Idowu Akinlotan

ON November 2, President Muhammadu Buhari began a private visit to the United Kingdom that is expected to end on November 17. The visit has been criticised, essentially because the president did not transmit any letter informing the National Assembly of his more than two-week visit to the UK, nor did he hand over power to the vice president. The presidency explained that the visit did not meet the 21 days threshold or the annual leave provision to demand transmitting a letter to the legislature and empowering the vice president to act. Opinion has remained divided on the matter, though the balance of argument seems to favour those who insist the president broke the law.

The presidency was obviously careful not to mention holiday as the reason for the president’s visit to the UK, and state officials were even more reluctant to insinuate whether the visit might be connected with the president’s health. All of them appear tired of speculations and recriminations over the president’s physical condition. The Buhari presidency, it is now abundantly clear, has become adept at presenting the public with faits accomplis as a means of deflecting or defanging criticisms. Does the presidency anticipate that Nigerians would have reservations over the so-called private visit? Why, the answer is to simply embark on the visit, announce it to the public matter of fact, and gloat that it is constitutional. Voila! They did this when they unilaterally dipped their hands into the country’s coffers in 2018, took a billion dollars from the excess crude account without authorisation, clothed the illegality with the noble purpose of fighting insurgency, and imbued it with a self-righteous but indefensible urgency.

Having measured the country’s literacy level and the low voltage courage of the citizenry, the Buhari presidency and a number of ministries and agencies, particularly the security agencies, have become more brazen in violating the constitution and the rights of citizens. The president is already in the UK. Of course officials know that there is nothing like private visit in the constitution; there is absolutely no mention of it. Not in the well-known Section 145, and not iin any other place. But they know that such an infraction, or even many infractions taken in combination, cannot earn him impeachment. Apart from the fearfulness of Nigeria’s ingratiating National Assembly, ponderous ethnic and religious configurations ensure that impeachment would be unsuccessful and even backfire.

The argument over whether the president could sign a bill in the UK is futile. Nigerians know clearly that the president was simply trying to clothe the illegality he had inspired with some trappings of officialdom. No CEO gets up from his desk, and without taking permission from the Board of Directors, simply abandons office and declares he is proceeding on a private visit. Every organisation has rules and regulations, just like the country has a constitution. If the Buhari presidency decides to repeatedly violate the constitution, it is not because the president and his aides don’t know the provisions of the constitution. It is simply because, overall, they have sized up the country and decided that their lack of leadership discipline means nothing to anybody. Their contempt for the law is palpable.

Having seen how brutally and contemptuously Aso Villa treats the law and the constitution, and having understood how the government tramples on the rights of the people, including particularly free speech, many state governments and agencies are following hard on the heels of the federal government. The Army simply got up one morning and declared that its officers had brainstormed over insecurity in the country and had taken the unprecedented step of demanding, between November 1 and December 23, that Nigerians would be required to produce their identity cards on demand by soldiers. They were not shamed by that inglorious measure. In fact they argued triumphantly that they were already implementing that measure in the Northeast. Even if it looked like military rule, they didn’t care. It did not matter to them that their plan was not debated and approved by the federal cabinet, nor did it strike them that it was an army thing rather than a military programme which requires the participation of the navy, air force, Department of State Service, civil defence and the police. It didn’t even occur to them that a programme of such magnitude should be announced by either the Internal Affairs ministry, the presidency, Defence ministry, or a spokesman for the joint chiefs.

Impunity has begun to take root gradually, and democracy is being lost inch by inch. It began with the presidency which should set the nation’s democratic tone, but which has instead begun to inspire dictatorship; now the cancer is spreading malevolently. The Customs, rather than the Internal Affairs ministry, also got up and announced border closures, and having done a benefit analysis instead of a cost-benefit analysis, has convinced the federal government to extend the period of the closure to next January. Flush with excitement, if not a sense of victory, the same Customs has again announced that no petrol dispensing stations would be supplied fuel within a 20kkm radius of Nigeria’s borders. Where are the calculations of the costs and benefits? And who should announce such far-reaching policies? Somehow, these knee-jerk policies, anchored on nationalist fervour, remind many Nigerians of fascism, in particular the Nazi variety.

