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No
to a Janitor as President
Published
June 11, 2004
The
recent imposition of emergency rule in Plateau State by President
Olusegun Obasanjo must be worrying to all lovers of democracy in
Nigeria. It is unfortunate that Nigeria's ship of state appears
to be drifting and now look almost rudderless. And the man who has
been thrice ordained to wield the mantle of office and steer the
nation along the path of sanity may have gone berserk and drunk
with power. We have watched with dismay the events leading to the
declaration of a state of emergency by the president on May 18 and
the suspension of the elected governor, Joshua Dariye, his deputy
and members of the House of Assembly and chuckle at the crippling
fascism that seem to confront the nation's fragile democracy.
It
is further frightening that warning shots are also being dished
out to perceived recalcitrant governors to make them buckle under
or else they would be visited by the same fate. This attempt to
blackmail elected governors and whip them around the little finger
of a supposed super ordinate president just to make them fall in
line is reprehensible. Coming too soon after the country shoved
aside the shenanigans of erstwhile dictator, General Sani Abacha
and his transmutation gamble, this cannot be salutary to the psyche
and morale of a people who staked so much in defence of democracy
in Nigeria from military usurpers.
Relying
on a non existent law that is not in our statute book, it is intriguing
that the president proceeded to impose emergency rule in Plateau
State, suspended the democratically elected officials and imposed
a retired general, Chris Alli as sole administrator. Besides, Obasanjo's
speech of May 18 was a virtual diatribe against Governor Joshua
Dariye for what he perceived as "incompetence" in handling the soaring
crisis in Yelwa which had pitched the Gomai against the Hausa/Fulani
settlers. Making a claim to a false Olympian height, the president
also berated the governor for abandoning his post when it mattered
most by travelling frequently out of the country without informing
him (the president).
But
we dare say the president lacked the moral basis for this charge.
Obasanjo himself must have made more than 100 trips out of the country
in his vain search for elusive foreign investment. Some have been
done with impunity even as the nation burns like the recent trip
to attend the G8 Summit in Georgia, USA even in the heat of a major
strike called by the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC against frequent
fuel price hike. The National Assembly had to intervene once to
make him cancel his foreign trip in the wake of the penultimate
crisis in Kano. So what lessons in morality can Obasanjo teach Governor
Dariye whom he accused of travelling out just five times without
taking permission from him? In what section of the constitution
is it written that governors must take permission from a janitor
president before jetting out of the country?
The
constitution makes it very clear that there can be no vacuum in
the management of state affairs. In the absence of a governor, the
deputy governor is in charge. In the absence of the governor and
his deputy, the mantle also falls on the speaker of the House of
Assembly. But what locus does a president who has been gallivanting
virtually all foreign capitals to accuse a governor of frequent
foreign travels? It is surely a case of a kettle calling the pot
black.
How
concretely can a governor who neither controls the Army or the police
live up to his status as chief security officer of the state? How
can a governor be effective in tackling security matters when he's
virtually castrated of the requisite powers? Like he did during
the last bomb blast in Lagos, Obasanjo's lambaste of the chairman
of Plateau State chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria
CAN as an "idiot" betrays the inability of the president to always
rise to the occasion when it matters most. In times of crisis, the
Nigerian people expect their president to soothe their worries and
passion and not one that would ride on a high horse and inflict
more pains.
What
is needed in resolving the Plateau State crisis is for a policy
of realism that would immediately restore Governor Joshua Dariye
and other democratic structures and genuinely address the lingering
indigenship question which underscored the Yelwa crisis. The government
should therefore embrace the rising call for a Sovereign National
Conference to resolve the raging nationality question in Nigeria
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