Re: Governor Daniel’s comment on Ekiti state’s political Imbroglio and the Nigerian Presidency.
The Nigerian VANGUARD and THISDAY on-line published governor Daniel’s responses to some interview in their dailies of Monday, 16th of October 2006. They go thus:
(a) “ Ekiti : No cause for alarm” ……..Daniel
(b) “ The crisis rocking the presidency is completely unnecessary because ‘ the presidential system of government that we run is presidential in all ramifications. The president is the custodian of the peoples’ mandate. It is as simple as that. Any other thing is secondary. The president is unique. The president is not God, but he is next to God in our kind of democracy. Anybody who understands that will know how to behave.’
………Daniel.
It is incumbent upon me as a thorough bred citizen of Nigeria from Ogun state to express my feelings that bother on disappointment about governor Daniel’s comments and notion about the political, constitutional and moral crises manifesting themselves in diverse shapes and colours in Ekiti state. The events unfolding in Fayose’s state are far beyond simplistic political rhetorics and they should not be treated that way. As far as governor Fayose’s problems are concerned, they are primarily moral issues. The political aspects of Fayose’s problems would be resolved constitutionally if the state’s Judiciary remains unpoliticized but left alone to perform its constitutional duty as the final arbiter of constitutional disputes of our peculiar magnitude of political events in Nigeria.
The moral aspect of Fayose’s governorship should be a major concern to his peers; that is, all the remaining state governors in Nigeria and all other political office holders from the presidency to the local councillor. It is disturbing for enlightened citizens of our country to read what governor Daniel had to say about the horrors which seem animalistic in content happening in Ekiti state. The countless finger pointing and accusations of murder incidents in Ekiti state and the wild nature of stealing of public fund, fraud and other incredible allegations which have now become regular features of Nigerian politics are depressing. Therefore Governor Daniel’s comment of ‘ No cause for alarm’ in Ekiti is inappropriate and completely out of place, superficial, shallow and bother on dishonesty. These negative incidents go beyond mere political rhetorics and child’s play. They touch our sensitivities and conscience as citizens of goodwill.
His other comment about the Nigerian presidency is equally fundamentally faulty. There is no presidential system where the president is next to God, that is, president Obasanjo according to Daniel is next to God in Nigeria’s presidential arrangement. That kind of statement is absolutely wrong because it is never so anywhere. I am surprised and taken aback because I have always rated governor Daniel high in his perception of the political system in which he holds the office of the governor of an enlightened and vibrant state. First, I wish to call the attention of governor Daniel to the basic and fundamental concepts of “ separation of powers” and “checks and balances” among the three arms or institutions of democracies. Every democracy that worths its quality and meets the tests of modernization and development must be seen to observe the principles of “checks and balances” between its Executive arm, its legislature and its judiciary. All the three arms are equal partners in governance. They are peculiarly designed to check the excesses of one another and create some consequential balance in democratic governance in order to avoid creating a dictatorship or a totalitarian kind of governments. If our political system in Nigeria is democratic in all its ramifications according to governor Daniel’s notion, the above stated mechanisms must be present, recognised and observed wholly and completely.
In any meaningful democracy, as young as Nigeria or Ghana or as old as Britain, France and the United States, the powers allocated to various arms of government depict their boundaries of legal and fundamental powers according to the document that established them. It is only Britain, the mother of all democracies that runs an unwritten constitution which cannot be found in a single document but in several statutes here and there beginning with 1215 Magna Carta. The characteristic ingenuity of the British elite over the years led to the British creation of their government with the unique concept of “fusion of powers” rather than “seperation of powers”. The British were ahead of Montesquieu’s theoretical proposition in 1648 and since then have not faltered.
The impeachment factor vis a vis the presidency in presidential systems is the biggest control or threat to a presidency that tends to violate certain prohibitions of the constitution as prescribed by the document itself. The issue is not how power is shared between the center and the periphery or the units that make or constitute the federal system. Power sharing between the central government and the states of the federation is unique and peculiar to the type of federal system envisaged taking into consideration the history of the people concerned and other traditional, geographical and social antecedents. For illustration, the defunct Soviet Union was a federal system as compared to the United States; another federal system. The difference lied in philosophy of government that each practised. The Soviet federation was a communist dictatorship and the United States remains a meaningful democracy that enforces human rights, freedom of choice, running a two or multi-party system,‘separation of powers’ and ‘checks and balances’ as its democratic principles.
