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Two Alarm Bells:
Two recent developments should alarm Nigerians and members of the human rights community particularly. They should alarm us because they tell us clearly where Buhari is headed. The first thing he did when he recently returned to Nigeria after another medical trip to the United Kingdom was to declare that he would be jailing “more of the thieves…that brought the economic problem to the country” because it is really something expected of him. Not surprisingly, some of us were up in arms accusing him of being tone deaf. However, that is because a lot of us do not understand the script. The script is a return to dictatorship under the garb of democracy. Buhari is desperate to remain in Aso Rock, no matter what happens, but he thinks silencing the politicians, the elite and the people who do not support him with this threat is the next thing to do.
First, the threat is directed at those within his party still intent on decamping to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He’s telling them that any decampment will put them in his crosshairs. Naturally, he expects such a threat to keep them in line because they know they are protected within the All Progressives Congress (APC) no matter their crimes, as far as they are working for his reelection. He’s also telling those in the opposition parties, especially the PDP that he will be coming directly after those of them who pose a threat to his reelection bid and/or persons who make their political structures tick.
There’s another group the speech is directed to as a coded message. This is his Northern base. It is a narrative long established that Southerners have stolen their wealth through conspiracy with a few Northerners and that like a Mahdi Buhari is the one to bring judgment upon them. It is proclaimed as the only job of his presidency and what he would deliver on, which is why he said it is what is expected of him.
Of course, he knows that this is not the priority of the rest of Nigeria. He knows Nigerians are expecting him to regenerate the economy and enforce peace in the land, but his base expects him to fight some puritanical war against corruption because his promoters have been using this as an excuse why things are bad. They have been assuring his base for more than three years now that once “Baba” finishes dealing with these corrupt people all the recovered stolen wealth would be shared to the suffering masses in the North! With the election coming and with him persecuting his opposition in the name of trying to jail the thieves, he’s sure this would energize his base and assure him of their votes. Again, for those who understand Northern politics and the Buhari imaging, this is something that has been woven into popular culture to mythical levels since his days as a military Head of State. This is about Buhari who wants to purify the system, but who the thieves never allowed while he was in uniform, but who Allah has brought back to do that job now. This messianic tenor to the Buhari story is very real and very loud up North
The second development is his scandalous speech at the annual Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) General Conference. It was a speech unworthy of any democrat of whatever hue! He went before the annual gathering of lawyers and effectively proclaimed his government a dictatorship! The President in an administration that has a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) as the Vice President and another as the Attorney General went before the NBA to lie about a ruling of the Supreme Court evidently based on the lies sold to him by another desperate Senior Advocate of Nigeria by the name of Festus Keyamo who is now fully part of his campaign for reelection. This is embarrassing enough, but more embarrassing is what the lie is meant to achieve.
The president declared on the strength of a non-existent law and a non-existent ruling of any court of the land that the Rule of Law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest after he and his administration have refused to release Mr Sambo Dasuki whom the courts have granted bail on numerous occasions and after he and his soldiers have captured Mr Nnamdi Kanu who was on bail at the time they invaded his home in September last year. Since then, no one has seen Mr Kanu prompting fears that he may have been secretly killed. On Friday, the 17th of August 2018, 120 women, aged between 22 and 70, mothers of children went out to peacefully protest and plead for Kanu’s release in Owerri, Imo State. They were tear-gassed, beaten and thrown in jail without food and without access to relatives and their lawyers! For days, the nation wailed and cried at the sight of such infamy until a Vacation Judge, Justice Benjamin Iheka courageously discharged and acquitted the women unconditionally!
So, in the year of our Lord two thousand and eighteen, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria went before the national body of lawyers and judges and declared that national security and national interest are matters only he and his goons can deal with and not our Constitution. Yes, in that singular speech, the president abrogated section 35 of the Constitution, which is the section guaranteeing the right of a citizen to personal liberty. The section lists the processes and the conditions under which a person may be deprived of his or her personal liberty and none of those conditions and processes includes a citizen being deprived of his or her right to personal liberty when the president or the security services feel that he or she is a threat to national security. None of it says the president and the security services have the right to keep a citizen in detention after the courts have granted them bail and after they’ve met the conditions stated by the courts to be admitted to bail.
