Who will tell President Muhammadu Buhari that Nigeria under his watch is sliding in a reverse gear? That things are falling apart under his watch and that the Nigeria of our dreams is fast disappearing into the uncharted anarchy of democratisation of incompetence, denial of fundamental rights and freedoms and increasing hardship in the land? The leader cannot pat himself on the back for a job well done, mark his own scripts and score distinctions when the examiners, as the ordinary people are groaning under great hardship arising from executive action and inaction.
In this discourse, I seek to examine the denigration of human rights and fundamental freedoms and the denial of the very basics of democratic tenets under the watch of President Buhari. Any discourse on human rights ought to start with the right to life because rights are only for the living and get extinguished in death. The thousands killed since the beginning of this year paint a picture of a country in war, the blood of the innocent crying to the high heavens for vengeance. Yet, the President and our security chiefs are scoring themselves as great performers in securing the nation. The killings in states like Benue, Taraba, Kaduna, and Kogi no longer command the front pages. They have become routine and the people killed are expendable. They do not count; they are neither taxpayers nor bonafide citizens who have made a contribution to the society. The story of the identities of the killers keeps changing; from herdsmen, Boko Haram, non-Nigerians especially of the stock trained by the late Libyan leader, Muommar Gaddafi, who died about eight years ago. Who is really in charge and who cares about the victims?
Another fundamental tenet of society is the idea and concept of justice which speaks about treating like cases alike, non-discrimination, equality before the law and equal protection of the law. These are key pillars of social engineering and cohesion, societal transformation and respect for the rule of law. What we currently have is institutionalised contempt for this lofty ideal. The law looks at faces of citizens before deciding to mete out favours or punishment. Under Buhari, all citizens are equal but some are more equal than others has become the creed of governance. And the enforcers of this creed are without scruples and do not care about what fellow citizens may think or say. We have a government that claims to be seriously fighting corruption. In one breath, it investigates and puts on trial some persons suspected to have committed petty and grand corruption. The citizens are happy that punishment may soon follow a crime and monies will be recovered to the treasury to serve the public good. In another breath, a member of the administration belonging to the favoured elite is caught with his hands straight in the cookie jar and the anti-corruption, no-nonsense President and prosecutors of financial crime look the other way.
Clear evidence of criminality available in the public domain no longer matters and is of no issue. Pray, what is the difference between the crimes allegedly committed by many members of the previous administration who are facing their day in court and what the former secretary of the Buhari government, Babachir Lawal did? The difference is that the former served in a government different from the current one. When investigations and prosecutions become instruments for the expression of party patronage and loyalty, the rule of law is imperilled, societal morality degenerates and the message is sent to all – join the ruling party and you can get away with blue murder! What a message and what a morality. This is the morality of the animal kingdom, evoking the basest instincts of our humanity in a race to the bottom.
Again, Nigerians woke up to see live television pictures of gangsters invade the Senate in broad daylight, took away the mace and threatened everyone in the chamber. Where is the report of the police and other law enforcement agencies on the incident? Who has been arrested or who is facing prosecution? The pictures of the invaders were caught on camera and have been shown on television across all Nigerians homes and there is no report. Yes, the Senate needs to be put in its place because the powers-that-be do not like the face of the leaders of the Senate. Thus, the institution has to be desecrated and life goes on as if nothing wrong happened. The other day, some recognised and highly placed Nigerians brought a petition for the recall of Senator Dino Melaye and invoked the Independent National Electoral Commission to use public resources to organise a signature verification which showed that a majority of the signatures were forged and included the names of dead persons. INEC also defended cases filed by the senator against his recall. Of course, now the exercise has failed, the police and the law enforcement agencies have seen no evil, nor heard one; there is no forgery, nothing wrong but the business of running perceived opponents out of town must continue. Where is the integrity of law enforcement? So, laws are to be enforced based on the shape of the face and nose of the alleged culprit or complainant.
We are back to the era when the executive decides the court orders to obey and those to violate with impunity. The court order for the release of a former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, has been disobeyed. The central questions are; is the allegation against Dasuki for an offence for which the court can exercise its discretion to grant bail? When the court has exercised its discretion, is the President who swore to defend the constitution permitted to treat the order with contempt and levity in a democracy? These posers cannot in good conscience be answered in favour of the President and his executive. Also, the Federal Government disobeyed the court order for the release of the Shiites leader,Sheik El-zakyzaky and held him in illegal detention for so long. Now that his supporters have started daily legitimate demonstrations against this gross abuse of the rule of law, the state rushes to charge him for murder. This is clearly an afterthought and an abuse of process. Why detain a suspect for over two years before remembering to charge him to court? The facts grounding this charge did not suddenly emerge. They have been available from the first day of his detention. The same executive that disobeyed the court order for his release is going back to the court to try the beneficiary of the order which was violated. Assuming the court comes to the conclusion that the accused is innocent and should again be set free, will the Federal Government obey the order?
Whenever the rule of law and respect for fundamental human rights and freedoms become the prerogative of any man or a select few, no matter how highly placed; whenever court orders become subject to the review of members of the executive who are not schooled in the art of judicial interpretation, the society is imperilled, endangered and is on the brink of anarchy. I have volunteered to tell the President, who swore to enforce the laws of our land, to enforce the orders of the courts, to guarantee human rights and fundamental freedoms. Mr. President, the buck stops on your table, do not plunge Nigeria into needless anarchy.
