A LEOPARD IN HIS FAMILIAR TOGA:
Pulling a Nation Into The Jungle by a Converted Democrat
By Tunji Ajayi
History is sacred. A very meticulous subject I spontaneously love by accident. The ravishing, exquisitely neat fashionista female teacher who taught me spoke Queen’s English with sweeping eloquence. Instead of reading to us from prepared lesson notes as most teachers do, she wrote hers on the blackboard for all her students to copy. I often felt like licking her exquisitely beautiful hand-written lesson notes on what we called the blackboard; the type I doubt if our present-day students ever came across. Her handwriting, with precisely uniform font size, was like the Calibri type face of our modern-day computer. Rubbing the neatly written lesson notes off the blackboard often became problem for me; the class captain. But most importantly she often gave me her left-over food during “ounje aago mokanla” – the 11.O’clock breakfast. While my classmates with gluttony instinct struggled to have a taste; I often fought back, since I would rather prefer only to give part of it to one pretty girl in the class, with whom I often exchanged cursory glances at short intervals.
But the puritanical discipline in me often made me struggle to keep my eyes away. Till today, I still hate looking at pretty girls or ladies for too long. Yes. My being a disciplined student is congenital. Indeed, I never knew how to say “I love you” to a girl in my youth days. The more I rehearsed the simple three-letter words, the more I trembled and stammered when occasions arose to say so. Oh! That neat teacher made me love History subject, now expunged from the school curriculum. Thus most of our youths know nothing about real war. Hence, they innocently chant war songs on the streets; thinking that war is anything like what they watch in James Bond or Arnold Schwarzenegger fictions and make-belief films and footages. Oh! War! The most dreaded word to the discerning. May our beleaguered nation never again be dragged into such horror. Sorry. I have digressed! Digression is the weakness of a loquacious writer.
Just like the characteristic of the subject, the teacher was very scrupulous enough for me to imitate. Hence, I am an avid keeper of records. History too is very scrupulous at recording all our noble and ignoble activities. In a piece: “Another Look At Those Draconian Decrees” (Daily Sketch, November 29, 1985), having been puzzled about the profuseness at which draconian decrees were being churned out by the then military junta which ruled Nigeria from December 31, 1983 to August 27, 1985 and the brazen travesty of justice pervading the social and political space then, I had raised a question on why the relationship between the then Attorney General and Minister for Justice, and the then Head of State was like master-servant relationship, more so when the former held a sacred position whose responsibility was to advise the latter - a military man, on matters relating to law. Please permit an excerpt: “Now, the chief executive in military government is no less than the Head of State (now President) to whom the Attorney General and Minister for Justice gave valuable advisory services on legal matters. The Head of State is therefore expected to place high premium on such legal advisory services, lest his action contradicts legal norms or becomes inimical to the interest of the state.” I went on:
“However, it is difficult to conclude that the relationship that existed between our deposed Head of State and his Attorney General and Minister for Justice was not master/servant or employer/employee relationship, whereby the Head of State issued command: “Do this,” and the Attorney General subserviently said “Yes sir”, ostensibly to keep his job. There could have been one of these two possibilities: either the then Attorney-General was shy to give legal advisory services to the deposed Head of State, or the deposed Head of State felt it was just a mere formality to have an Attorney General and Minister for Justice in the cabinet so that he, the then Attorney General, had no option than play a second fiddle.”
History, like I said above, is meticulous at recording events without bias or prejudice to anybody’s interest; such that our activities today become stories to be to read by our impressionable youths tomorrow. The then Attorney General and Minister for Justice at the time under consideration was the erudite Dr. Chike Ofodile (SAN) of blessed memory. And the Head of State was this same General Muhammadu Buhari during whose regime a whopping 46 decrees were hurriedly churned out within twenty months of his rulership, in addition to the existing obnoxious ones for our revered judiciary to interpret and apply. Many of those decrees were so draconian and repugnant, and roundly criticized. Against legal norms, some even had retroactive effect and by which some citizens suffered capital punishment; viz death penalty for drug-related offences. The jigsaw puzzle then was to ask what extent did our courts of law go to stand for justice and fairness if they were bound to apply obnoxious decrees?
