THE ULTIMATE REIGN OF IMPUNITY AND THE JOURNEY TO ANARCHY Let us begin with the threat to the judiciary. When the Chief Justice of the Federation, Mariam Aloma Mukhtar addressed the opening session of the 2014 conference of All Nigerian Judges of the lower courts in Abuja, she lamented that judges in the country where functioning in ‘’deplorable and unsecured conditions’’. In the months leading up to the conference judges had been assaulted and beaten up in states such as Ekiti where a minority number of legislators have also convened, all in support of the goals of the ‘’sworn in’’ governor. In one of the most egregious molestations of the idea of separation in the doctrine of separation of powers, the Ekiti Judiciary and Legislature have been castrated. Seven of 26 representativeshave elected a speaker and the so called Governor says that’s okay. How Nigerian leaders have the effrontery to call what we have here a democracy amazes me. What gets to me more is how our political class cannot educate themselves to understand what they owe the future, and that institutions are the key to that future. At the heart of the building of institutions is the rule of law violated so shamelessly in not only the issues in Ekiti but also in courts locked up in states like Rivers, abuse of elections in such places as Delta in the last Local Government elections, creating the impression that politics is not about ideas or service but the domain of the crooked and the self-obsessed. What does not seem to have become clear to the leadership is that the reign of impunity has finally come to roost in the effects of financial recklessness playing out in panic on the economy on what should have been an easy adjustment, and the flow through of impunity in the rapid deterioration of the rule of law and the state of Nigeria’s institutions generally. These are major legacy issues. As bad, is the crisis of property rights. Beyond Hernando De Soto and the mystery of capital not being overcome by the trend of damaging institutions regulators use power to take over properties of others or prevent consummation of legal contracts because a predecessor approved of it, harming future investments prospects. Remarkably just about all who have inflicted this damage, wittingly or unwittingly, are seeking to continue in office. The culture of resigning from office or not seeking re-election, even when we are not directly personally responsible for a wrong is helpful in the regeneration of governance systems. But here people for whose sake the country is so divided with threat of worse, want extension of their tenure, if possible beyond term limits. Most of the big fear of 2015 which is not only affecting investments and the very legitimacy of the democratic process in Nigeria is because many in power do not realize that their decision to pass on this round could do both themselves, Nigeria, and how history treats these times, a world of good. For the political class to be in song and dance campaigns, and effusive accolades poured out in newspapers to celebrate the birthday of a president when Nigeria’s sovereignty over vast territories is in question; innocents are dying from terror attacks; and poverty is savaging a majority of the people, is to give the impression that in us was found the generation Franz Fanon must have had in mind when he talks of the generation that discovered its mission and deliberately decided to betray it for in truth, every generation must discover its mission and choose to either fulfill or betray it. Post script: As I was about post the foregoing, news came that the senate president David Mark had shut down the National Assembly. For more than 30minutes after I got the breaking news I watched on TVC an orderly session of the House of Representativespresided over by the speaker Aminu Tambuwal. Another breaking news coming at the same time suggested seven members of the Ekiti State House of Assembly had impeached the speaker. The total breakdown of the rule of law and the reign of impunity was proceeding at the same time as reckless spending of public resources and rent extracted resources on wrap around single adverts to congratulate the President on his birthday at costs higher than can provide good education for a whole Niger Delta town, made for much sadness about how we got here. Our democracy had come unstuck. I heard House members on TV talking of rumblings in the barracks. Even if that was not true, such impunity at all levels of government by a ruling party as in Delta LG elections, Ekiti State Assembly and the National Assembly, is to say farewell democracy
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 09:01:36 +0000