Before Tinubu crashes Nigeria’s democracy|Rapheal
Have you noticed the trend by appointees and foot soldiers of the President Bola Tinubu to dismiss anyone with contrary opinions on the state of affairs in the country? Such dissenting voices are termed unpatriotic. That is not so. It is rather, the other way round. Those critics really mean well for the government and the nation, while the agents of the administration, speak to keep their jobs. But no matter how it is taken, Nigeria under Tinubu, is in dire straits. Almost the entire unifying ties holding the country together, are in tatters.
Clannishness and ethnic bigotry have been elevated to national policies. Virtually all the meaningful appointments in the land are held by the President’s kinsmen. The level of hunger in the land is unprecedented. At no time had Nigerians questioned the essence of their citizenship as now. These incidences of leadership failure, however pale to nothing when juxtaposed with the creeping autocracy the president is increasingly manifesting. That is the most disturbing challenge to the tottering democracy in the land.
Every system has what binds its citizens together. For Americans, it is their faith in their constitution, according to Harvard University political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in their book, “How Democracies Die”. That belief, according to the authors, makes the citizens see their country as a chosen nation, providently guided and a beacon of hope and possibility to the world. All the same, they note that even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves, guarantee democracy. “For one, constitutions are always incomplete. Like any set of rules, they have countless gaps and ambiguities”, they argued. To bridge the gap, mutual toleration comes in. By this, political rivals are accepted as having equal rights to exist and compete for power and govern, as long as they play by the rules. Here in our country, the maxim is expressed in the third stanza of the resurrected National Anthem; “O God of all creation, Grant this our one request: Help us to build a nation; Where no man is oppressed; And so with peace and plenty Nigeria may be blessed”.
But to Tinubu, these are mere proclamations that only matter when they suit his agenda. His respect for the constitution is at best, perfunctory. As for the opposition political parties, they are better in non-existence. The president’s attitude to power is totalitarian and absolutist. For a man who even when he was some distances away from power, had recommended that power is not served in the restaurant but to be grabbed and run away with, nothing could be more audacious. He has been acting it.
But nothing perhaps, underlines his most brutal assault on the constitution as his declaration state of emergency in Rivers State, suspension of the governor, Siminilayi Fubara and House of Assembly, on Tuesday, March 18. Reasons offered for the exercise, are hardly convincing. Other than the President seeking to appease his sidekick, the minster of the federal capital territory, Nyesom Wike who is at loggerheads with the governor and by that gain full entry into the state, there is no justification for the action. Lawyers and experts in constitutional matters have pointedly told him that in declaring emergency in Rivers and suspending the governor, he went beyond his powers. But that is Tinubu, a conquistador of sort, who takes no prisoners but goes for the kill. For him, the race for 2027 is already in full throttle. He knows in the innermost recesses of his mind that he did not win free and fair in Rivers in 2023. He also has the fears of losing the state in 2027 with Fubara asserting himself. The only way out therefore, is to take away the governor or get him thoroughly weakened to the point that by the time he begs his way back to office, he would be a lame duck, a robot.
How Nigerians fare as long as the President actualizes his drive, does not matter to him. Barely two years under him, the citizens have witnessed what can arguably pass for the worst form of hunger and deprivation. It only took him mere brain wave on the day of his inauguration to remove subsidies on petroleum products and leave the national currency, the Naira, floating at the capital market. Nigerians have literally gone through the hell since then, with soaring prices of food items and services as well as steady crash of the Naira. To state that country under the President has been emasculated, amounts to stressing the obvious. Many citizens are literally turning to walking corpses, with no hopes on where their next meal will come from.
Under a military arrangement, the crass indiscretion by the President can be understood. But we assume we have a democracy with full compliments of the executive, legislative and judicial arms. The legislature, in particular, defines the system of government in the country, as a democracy. It is not for nothing that Section 47 of the Constitution prescribes several roles for the legislature, including checking the excesses of the executive. That is why the legislators are seen as true representatives of the people. The critical question therefore, is where is the legislature, the National Assembly in all these?
The problem is that the legislature does not understand its role, nor the power it commands in putting the country on a sound footing. Consequently, the executive has exploited the naivete or lethargy of the lawmakers and has reduced the lawmaking institutions to mere appendages of the presidency or governors’ offices. But at no time in contemporary history had the National Assembly in its actions and utterances, shown to be most timid and timorous in approaching the matters of state and governance, as it is under the Senate Presidency of Godswill Akpabio. Bad enough, the judiciary does not offer much hope. The courts in the present dispensation, have shifted from being the last hope of the common man to the beacon of injustice against the weak and poor.
No nation succeeds on this path. A lot needs to be done to save the country from the path of perdition which Tinubu seems to set it for. It is high time men and women of goodwill, cutting across party lines and ethnic divides, rose up and demand that the President and his team, play by the rule. Democracy loses its essence the moment it detracts from being the government of the people, for the people and by the people. Nigeria is gravitating towards that odious line.
Credit:The Sun