Under this asphyxiating authoritarianism popularly termed “Buharism” in the media, Nigerians prayed fervently for the alternative popular democratization of the polity for reprieve. By 1979, democratic governance was installed in Nigeria with Shehu Shagari’s civilian administration and Nigerians sang Jubilante Deo. Today, the same person, Muhammadu Buhari, who ruled Nigeria after removing Shagari’s administration through a military coup d’etat of December 31, 1983 and ruled as a military Head of State till August 27, 1985 still has the honour and privilege of presiding over Nigeria as a democratically elected executive President of Nigeria - A grand opportunity to make a positive impression. Politicians are adept in sophistry and application of sweepingly sweet words to hoodwink unsuspecting electorate. Buhari, having lost previous successive elections in 2003, 2007 and 2011 allayed the fears of the electorate prior 2015 presidential election. Thus, on February 26, 2015 in his speech entitled “Prospects for Democratic Consolidation in Africa: Nigeria’s Transition” at the Chatham House, London’ Buhari showed penitence. He confessed that though he could not change the past, he could change the future as he had truly become a “converted democrat.” Hear Buhari in his own words: “I cannot change the past. But I can change the present and the future. So, before you is a former military ruler and a converted democrat who is ready to operate under democratic norms and is subjecting himself to the rigours of democratic elections for the fourth time.” He won the election and was sworn in on May 29, 2015. But just like the question his military rulership provoked then; we are tempted again to ask; how far have the rights of the citizens been protected since he became a civilian president in 2015?
Unlike military rulership by hunches, personal whims and decrees, in democratic settings, all government institutions are expected to be functional for good governance. The Attorney General and Minister for Justice’s exalted office exists to serve in advisory capacity to the government on all legal issues and ensure constitutionality of every government’s actions to avoid commission of legal “faux pas”. He represents the public in all legal proceedings for the enforcement of law and the protection of public rights. The established courts of law also exist to interpret the existing law and new ones passed by the legislature and adjudicate to ensure justice and fairness. Indeed, there is this legal maxim that stipulates that judges’ duty is jus dicere and not jus dare. That is, their main duty is to interpret and apply the law and not to make it. But here comes a democratic government that seems to be acting brutish with iron fists as if Nigeria is still under the jackboot of a military government. An example of the recent suspension of Twitter suffices to buttress this claim. This provokes the puzzling question: To what extent are citizens getting humane treatment and having their rights protected under this democratic arrangement? The President was alleged to have run afoul of Twitter’s rule culminating in Twitter deleting His Excellency’s tweeted message. Barely 48 hours thereafter, the government took its pound of flesh. Alleging that Twitter had often allowed its facilities to be used ignobly by secessionists and fake news peddlers to threaten Nigeria’s peaceful coexistence; the Nigerian government hit back. Twitter was suspended in Nigeria indefinitely; thus catching Nigeria’s over 40 million Twitter subscribers napping. The suspension was like a military fiat. It was just an announcement through the Minister of Information and Culture without recourse to official and legal norms. The government also threatened any subsequent user of Twitter’s services with a jail term. Within a short period after the suspension, over 40 million Nigerians were cut off from Twitters services. Human communication began to suffer unbridled hiccups. Businesses being run with the aid of the handle suffered paralysis. While millions of users groaned in pain, over N2 billion was estimated to have been lost within only 24 hours of the ban by a nation that had lost several $millions earlier to the Covid-19 scourge. A baby vomited on her mother’s lap. The mother had no patience to clean up the mess, but angrily beheaded the baby. What a man destroys when drunk, he pays dearly for it when sober.
I am not a lawyer; neither do I profess to be learned. But I still remember the sacred principle relating to law of vicarious liability. Simply put, you can only suffer the punishment meted on a group if you are a party to the criminal or civil wrong committed by it. Consequently, a person may not be made to suffer punishment unduly for a tort; viz a criminal or civil wrong committed by another person(s), unless he has authorized that person to commit the act on his behalf. Even in a “Principal-Agency” relationship, where the maxim: Qui facit per alium, facit per se” holds, suggesting that “whatever an Agent does, the Principal is deemed to have done it”, provided the act is found to have been done on his behalf. Even then the exception to the general principle holds sway, viz, that the Principal may be absolved from blame if established beyond reasonable doubt that he had earlier repudiated the Agent’s actions for which a tortuous act is being alleged. Thus, I wonder if an innocent man should be made to suffer the penalty for an alleged wrong committed by another person. Consequently, if some few Nigerians actually misused Twitter’s services as to threaten the corporate existence of Nigeria, as being alleged by the government, the right to communicate and be heard by other innocent millions of Nigerians, and do business using Twitter’s facilities had been brazenly trampled upon through brazen suspension and services termination. This poses a fundamental question: Which quality of legal advice does the Attorney General & Minister for Justice offer the executive President in this democratic setting to qualify it as a government of the people by the people for the people? What should differentiate military governance from democratic administration on a matter of application of legal rules? If democracy truly respects the cardinal principle of natural justice, hadn’t the “Nemo Judex in causa sua” principle been breached; since a man or an institution cannot be the accuser and a judge in his own cause? Again, the over 40 million Twitter users were browbeaten alongside those alleged to have wrongly used the facilities to threaten national security and thus suffered same punishment – a case of spanking the innocent with the alleged offenders. If the government that alleged also applied punishment in a fiat, how does this differ from issuance of decrees in military setting? How does this make the President a truly “converted democrat” as boasted at the London Chatam House in 2015?
