News From Nigeria
A QUE
STION OF JUSTICE BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE
There is no development if it is done at the expense of the rule of law and the confiscation of people’s properties. The greater part of development is the upholding of the rule of law and justice.
Since I can remember, successive Nigerian governments have treated the rule of law as an inconvenience. The rule of law is the bedrock of any society that wishes to develop. It is the sine qua non of a developed society. It is the main difference between developed and underdeveloped countries.
Successive Nigerian governments from states to the federal have made the demolition of people’s properties as a developmental tool. This is wrong at all levels. This they do without any conveyance from the courts. This is anathema to the rule of law.
Our laws must develop more than physical structures. These gross violations of the rights of the people by government are the root for all the insecurities and anarchy in the land. The Nigerian government proposes and disposes. This is wrong. The damage done to the economy by these actions is monumental. No one in his right mind would bring money into such economy where policy summersault and brigandage are the order of the day. Those who are there are just agents of capital flight.
I have always said that the National Assembly have betrayed Nigerians by being a collection of military boys who lack the acuity to create an enabling environment for the development of our laws. They take these fat salaries and go to Abuja to sleep. They have done nothing to expunge bad laws in the Nigerian statute books. This is very wrong.
At the end of apartheid when Nelson Mandela took over, the first order of business of the South African Parliament was the expunging of bad laws that were passed during apartheid. That is what they call development.
Since the inception of civilian rule in Nigeria, the successive governments from state to federal level have not reviewed any of the bad decree passed by the departing military personnel. They even refer to these military decrees as act of the National Assembly. Some of these laws are still observed to the detriment of the citizens. Olusegun Obasanjo passed the Land Use Decree. Since that decree was passed, a lot of Nigerians have had their properties confiscated or demolished by agents of government without any conveyance from the courts. This is abnormal. No one should be surprised that this is the major reason for insecurity and anarchy in the land. This is the reason for the stagnation of the economy. There is no rule of law in Nigeria and government agents are the people using government to violate the rights and properties of the people. No nation can develop in the terrain of injustice.
From time to time, the Nigerian government goes begging for people to bring their hard-earned money to invest in Nigeria. A foreign entity recently announced an investment of 600 million dollars in Nigeria. This is not money compared to what Nigerians can push into the economy on their own. The people in power are too blind to see, or they deliberately ignore the Nigerians in diaspora who can flood the place with cash and lift the economy. They are financially buoyant and technically savvy. The Nigerian diaspora remits more than 25 billion dollars to Nigeria annually. This is the official amount that is documented. This doesn’t include unofficial remittances. This is the power that Nigerians in diaspora have that the government is deliberately ignoring because they know that the day these Nigerians make Nigeria their home, the shenanigans of the peacocks will be over. These Nigerians are savvy and technologically equipped. This is the formula that built China and India. Those countries gave their people in diaspora muscle, and they exercised it.
Today the Indians and Chinese are in Nigeria discriminating against Nigerians. No foreigners will bring his knowledge and talent to a place where the pronouncements of those in government and government officials become law. Nigerians in diaspora are very sensitive to this lack of rule of law. A lot of them have lost their lives because they succumbed to the yearnings. This curiosity has been dampened by these unfortunate incidents. They know that life and properties are not guaranteed in Nigeria, and they have slowed their foray into Nigeria.
The hurt is too much. China and India leapfrogged into the twenty first century by using their diaspora. Nigeria has more ingredients than these countries, but still on its knees and continues to treat the rule of law and justice as a gift it bestows on “deserving” citizens.
Nigeria is a place where a fellow Senator will suspend another Senator. Is our democracy a joke? It is a big joke as those in power think they can bend the laws to punish their detractors. The whole judiciary is corrupt. The criminals who should be in jail are in high positions enacting laws to imprison the people. The lawyers are nothing but high priests in the court of Herod. Their main job is to collect bribes for the judges. The rest of the people can be damned.
Development is not a gift you impose on people. It is a process that is necessary for the survival of a people. The development of the rule of law is the sinequanon of progress. Unless we champion the development of the rule of law, we are going nowhere. This is where our emphasis should be instead of building roads and bridges that lead to a cul-de-sac. The absence of the rule of law makes these constructions nothing, but monuments to our ego.
Dr Austin Orette writes from Houston Texas
The reason why we are so full of cynicism and nihilism is because we have not been able to dig deeply into what afflicts us and propound lasting solutions to our problems. All the solutions we have at this time were hurriedly foisted on the nation by a beleaguered and departing military.