But worse has happened. Go to Cross River State where a journalist and publisher of the Cross River Watch, Agba Jalingo was whisked away from Lagos in August over the publication of a report alleging a N500m financial malfeasance against the governor. The Cross River State government simply dispensed with the constitution, got the police to storm Lagos and arrest Mr Jalingo, kept the journalist in jail for 34 days before even charging him in court. A conniving judiciary in Calabar perpetrated unspeakable constitutional atrocities in the process. Worse, Mr Jalingo is now charged with terrorism, treasonable felony and attempt to topple the Cross River State government. Even prosecution witnesses were unashamedly and unprecedentedly granted anonymity to testify. Treason? Well, who needs the constitution? After all, the federal government itself casually hurls treason charges at its critics.

Taking a cue from the ongoing and continuing madness, policemen from Kwara State also stormed Lagos in October and hauled Adebowale Adekoya of the News Digest into detention over a story on alleged hemp smoking in an agro-allied firm owned by former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) acting governor, Sarah Alade. Libel laws take time and, in the opinion of some of these top Nigerians, do not punish journalists enough. The DSS had also in 2016 arrested Jones Abiri, publisher of the Bayelsa State-based Weekly Source, kept him for about two years without trial, and eventually released him in 2018, only to re-arrest him early this year and charge him with acts of terrorism. And almost as if Nigerian officials and security agencies know where to charge their quarries with obscene crimes, they have found a kindred spirit in Justice Ijeoma Ojukwu who sets outrageous bail conditions for suspects.

Impunity is fuelling the spirit of authoritarianism in many parts of Nigeria, and state governments and security agencies are being seduced by federal-style impunity. Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, has cottoned onto that spirit, and the police and other security agencies are robbing Nigerian youths of the pleasures and freedoms of growing up in Nigeria. The proselytising and unprofessional security men, in the name of combating cultism and Internet fraud, now specialise in humiliating, depriving, alienating and criminalising Nigerian youths whom they unlawfully disallow from wearing certain hairstyles, clothes and dresses. Nigerians cannot now even make calls or receive calls while transiting myriads of disruptive and often extortionate checkpoints. The paranoia, repression, ignorance and impunity are unexampled.

But it is not only the youths who are being robbed of their future, the government and its security agencies are doing enormous damage to the spirit of the country in politics, business and culture. Soon the tyranny, if the vituperations of the Information minister, Lai Mohammed, are anything to go by, will be extended through stringent social media regulations, as if the ruling APC will be in office for eternity and stand no risk of falling into their own traps sometime in the future. Impunity is taking dangerous root in Nigeria. It is time to campaign against it and stop the descent into chaos and retrogression if democracy, already terribly wounded, is not to be lost altogether. The presidency is too steeped in authoritarian culture to be of any help in entrenching democracy, and the self-deprecating National Assembly is too scared of its own shadows to halt the precarious decline. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which is inexplicably waiting for their footloose presidential candidate in the last presidential poll, Atiku Abubakar, is too weak and sundered to pack enough punch in the impending combat.

In equal measure, students’ unions are balkanised and denuded of culture, a voice, and any noble virtue; and civil society groups are often available for hire on both sides of the clumsy divide polluting the society. Who is left but a few voices that won’t bow to the national idol, as the space for freedom shrinks ignominiously? The government of the day does not understand democracy, and no amount of sermonising and persuasion will get them to recant their authoritarian proclivities. And with ignorance writ very large among the citizenry, the prognosis is indeed dire. But perhaps perceptive Nigerians will keep hope alive that once they become enlightened, the people will eventually kick against their oppressors and demand democratic governance and the full protection given them without conditions by the country’s imperfect and besieged constitution.

Culled from Thenation