Nigerians must consider themselves ‘indebted’ to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), first, for giving new meanings to the once-familiar concepts of ‘principles’, ‘morality’, ‘law’ and ‘constitutionalism’, and second, for insisting on operationalising them in their new, but self-assigned opposition role in the ongoing Rivers fracas.
Thanks to the august body, the string of absurdities which started with the torching of the parliament building, the banishing of 27 in a parliament of 32 members into the proverbial Siberia and their subsequent replacement with three members, the running of the business of government without a duly passed appropriation law and other heinous constitutional infractions are supposed to count for nothing.
Even less – in their view – is the unambiguous, declarative judgment of the highest court dubbing the Fubara-led contraption in Rivers State – and that is what it is – as the height of despotism.
In the eyes of the Afam Osigwe-led NBA, those fundamental infractions should still be deemed as tolerable and that is even long after the Supreme Court had pronounced on the death of law and constitutionalism in the aftermath of Governor Sim Fubara’s coup in the state!
Wouldn’t that amount to defecating in the communal pond – in a moment of opportunistic exigency?
Imagine, we are supposed to be dealing with a grave matter – the subversion of those fundamental tenets of democracy; one whose terrible derivative, was the treatment of the legislature branch as expendables! It is certainly a new day that the NBA has since deemed them as tolerable – including the open call for anarchy by the dictator!
Could the strident defence of those absurdities have also counted for the defence of principles and constitutionalism in the books of the NBA?
Even with the above background, the tragedy is that the NBA continues to push the specious narrative that the problem in Rivers State actually started on March 18 when the state of emergency was declared by President Bola Tinubu. Ever since, the body has somewhat assumed the role of the judge in all things right and wrong. Finally, Nigerians are beginning to know why! And that is far from ennobling!
Little wonder the NBA has pronounced the president wrong to have staved off the looming anarchy; wrong to have directed the combatants to take time to rest in the event that truce was nowhere on the horizon; and wrong with his appointment of a sole administrator to take charge to allow things to cool down. And then the National Assembly for approving the declaration as the law required.
Talk of a body traditionally sworn to the defence of the rule of law and constitutionalism, finally revealed as having a dog in a most unnecessary fight!
And the result? Muck everywhere. And so the predictable verdict by the same NBAS – the once-famed Garden City is no longer place to do business. Why? Because the government halted the spiral of impunity by a benevolent despot who once declared that the parliament can only exist to the extent that he allows it!
In their sponsored anomie, we are supposed to be torn between the Supreme Court-declared constitutional aberration and the National Assembly-approved administrator temporarily holding the reins of government in the Garden City! Well, they, the NBA and their allies could not be more wrong!
Yes, we grant our ‘principled’ NBA the right to its persuasion that living under the former’s jungle rule characterised by impunity would have been more dignifying than the mere thought of staging the high-octane event under the latter brought in to preserve peace and order. Only that we must give thanks that body does not have the last word!
To be sure, no one is contesting the body’s freedom to take their AGC to Enugu or wherever! It is entirely their business. They also free to glorify their stance as a ‘principled stand against the unconstitutional governance of Rivers State’. Or even still, their insistence that continuing with the AGC in Port Harcourt would have amounted to “a tacit endorsement of constitutional violations and subversion of the rule of law.” And finally the declaration that the NBA “could not, in good conscience, hold its flagship event in a state governed unconstitutionally. These are entirely the body’s prerogatives.
Except that in the exercise of their discretions, the body not only chose to lapse into an unforgivable amnesia, they forgot one little matter that was just as important to Nigerians and to the good people of Rivers State – the N300 million paid by the suspended governor to the NBA to host the event. The revelation obviously sheds some light into the dynamics at play as indeed the motivations behind them.
For now, the issue is that the state has been denied the hosting rights to the event and the good people of the state of its potentially accruable benefits. And so the administration in the state wants the money back.
On its part, the NBA says that the state should not only perish the thought, but also that nothing of the sort is being contemplated – a case of double whammy. It says the fund was “a gift” to the association for its 2025 Annual General Conference, not tied to any hosting rights. It claims the NBA usually seeks support from organisations, government agencies and state governments due to the “enormous cost” involved in hosting the conference.
While those may well be, still, they do not vitiate the issues of principle, of law and of due process. Here, it ought to be strange that the NBA would choose not be bothered that the fund could not have been lawfully appropriated by the three-man parliament that the donor (or is it their client) opted to work with.
Even more deplorable is the very idea of holding on to what appears to be an unlawful item when the demand was made. For while the NBA might feel entitled to whatever pretences it deems fit to project, to most discerning Nigerians, that stance could only be a measure of the ingrained pathology of impunity that has led the state as indeed our beloved country to this sorry pass. Trust Nigerians to recognise duplicity when it manifests. The latter would seem one which no puerile legalism would wash.
For now, Nigerians have to wait for the courts to determine who, between the NBA and the Rivers people, is right or wrong.
Credit:The Nation