“the Akeredolu family allowed politicians to divert their attention from a 100 percent care for their bread winner to joining issues with schemers on how to keep the status quo that they have been exploiting”.
BY TONNIE IREDIA
Many Nigerians have for long been calling for a new constitution for their country because the subsisting 1999 constitution never met and still doesn’t meet the basic requirements of a people’s constitution. However, many other citizens are not persuaded that writing another constitution is a viable way out. The perspective of this latter school of thought is that Nigeria as a nation has had a history of several written constitutions whose provisions are hardly ever adhered to by the people. How can writing a new constitution alter such a culture of impunity in the polity? Indeed, our political leaders have since the restoration of democracy to the country in 1999 perfected the practice of experimenting with the letters of several provisions of our constitution. They do this in two ways. First, many existing legal provisions are bypassed while dealing with issues that such provisions were intended to address. Second, even where the letters of the law are applied, the real spirit of such provisions are never reckoned with.
In truth, our experience has been that of a people who on a daily basis helplessly watch their elite class flouting extant laws while the judiciary looks the other way leading to the resort to what is called the doctrine of necessity to redress the consequences of their deliberate contributory negligence. Of course, many Nigerians are now familiar with what is meant by the doctrine of necessity – a principle which presupposes that certain developments were either not anticipated by law or are better handled by an extraordinary approach. The trend these days is that presidents and governors have developed a hobby of not handing over to their acclaimed deputies whenever they need to travel abroad for medical check-ups or are unable for whatever reasons to perform their duties. Yet, human mortality theories have for long established beyond reasonable doubt that anyone can fall ill or even die anytime. If so, why is it difficult for an office holder to perform a simple duty of delegating duties which the constitution explicitly demands?
In all cases where politicians keep canvassing the doctrine of necessity to deal with troubled times, each affected leader had ample time to handover to his deputy; the only exception being the case of former governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba state, who was involved in a plane crash. The case of former president Umaru Yar’Adua and his vice Goodluck Jonathan was probably the first time, the term, doctrine of necessity was actually applied. If we recall that Yar’Adua didn’t enjoy the best of health before he assumed office as president, the story that he was too sick to remember to handover to Jonathan before proceeding abroad for treatment remains puerile. The truth was that those around the president ignored the constitution at the time because they were trying to stop a southerner from taking over the tenure of a northerner in a system that had become anchored on rotation. To some people therefore, it was the turn of the north to rule after president Olusegun Obasanjo, a southerner had served as president for 8 uninterrupted years.
When the game was virtually up, the National Assembly quickly moved in and with the help of the doctrine of necessity produced a resolution that made Jonathan to take over as acting president. This helped the legislators of the time to claim cheap heroism for resolving the impasse caused by a president who failed to do the needful before travelling out. In another country where the practice of the rule of law is a priority, a president would not have been allowed to stay away from duty from November 2009 till February 2010 without transmitting power to his vice. In such countries, the legislature would have declared the president incapacitated and followed the legal process for removing him from office, without hiding under the doctrine of necessity. After all, the constitutional provision was not prepared with just ill-health in mind. Rather, the transmission of power to a vice president or deputy governor was also required whenever an otherwise healthy principal had cause to travel out for any reason.
The more annoying dimension of the trend is that it is those close to the leaders who invent stories that help our office holders to experiment with our constitution. Otherwise, how can a president that we were all told was treating files in foreign hospitals be unable to transmit a letter of transfer of power? It is thus obvious that it is the immediate aides who always do the havoc deploying several antics to execute their plans. At a point, Nigerians were told that there was nothing legally wrong with our president ruling from any part of the world. They also concoct reports of how an ailing principal was hale and hearty, playing games or even dancing just to confuse citizens. President Muhammadu Buhari’s aides who no longer wanted vice president Yemi Osinbajo to act whenever his boss was away came up with a story that the president was not obliged to transfer power in any trip whose duration was less than 3weeks.
Loyalists of former governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba state who was involved in an unanticipated air crash did not behave differently. Getting his deputy to act on his behalf was surprisingly not automatic. Following severe injuries, he sustained in a plane crash on October 25, 2012 Suntai was first flown to Germany before being transferred to an American hospital for treatment. Rather than allowing deputy governor Garba Umar to, in the normal course of events, act as governor, the first preoccupation of the Taraba state legislators was to pass a resolution for the injured governor to continue as the captain of the governance team. Why did the State Assembly not trust Deputy Governor Garba Umar to act on behalf of his political godfather? To sane minds, it was perhaps too early to work against a man handpicked by Governor Suntai to replace former deputy governor Sani Abubakar Danladi, who was impeached 3 weeks earlier for inexplicable reasons.
The story of how Taraba handled a governor who was no longer able to serve because of a plane crash is worth retelling. When Umar was eventually allowed to act, the state became divided on whether or not to confirm him as governor after 10 months of unending stories of Suntai’s incapacitation. The ailing governor eventually returned to Jalingo in August 2013 after allegedly transmitting a letter to the State Assembly indicating readiness to resume duties. But no major political figure except the then Adamawa governor, Murtala Nyako was allowed to see him. According to Haruna Tsokwa, who was Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Suntai’s wife, Hauwa blocked the state lawmakers from seeing the governor – a narrative which along with what has been said above provides a good background for understanding the political crisis in Ondo state over the state of health of Governor Rotimi Akeredolu.
The current burial-ground peace in Ondo state was facilitated by the intervention of President Bola Tinubu, who has had to call Ondo politicians to two meetings with him in Abuja. It would appear that the president has finally succeeded in translating to them in English, the provisions of the Nigerian constitution that is also written in English on the procedure for handling an ailing governor. Apart from Deputy Governor Aiyedatiwa, who is lucky to enjoy the benefit of a constitutional provision that enables him to act as governor, every other Ondo political gladiator is holding-on to different strands of the doctrine of necessity with none really bothered about the health of a leader who has been a benefactor to most of them.
Unfortunately, the Akeredolu family allowed politicians to divert their attention from a 100 percent care for their bread winner to joining issues with schemers on how to keep the status quo that they have been exploiting. Who gets what, where, when and how is all that matters to Nigerian politicians. The race for next year’s governorship election in Ondo state started long ago and it has been the main factor influencing the support for or against any person acting on behalf of Akeredolu, constitutional provisions notwithstanding. What Nigeria needs now is not any doctrine of necessity, but an end to gross political rascality in the country.
December 17, 2023