What the law says is that if the president or his security services feel(s) that someone in detention does not deserve bail because they are a threat to national security, the state has to come to court to argue the case and show evidence why the court should not grant the person bail. If in the discretion of the court, the state has not made the case for the continued detention of such a person through its submission, then the judge will grant bail and whatever prison or agency of state holding such a person in custody must release them forthwith once the bail conditions are met. If the state makes the case, the court will grant their prayers and order the person to still be remanded in prison or detention. The law never envisages a situation where the state will capture a citizen, put him or her in detention and declare that some unknown law allows them to keep this person in detention because he or she is supposedly a threat to national security. The law has not given the president and his security services any such powers. Only a judge of a competent court can make that decision.
So, yes, on that podium, the president has ousted the jurisdiction of the courts in matters of bail for anyone that he and his goons whimsically declare to be a threat to national security. On that podium, he told the judges and the legal community that he and his goons will not be coming to their courts to argue why anyone should not be granted bail because that is now solely his decision based on his interpretation of when whoever happens to be his victim poses a threat to national security.
President Buhari does not recognize that only the courts have the duty and the power to adjudicate on what constitutes a matter of national security or when someone poses a threat to national security based on the case made to the courts by the state and the evidence presented. From now on citizens will be captured and thrown into the gulag and the keys thrown away. Then the Attorney General would appear before the cameras to tell Nigerians that in the case of the detainee in question, his or her civil liberties and individual rights to freedom and movement do not exist and cannot be granted by any court of law through any bail process because in their case, the Rule of Law is subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest as defined by the president and the security services. This is where we are right now as a nation.
Of course, the more disappointing thing for me is the loud silence that has greeted this menace from the legal, civil society and human rights community. Where are the lawyers? Where are the human rights advocates? Where is civil society? I can understand that protocol probably did not allow them to openly object to the president on the floor of the conference where he delivered the speech. But we’ve heard from people who were there saying that the lawyers were clapping when the president was delivering the speech. But whatever the situation, what has happened since then? Why the eerie silence from members of the bar and the human rights community? What kind of country are they looking to continue practicing their law if they accept this from the president of a supposedly democratic country? Can’t they see that this is a return to Decree 2 of 1984 promulgated by this same Buhari as a military Head of State?
I urge our lawyers and civil society groups not give up now. They have to learn the lessons of the past, pick themselves up and face the challenge we now have in front of us. No one can make them irrelevant in the nation’s affairs but themselves! Yes, in spite of everything, this is the time for them to wake up! The tag of “democracy” must not deceive them because those who should be defending this democracy have already compromised it! Thus, it is important that civil society bodies rediscover their mojo now because they can once again save Nigeria in 2019. Political parties are just special purpose vehicle for grabbing power and we know as a fact that accountability is non-existent!
The civil society groups must redevelop the June 12 mentality of the struggle to fight the menace in the polity now! They must not look and say they cannot act because there are people with whom they were in the struggle in the past whose political fortunes would be hurt. No, it’s the survival of the nation that is at stake! Nigeria is one and if any group of people must show this on the ground, it’s the civil society sector. That is the next stage of the struggle. They must be bold to win over the people whom they serve. They are not political parties but they must campaign even better. Yes, it is a pro-democracy struggle all over again and we need not deceive ourselves! Buhari is a mistake, but we can correct our mistake! He’s got to go and civil society must play its role in seeing him off! On offer here is another opportunity for civil society organizations to change the direction of government and politics in Nigeria. That opportunity was offered on June 12 1993, it wasn’t taken. It was offered at the beginning of the Fourth Republic and it wasn’t taken. It was offered in 2015 and they took it, but we now know that choice was a mistake, the mistake we are still living with now. Now, that chance has come again.
19. North And South United For The North Against Buhari (Relationship Status: It’s complicated):
I do not think most people in the South are still under the illusion that Buhari has anything good to offer the nation. We know that APC political leaders who are feeding fat from the Buhari presidency or who have political ambitions riding on the back of his victory in 2019 will tell us Buhari is the best thing since ewedu and amala, but most of us in the South know that’s not true. The problem we have today with regard to Buhari is with the Northern elite and the ordinary Northerner. We need to speak the truth to each other and that is the plain truth!
