By Abraham Ogbodo.
We have a responsibility to assist President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to practise democracy. We are doing as if a failure is Tinubu’s personal failure. It is not. I have lived through four republics in Nigeria. And that is because politicians have not mastered how to care for a republic. Each, since the first republic started in 1963, had come with a new challenge. The ongoing dispensation which started on May 29, 1999 is the fourth republic. It is the fourth time that we are doing this thing called general elections, in every four years, to recruit leaders to lead us according to a set of laid down rules also called a constitution. The problem is that if this fourth attempt is not managed well, there shall be the usual interregnum, to be followed, hopefully, by a fifth attempt. This is why I am calling on all of us to assist the President to practise democracy. He is human and prone to mistakes that can be avoided with collective vigilance.
What I am saying is very important. Sleep walking while President Tinubu remains eternally awake and searching for ways and means to consolidate is not helpful. That is not how a Democratic Republic functions. For instance, that aberration called State of Emergency which was invoked in Rivers State and quite capable of causing injury to the Fourth Republic would have been avoided if the relevant quarters had not slept on duty. From the Attorney General to the mail runner in the Federal Ministry of Justice, nobody had the presence of mind to tell the President to stop. The legislature and the Judiciary did nothing to help the executive. Tinubu was allowed to approximate the republic in all ramifications and have his way till the end in the Rivers matter.
The truth is that everybody wants to help Tinubu to do as he likes. Nobody wants to help the republic to stand as it should. Only last week, another august body that exists to help the republic somehow capitulated and resolved to help Tinubu instead. This body is called the National Council of State. Its members are very eminent. If the republic were a publicly quoted company, these people would constitute the Board of Directors. The President, his Vice, President of the Senate, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Governors of the 36 States of the Federation and the Attorney General of the Federation are members of the council. Others are all former heads of state and former Chief Justices of Nigeria.
That is the awesome assembly that sat last week to unanimously endorse President Tinubu’s choice of Prof. Joash Amupitan as the new chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The underlining ethical issues were carefully ignored. Same day, same time and same place, the council also unanimously, according to Bayo Onanuga, gave the nod to the President to exercise his prerogative of mercy as stipulated in Section 175 of the 1999 Constitution, to pardon a motley of prisoners and other offenders, comprising drug barons, robbers, kidnappers and illegal miners. The freedom was wholesale, almost like when Boko Haram fighters broke into Kuje Prison in Abuja in July 2022 to set free 879 detainees including their 68 members. The nation has since recovered from the shock and it is somehow managing to move on.
It takes legends to exhibit statesmanship in politics. Tinubu may be working to become a legend. For now, he is not one and so does not bother too much about the exhibition of statesmanship in his politics. He is a politician working assiduously for votes and victory in the 2027 presidential election. He is not detached to see the bigger picture. He sees what works for him and not what works for the republic. This is why the sages say that only the President should not be allowed to run a Democratic Republic. He may refuse to apply the controls and run it aground. It is also why the allegiance of all workers in the republic is to the republic and its governing constitution and not to the President or any individual or group of persons. I am saying politics outside statesmanship does not build a nation. Ambition that is not nuanced in a vision is addiction. It is a tragedy that is waiting to happen. This is where we are with BAT.
Consequently, the courage to fine tune Tinubu for good purpose should not lack among us. For instance, on the tinted glass permit for vehicles, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) should have summoned the courage to advise the President to push tax matters through the National Assembly for the statutory framework for proper implementation by the relevant agency of government. Instead, IG Kayode Egbetokun was all too ready to allow the police to be used to push an illegal agenda. He was sounding as if the matter really had much to do with a genuine desire to offer better security by the police. It was a backdoor taxation to make more money for the Federal Government to spend. The police only became a tool to force it down the throat of exasperated Nigerians.
Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN) is the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) and Minister of Justice. His opinion is strong in guiding the executive right. In matters of separation of power and governmental boundaries, only dictators ignore the opinions of their attorneys-general. The AGF is a thorough bred legal mind. He is usually not among the colony of cabinet appointees that talk for effects. He is measured in speech and action and no matter the degree of expediency, he should strive to resolve on the side of law and equity. He knows tomorrow will come and within the same objective facts, his opinion today must stand the test of tomorrow.
While in office, the AGF is more or less on trial. The verdict comes after his time as attorney general has run out. What he says or doesn’t say and what he does or doesn’t do will count for or against him in the court of public opinion. Sometimes, it gets up to the real court or body with adjudicatory powers to pronounce punishment. It had happened exactly that way with a certain Michael Kaase Aondoakaa who had his SAN title withdrawn after his time as AGF. The AGF is to defend the regime within the boundaries of law. It is not part of his duty to invent some strange jurisprudence to explain away illegality and unconstitutionality as a new way. On the Rivers State emergency rule, something tells me that at the appropriate time, Prince Fagbemi may be required to offer more perspectives on Section 305 of the Constitution. Law should offer justice. It is not a technical game to played by experts to obfuscate the truth.
There is another matter on which the AGF’s opinion is urgently required. This is the continued detention in army custody of leaders of Okuama community in Delta State over their alleged role in the murder of 17 soldiers in March last year. The details are already well canvassed and do not require restating here. The five detainees after the death of the sixth have been in military detention since July last year. What is curious is the refusal of the AGF to call the Nigerian Army to order. To tell the Army that it does not have a role to play in the administration of criminal justice in Nigeria. That, in a democracy and in fact at all times, only the police is permitted by law to prosecute criminal suspects in a court of law. The alleged crime remains murder. That servicemen were involved does not give it a different description in the Criminal or Penal Code. The Army has defied the established legal system and it does not look good for democracy. Therefore, the military must also join to assist President Tinubu to practice democracy.
Let me say this even at the risk of sounding repetitive. Lateef Fagbemi is Attorney General of the Federation. He is not Attorney General of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu or even the Federal Government alone. He should operate to ensure harmony among the levels of government in a federal structure. He is not called to confuse the legislative fields to give the federal government undue edge. He cannot walk back from the principle of separation of power and the rule of law to offer legal interpretations that do not have foundations in our jurisprudence and politics. Jumping ahead of reason all the time to defend the central position as was the case in the local government elections in Osun State, does not edify his high office. It makes him look like any other person in the federal cabinet who acts to impress the President. The Lateef Fagbemi that I know is not seeking any revalidation with a ministerial appointment. He does not need to act less than himself and his high office to safeguard his place in government and the larger society.
The National Assembly and the Judiciary command a different kind of attention. Their role in ensuring democracy is not a guess work. It is properly laid out in all the governing codes as well as all the political and leadership theories and practices that aspire to create a peaceful order based on the guarantee of civil liberties. Theirs is both an administrative and moral duty. They offer the institutional safeguards. They separate democracy from dictatorship. When they fail as they are failing now, it becomes a betrayal of trust and not just a mere dereliction of duty. Both institutions and their leaderships must rise to assist Tinubu to practise democracy.
All said, so much depends on the readiness of BAT to accept help. What if he refuses to be helped? It is like flogging an unwilling horse. It takes you nowhere. And so, part of everybody’s task is to encourage President Tinubu to accept help. He badly needs it. We should find some way to point it to him that Nigeria is not going to end with his presidency and that the verdict after his performance should bother him more than the verdict during his performance.