Which arm of government can impeach? It is the legislative arm following a process or procedure in which the judicial arm has definitive obligations to perform. Our problem with the ‘Rule of Law’ or its supremacy are cultural and behavioural. As a non-western people, our African cultural antecedents and tradition must begin to give way to the import of western education, enlightenment and discipline. Nigerians who are well grounded in western education, especially in law, philosophy and the social sciences need to help our society at large to create what could be described as ‘African Renaissance’ to liberate our minds individually and collectivelly from the tendentious and backward risk of lawlessness in public office and other state obligations in order to promote systemic democratic values which we falsely think we cherish, and build ordered leadership and societies where the ‘Rule of Law’ would be our watch-word.
When the Nigerian presidency of the present democratic dispensation is described by a sitting governor, who is fifty years old, as being next to God, he is either delibrately playing to the gallery which is dangerous or one should feel concerned and be wary of the shallow knowledge of those who are previleged to rule us at this particular time. The expressed notion of Governor Daniel, if true, according to the Vanguard and Thisday on-line is disturbing. The governor needs to assimilate one important and essential feature of presidential democracy which gives constitutional equality and independence to each branch of government, that is, the legilature, the executive and the judiciary. If president Obasanjo is next to God in the contemporary Nigerian presidential democracy, that is probably personal to Governor Daniel and those who believe in what he said. If I may ask, how and why did the National Assembly, precisely the Senate, defeat Obasanjo’s attempted but illegal ‘third term’ presidency of May 2006? Is Governor Daniel aware that the National Assembly can remove both our president and his vice through the impeachment process if there are constitutional violations to that effect? Even though in our traditionally crude methodology to legalise illegality, eighteen members out of thirty-two in Oyo state were taken as the constitutionally required two-thirds, a situation compromised by a corrupt and politicized Chief judge of the state in a shameless conspiracy to illegally remove governor Ladoja. Our president’s hand was clearly evident in the regrettable event. Does this kind of scenario indicate to us in followership that our president loves this country and can afford to die for it as he often says? Is this the kind of leadership we need to build the Nigeria of future? Absolutely not. When the presidency undermines the law of the land how could the ‘Rule of Law’ prevail anywhere in the polity?
It could be healthy for the president and his vice to disagree on issues or on public policies. They are different individuals with different views and minds. What is unhealthy is the publicity given it by either of the two men concerned. This is where a disciplined sense of responsibility and self control comes to be a major factor in holding such high public offices as the presidency and governorships. You disagree in the secret environment of your offices and shield away and protect the interest of the entire electorate and the nation at large. Giving such a disagreement some publicity is an evidence of moral weakness and incapability to lead. The American president between 1963 and 1968 L. B. Johnson and his Vice president Hubert Humphrey disagreed on the adminisration’s policy in Vietnam. The disagreement was so intense that the two were not on speaking terms between 1966 and 1968. The remarkable mark of responsibility and leadership dispensed by both was highly commendable. Both would not let their differences reach the American public through the media. They kept mute about it until both left office. They reconciled later to visit each other. With us, we want to be seen and demonstrate the paraphenalia of official superficiality without genuine personal responsibility. The Nigerian elite has much to learn to sustain itself creditably.
Our greatest problem in Nigeria is primarily a moral one coupled with lack of exposure, lack of knowledge and enlightenment, lack of personal satisfaction in our efforts in low and high places. Even the restraining MORES of our African tradition have been thrown to the winds and we have become slaves to avarice, fraud, falsities, lies, undue and unnecessary accumulation of properties, and such vices. The cronies in our midst will definitely not listen but continue to promote and sing the praise of their immoral bosses and masters even when the truth openly stares them in the face.
Dear Governor Daniel, your good deeds as a progressive governor weigh more heavily than your negative side. I have personally written much about you and your effective government in Ogun. Many enlightened Nigerians that you know in person but belong to other political parties argue in support of a deserved second term for you. I am an AD sympathizer and cannot shift from that position because I am an Awoist of the UPN tradition, culture and generation. You became attractive to a good number of believers in Papa Awo’s legacies of efficiency in government, credible performance, transparency, responsibility, responsiveness, egalitarianism and general societal advancement because of your style of performance in Ogun state.
The intellectual aspect of all these policies and their execution remain the hallmarks of Awoists in contemporary Nigeria. But your recent expose’ to the VANGUARD and THISDAY on-line about the Ekiti situation and your faulty perception of the Nigerian presidency deserve to be discarded and thrown away because they constitute bad education and wrong information to the Nigerian public.
By: Bankole A. Okuwa Ph.D.
Professor of Political Science
University of Arkansas
U.S.A.
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