Historically, Nigeria has always struggled to lead itself. These struggles strongly highlighted by the difficulties in governance have always manifested as challenges in legislation, enforcement of laws, and interpretation of the said laws whenever conflicts invariably arise. The struggle to fulfill clearly delineated roles by the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government go a long way in explaining just why the Giant of Africa is stuck in a rut, and just why many spirited efforts to take it to greener pastures have continued to fail.
At the state and federal levels of government in Nigeria, the pattern is a hauntingly familiar one: an overbearing executive usually tries to have a rubberstamp legislature and a malleable judiciary in place so that with such an unholy triad, turns can be seamlessly taken between serving public and parochial interests.
Thus far, the story of Nigeria`s democratic federalism is one in which power is concentrated in the executive, with separation of powers remaining hollow, and checks and balances mostly a mirage.
If Nigerians thought they had seen it all in just how overbearing an executive arm of government can be, events since 2015 have shown that the box of tricks possessed by Nigeria`s pseudo democrats is virtually bottomless.
Many times, under the current administration, the National Assembly, that citadel of Nigerian legislation has been turned into a battleground, just as judges have been hounded day and by night in flagrant attempts to defang the judiciary.
Decidedly, in a taste of what is to come in 2023, fireworks recently flew freely between the executive and the legislature over the Electoral Act 2022.When after several suspenseful trips between the Presidency and the National Assembly, the Act finally found presidential assent, Section 84(12) of the Act retained some fuel for the rancorous fire many thought had been put out.
Section 84(12) of the Act provided that: “No political appointee at any level shall be a voting delegate or be voted for at the convention or congress of any political party for the purpose of the nomination of candidates for any election.
The Presidency had argued that the import of the section was to disenfranchise serving political office holders. When subsequent requests to have the section deleted from the Act was rebuffed by the National Assembly, matters moved to the Federal High Court Umuahia where the section eventually suffered deletion at the instance of one Nduka Edede of the Action Alliance (AA) who sought and obtained its nullification.
The autocade of attrition may yet move to the appellate courts but in the immediate aftermath of the verdict on March 18,2022, it was a triumphant Attorney-General of the Federation, Mr. Abubakar Malami, who exultantly announced that the judgment of the court would be immediately made a part of the government`s gazette, section 84(12) having ceased to exist.
It can be said that it was the president`s protestations about the audacity of section 84(12) that prominently instigated the piercing postulations of a slew of plaintiffs before the Federal High Court in Umuahia, and Ibadan. And it was from the court in Umuahia that the African cherry finally fell into the lap of the child to cause the cheetah to rise. Would that every judgment given in matters involving the federal government be treated with similar alacrity.
Were the cheetah`s speed not so selective of convenient circumstances, perhaps, the Federal Government would have spared the country many a judicial and political embarrassment thereby preventing the feet of the Giant of Africa from being steeped in such stiff clay.
Section 84(12) had forcefully rattled political appointees who nursed ambitions of running for elective offices because it would have reduced their political ambitions to dust if they refused to resign first from their juicy positions and for what aim, perhaps, a sanitization of the polity.
A country where leadership is a formidable challenge problem should be loath that political appointees are disposed to combine the offices they hold with the distractions of electioneering.
In a country where even Local Government councilors surround themselves with dozens of do-nothing political appointees who come alive only when the vain or the villainous is to be vaunted or vouched for, it is telling that the Attorney General of the Federation, himself a political appointee, reacted with such glee at the decision of the Federal High Court to let political appointees off the hook. Talk about political self-preservation.
Talk about the haste with which decisions judicial decisions deemed favourable to the powers that be are enforced in contradistinction to the reluctance with which those deemed unfavourable are enforced, if at all.
Since Nigeria returned to democracy in 1999, many Nigerian Attorneys General have preferred to court controversy rather than advise the governments they serve to abide the decisions of courts of law. Perhaps, the day will soon come when the law in Nigeria will actually find leverage in the lips of Nigeria`s chief law officer.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
