, like everything else, are we simply waiting for the next crash?
Though section 305 of the 1999 Constitution is clear about the power of the president to declare a state of emergency in any part of the country, especially following a breakdown of law and order, what President Obasanjo declared last week was a coup d’etat, and not a state of emergency. You may call Ayo Fayose, the Ekiti State governor, a thief or even a murderer as people like Femi Falana (who hails from the state) want the world to believe, but order had not broken down in Ekiti to warrant the removal of the governor. There were no riots and no single shot was fired. Nobody had been killed as a result of the skirmish between the governor and the House of Assembly. There was no religious crisis, and no communal crisis. We just had a bunch of rascals in the State House of Assembly who were being remote-controlled by Aso Rock. The best that could have happened was for the president to send in the police to the House. But he too was an accomplice and an interested party.
The issue, for those who have been following the Ekiti crisis, is that certain friends of the president, commanded by Chief Afe Babalola, the president’s lucky lawyer and friend, had suddenly agreed among themselves to remove the governor who has been accused of nearly everything evil under the sun.
In Obasanjo’s democracy, a governor doesn’t get “impeached” or removed from office for committing crimes. He gets removed whenever the president decides such a governor should be removed, and then makes a lot of bribe money available for the operation. Fayose might have been accused of serial murder, but so have many others who are also being accused of complicity in the murder of Bola Ige, Marshall Harry, and Aminasoari Dikibo. Fayose was also said to have stolen tons of money belonging to a poultry project – or is it that he stole some chickens belonging to the poultry project? – but we know the friends of the president who have been stealing oil money belonging to their states and nobody is trying to “impeach” them. Fayose is in trouble today because the president and his friends are tired of the governor’s continuous occupation of Ado Ekiti Government House. The president had earlier reached a compromise with him to forfeit his right to a second term which the governor had initially agreed to. The turning point started when the governor changed his mind and started preparing to contest for a second term, just like the president did in 2003 when he went against an earlier promise to seek a second term.
The House started the impeachment process on a fine note. As required by the constitution, it got at least a third of the members to send the impeachment notice to the governor, through the very ambitious speaker, Mr. Friday Aderemi, who prefers to think with his stomach rather than his head. The House members missed it and started mucking around when they thought they had the power of life and death to sack just about anyone who caught their fancy, including the chief judge of the state. Even after the chief justice of Nigeria and the attorney general of the federation had objected to the foolish and laughable proclamation of removing the chief judge from office by, of all people, the speaker of the State House of Assembly, they still proceeded because, as one of them eventually revealed, the president had given his word to support them all the way. But even with all this, there was no breakdown of law and order; and on this particular matter that led to several people declaring themselves governors, including a few from beer parlours, the governor, Fayose, did not commit any offence warranting his removal from office. It is the speaker and his colleagues that need to be punished with the full weight of the law – if there are still laws in the country.
Having said that, let’s go back to the 1999 Constitution, the grundnorm of our current democracy. The constitution gives the president some latitude to declare a state of emergency, in a real emergency situation, but this would have to be approved by two-thirds of both the Senate and the House of Representatives within two days if the Houses are in session or within 10 days if they are not. If both Houses refuse to give their imprimatur, the state of emergency shall be voided. Ken Nnamani’s Senate is expected to resume on Thursday to discuss it and the reps shall follow suit. My candid advice to the National Assembly is to reject the emergency rule in Ekiti State root-and-branch because it was contrived by the president himself and there was absolutely no basis for it. Law and order had not broken down. If the National Assembly fails to do so, then, as a friend said yesterday, Nigerians should simply gear up themselves to an early morning announcement anytime from now thus: “I President Olusegun Obasanjo hereby declare a state of emergency over Nigeria and I appoint General Olusegun Obasanjo as sole administrator.”
I am not holding brief for Fayose. I don’t even like the man because he was a beneficiary of Obasanjo’s massive rigging machine in 2003. I am actually having a good time watching thieves fighting themselves. But the brakes just have to be applied to the drive of one man to push Nigeria to the precipice because of an ungodly inordinate ambition.
Foreign reserves: Congratulations are not in order, Mr. President The CBN recently announced that the nation’s foreign reserves have hit the $40 billion mark. At least, it is good to know that it’s not all our money that is being stolen. Quite thoughtful of the president! But is it not pedestrian to stow away $40 billion in banks overseas, yielding fat interests for foreign countries, at a time the World Bank just announced that more than 60% of Nigerians are desperately poor? NEPA doesn’t work, armed robbers and assassins kill innocent people daily, no potable water in most parts of the country, the education system is in a shambles, there are no drugs and basic medicines in hospitals, there is no public transportation system, most pensioners are still not paid, refineries are not working, inflation kills Nigerians daily (in spite of the CBN cute figures), and so on and so forth. And the president still proudly tells us he has $40 billion in foreign reserves. How unimaginable can a leader be! The only people that would be grateful to him are the foreign nations where the fat dollar accounts are kept. China has more than $600 billion in foreign reserves, but we all know what is happening in China. Ditto for India, which has about $480 billion in its foreign reserves. But Nigeria does not have the right to boast of a $40 billion foreign reserve if 90 million of its estimated 150 million people live below $1 a day!
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