The Northern elite has to come to terms with the fact that Buhari is a bad investment for them and the nation. They may make money from having him in government, but it’s blood money because many are dying from Buhari’s bad governance. They have to think of making money with a better leadership that addresses the economic and social needs of the country because there is every reason to believe that with Buhari we are building up to a political and social upheaval of the worst kind.
I know the way most members of the elite think is to go hide their families abroad and get a ticket ready to move at the slightest sign of trouble. But that is myopia. When it will come, a lot of them might not be in a position to do all they have planned to do and the truth is no one knows who’d be a victim. It is therefore better to enjoy the country and allow others too to enjoy. No one is saying everyone has to be rich, but majority of Nigerians have no reason to be this dirt poor. I mean, in a statement released ahead of her coming to Nigeria, Mrs Theresa May, the British Prime Minister stated what the whole world now knows, which is that Nigeria currently is the poverty capital of the world where 87 million Nigerians live on less than $1.90 a day! Mrs May called our country “home to more very poor people than any other nation in the world”. Is this what we should be celebrating in 2018?
The elite and the predatory establishment are as responsible for the state of the nation as much as Buhari, but he has to go because he represents our biggest danger today. He’s a danger to our national security, he’s a danger to our national unity and he’s a danger to our national economy! The elite of the North must act patriotically and turn their back on him now to save our nation because like the rest of the nation, they know the embarrassment is becoming too much!
As for ordinary Northerners still supporting Buhari and still thinking he would bring good governance to them, especially the Muslims, all I will tell them is to go to their Koran and also search all Islamic and Muslim literatures they can find. They should review Islamic history all over the world and let them find that one good leader in history or in contemporary times where their leadership has the same effect on the people they lead as Buhari’s leadership has had on them in the past three years and today. I will tell them that they are not worshipping Allah. They are worshipping a man who repeatedly lies to them and whose only love is to himself and his family. They have it in their hands to change their fortune. They have their PVCs to send the message that they are not dumb. Buhari is not the leader that will do for the North what the North deserves now. But, as I said, it’s in their hands.
For the rest of Nigeria, our focus should be on saving the North. Yes, I mean that absolutely! Only those who haven’t been visiting the North will not know that the gap between North and South in terms of development is too wide. It was that gap that delayed our independence from Britain for years and that gap is wider now because despite the North dominating national leadership, the leaders they have produced for Nigeria have been largely poor, very poor! It is true that we now have a zoning system operated by the main parties and we also have the Federal Character provisions in our Constitution, but these have only succeeded in papering over the problem of our nation.
The problem of Nigeria is the North and until we decide to tackle that problem squarely, the North will continue dragging us back! This is beyond politics; it’s national survival! It is in the interest of the rest of Nigeria for the North to be brought into the 21st century! Sure, the Northern elite knows how to take care of themselves, but the hordes of ordinary Northerners remain Nigeria’s problem because all they want, like any decent human being, are the basic things of life – food, shelter, access to good education, good employment, access to good health facilities and peace. Jonathan, despite all his faults, recognized that the problem starts with education, which was why he set up nine universities in the North out of twelve. But what has happened since he left? Not only are these universities now neglected, education all over Nigeria is neglected!
All citizens must begin to think of bridging the development gap as a project, North and South. We can start with this election. If Buhari is reelected, we can be sure that the gap will further increase because the man has no clue nor inclination to engage in development of any sort. After his four years, the North will not smell the presidency for at least 8 years. Only God knows what would be the state of our country at the end of that time, even where there is no guarantee that any Northern presidency thereafter would be better. We need to stop the bleeding now!
We must start by making sure that we vote in another Northerner with a developmental agenda as President. If such a person wins and does a good job for four years, we would be happy to give him or her another four years to continue with the good work. If all that this person achieves after eight years is investing in education and social development mostly in the North so we can get quality human capital from that part of the country to help build a 21st century national economy and society, then we would be fine. If we must save Nigeria, we have to save the North from itself first. And to save the North from itself, we all must first save Nigeria from the scourge of Muhammadu Buhari.
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