What is known of the sacred principle of natural justice, especially as exemplified by “audi alteram partem” maxim is that in an unruly crowd of 100 people; with only a pious but yet unidentified innocent man, law will rather allow all the 100 to go scot free rather than expose a single innocent man to suffer punishment unjustly. That explains the sanctity of cardinal principle of natural justice and deep respect for law, which presumes a man innocent of an alleged offense until duly tried by a court of competent jurisdiction in the land.
Thus, if a few erring Nigerians allegedly used Twitter’s facilities negatively as to constitute threat to the corporate existence of Nigeria, how does outright suspension in a jiffy become the reasonable solution, especially in this modern interdependent world of communal living? What could threaten the corporate existence of a country more than a President being an ethnically biased leader with unpretentious tribalistic mentality? What compromises a nation’s corporate existence more than a president promising security in one breath but promoting insecurity in another breath through the curious unpopular policy of reintegration of the so-called repentant insurgents and bandits back into the same society they had unleashed terror and committed genocide for over a decade? To what extent does the President’s unbridled love for open cattle grazing promote the corporate existence of the country over which he presides? If open grazing had snowballed into horrendous massacre, genocide, arson, rape, slaughtering of innocent Nigerians, why is Mr. President so emotionally attached to the archaic practice? Each time there appeared a solution and a way forward to a logjam; it is ironical that Mr. President, the father of the nation himself, who doesn’t want the country’s disintegration, reverses the trend to drive the country backward to 16th century approach at solving perennial problems? Like Martin Luther King Jr, the great American civil rights activist would say in his “Stride Towards Freedom” (1964): “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it”. Can one rightly say that Mr. President does not perpetrate and perpetuate evil when after 17 southern state governors who represent their subjects, and many well meaning Nigerians from the North had proffered the simple and straightforward worldwide-renowned ranching as the alternative to open grazing, the President in his June 12, 2021 Democracy Day address still drew the country backward again into the jungle; promising to engage the Minister of Justice to seek and revive 1963 open grazing route when Nigeria’s population was only 48.03 million, and far less structurally developed! What an ignoble manner of applying a 16th century mindset to govern in 21st century age of rapid technological, political and social development!
Mr. President had sworn by oath to protect every citizen and their rights under the constitution. If a tort, according to Professor Percy Winfield, is “the breach of a duty primarily fixed by the law, where the duty is one towards persons generally and its breach is redressible by an action for damages”, barring the executive immunity, it is safe to aver that Mr. President has brazenly committed a tortuous wrong alongside his advisers and spokespersons for which they are liable for punishment while the victims should be paid huge damages. Though, many of the old-skull and old-school Presidential advisers and spokespersons with 16th century mindsets and 1963 grazing-route thinking must have underestimated the importance of tweeting to modern business development. But in our modern time, virtually all business endeavors in our information technological age - the banking industry, the grocery stores, airlines, governments and governance, schools, manufacturing industries all thrive on tweeting as a fast mode of communication.
But for those who passively or clandestinely perpetrate and perpetuate evil, let them take a lesson from Theodore Roosevelt, the, 26th US president: “No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.” When our policy makers realize this fact, Nigeria will move forward. Verbum Satis Sapienti.
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*Tunji Ajayi, a creative writer, author, biographer and audiovisual documentary producer writes from LC-Studio Communications, Nigeria (+2348033203115; +2348162124412) (tunjiajayi4legend@yahoo.com)
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