When people compare Nigeria to other countries that are doing well, they tend to forget one big elephant in the room. Those countries they compare Nigeria to were never subjects of coup and counter coups. There was something very peculiar about the military regimes that ran Nigeria. They totally abrogated any form of democracy. From 1966 until 1999, Nigeria never had any parliament. As bad as Saddam of Iraq was, he did not abolish the parliament of his country when he took over. Citizens still had a modicum of debate on local issues. This was not the case with Nigeria. The military came in and threw away the culture of debate that was very robust in Nigerian nascent democracy.
In the first Republic Tafawa Balewa will address his constituency about the goings on in parliament. Other regional leaders did same and citizens were engaged. What is happening in our present situation is the harvest of the many years of military misrule. The present crop of politicians is the product of the military. They have no clues and are very imperious and distant from the people they serve. A majority of them are illiterates, clueless and products of forged certificates. Up from 1999, I am yet to see any representative or senator address their constituents about any solution to the myriads of problems facing the country. They are distant from the people who elected them and imperious like the military that selected them. They have no sense of civic responsibility. They are there to coast and collect their huge salaries and allowance and go home. The Nigerian parliament is a big joke. It is like Will Rogers Republic. Anytime they make a law, it is a joke and anytime they make a joke, it becomes a law.
As citizens, we have to think deeply on how to get rid of this odious system without involving the military in our body politics. A military regime is always a curse on any nation. The military cannot solve any problem. It is very unfortunate that prominent Nigerians succumb to this foolishness and visit people who were nothing but soldiers of fortune. Anyone who gained power through the military in Nigeria was a soldier of fortune who in a democratic system will be a nonentity.
Buhari was a military leader. He became clueless as an elected leader. David Mark spent more than twenty years in the Senate, and nobody knew what he stood for. I gave these examples so that Nigerians can see that the Military have no solutions. They are all about bravado and subterfuge. Nigerians must articulate the way forward. The reason why there is cacophony of ethnic reductism is that Nigerians don’t feel represented at any level. All the tiers of governments in Nigeria are sham. The leaders are not properly vetted, and they are very distant from the citizens that they are supposed to serve. They are imperious. They use their security to clear citizens from the roads they did not construct. We have to think deeper.
The present constitution cannot be workable in Nigeria no matter how much we tinker with it. That constitution is a product of military Regime that alienated and infantilized the citizens. They say it is an American style Constitution. That is a big lie invented by the military. The similarities between US constitution and the Nigerian constitution are night and day. There should be no comparison. The American constitution frees the citizens; the Nigerian constitution imprisons the citizens. The Nigerian constitution caters to a unitary executive while the American constitution is a federal document. To suggest otherwise is a big fraud.
In order to extricate ourselves from the imprisonment of this document, we must evolve a system in which every citizen will feel represented in a multicultural and multiethnic society. This is what I advocate and what I think will work for a country like Nigeria.
Nigeria already has six geopolitical zones. Each geopolitical zone should elect its President and Vice President who will represent each region at a council of presidents at Abuja. This council of presidents will be for a period of six years. The presidency will be rotated among these six presidents every year. The substantive president for each year will represent Nigeria at international Fora for that year. Their vice presidents will be the liaison and head of regional parliament. For any legislation to be law, two third must accent. The Senate should be abolished, and Reps should become senators for a term of five years.
The various houses of assemblies should be collapsed into the regional assemblies. The title of governor should be changed to state Coordinator who will be Chair of the state contingent at the Regional assembly and be answerable to the citizens. Most of these state assemblies are doing nothing apart from influence peddling.
A situation where the representatives of the people cannot be challenged in open debate is odious. This is what we have now. When each region sees their representation at the center, the agitation for North Central, East and west will evaporate and Nigeria can concentrate on the business of building Nigeria. All the aforementioned can be tinkered with by scholars and we can have a workable constitution.
Another aspect that will be relieved is the heavy logistics involved in trying to elect one candidate throughout the country. Now people will just elect who will represent them at the center. Let political scholars get involved in this project instead of lying to ourselves that we are practicing true democracy. We also must eschew this culture of Nihilism and engage in rebuilding the edifice that was destroyed by the military.
DR AUSTIN ORETTE WRITES FROM HOUSTON TEXAS