last week’s edition expressly concluded that the legislature is the symbol of democracy because they are voted in as the representatives of the people to checkmate the activities and abuse of power by the executive or judiciary. Historically, Montesquieu, the father of separation of power and checks and balance made it clear that everyone invested with absolute power was apt to abuse it and carry his authority as far as he can go. He even submitted that virtue as good as it is ought to have limits. In the ordinary man’s point of view, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Our street language states that too much of anything is bad.
Nigeria has experienced this obnoxious abuse of power during the military regime. The difference between a military regime and a democratic regime is the presence of the legislature. The military makes the law, they implement it, and they decide cases between the government and the people. This meant that there was a total absence of respect for the fundamental human rights of Nigerians for when the three powers are invested in one person, it breeds an unbridled tyranny. When we say “they”, the honest truth is that the correct pronoun is “he” because military regime is actually the rule of one man. Owing to the command structure of the military, junior officers are meant to obey the last orders of their superior officers.
The Head of State is always the most senior officer in a military regime. Once he gives orders, every other military officer obeys. The Head of State usually uses the instrumentality of the Army Council he sets up as the highest ruling body to legitimise his legal and illegal conducts. He rules by decrees which are the orders of the head of state stated in writing, and which outs the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts to try matters between the government and the people. He sets up his own courts, called Tribunals, to try offenders of grievous offences who are usually denied appeal to the regular courts, but are only allowed to appeal to the highest army council, which inevitably will confirm the death sentences, because the army council was set up to rubber stamp the decision of the Head of State.
This obnoxious abuse of power came to a head after the second republic was overthrown, and General Buhari was installed by the military to take over power. General Buhari just woke up one morning and made a decree which imposed death penalty on drug pushers and backdated the decree to have retroactive effect, thereby implicating some young men who were arrested for drug peddling at a time when the offence didn’t bear the death penalty. Buhari set up his own tribunal to try those youths who were found guilty by his tribunal and sentenced to death. Their appeal to the highest ruling Supreme Military Council was rejected and the three youths were killed by firing squad. I still remember how one of the youths cried that he would never have involved in drug peddling if he ever knew that it will take his life. The ugly thing here is not that drug peddling was made to attract death penalty, but that it was made to kill someone who, when he committed the offence, was not meant to be killed by the prevailing law at the time. This is like making a law to kill someone in his seventies for some youthful acts he conducted when he was in the university, during which the said acts were regarded as mere protests not rebellion.
Military President Babangida overthrew Buhari and came back even worse than Buhari. He unilaterally called himself President which ought to be a reserve for only democratically elected presiders of government. He enacted decrees that denied the fundamental human rights of citizens. He unilaterally promised to handover power to a democratically elected government within five years and failed to do so even after 8 years. He unilaterally barred citizens he didn’t like from contesting elections and cancelled elections of some politicians he didn’t like. At the end of the day, he unilaterally made a decree, guaranteeing election for June 12, 1993. He even ousted the jurisdiction of the courts from stopping the election, yet as the election commenced, he tried to use the instrumentality of the courts to stop the election. He failed, because the people insisted on having the election. He was compelled to conduct the election and decided unilaterally to cancel it after it was held on June 23, 1993 which eventually led to the death of about 100 individuals.
General Abacha ultimately benefited from the annulment of June 12. The tyranny of Abacha confirmed the dangers in concentrating power on one person. He made decrees that gave him the authority to detain any citizen without trial. Many eminent politicians and their wives were assassinated during this period. He arrested MKO Abiola and put him in detention until he died. He set up his juniour military officers, up to his Vice Head of State, Oladipo Diya, and even Olusegun Obasanjo, in a coup, and sent them to prison, after sentencing some of them to death. They were to be executed but for the sudden mysterious death of Abacha. There’s no limit to which an individual can abuse his powers if he is vested with unlimited powers.
Nigerians abhorred this tyrannical rule and fought against it with all their might. It costs them a lot in sweat and blood. The military, seeing the determination of the people, quickly handed over power to a democratically elected government in May, 1999 which brought in the government of Obasanjo. One would have expected that the entrance of democracy into the nation’s political landscape would have ended tyranny, but gradually it became obvious that what we inherited from the military wasn’t democracy but civilian dictatorship. At the soul of Obasanjo’s administration was do or die politics that witnessed the assassination of notable politicians and personalities including Obasanjo’s Minister of Justice, Bola Ige. Anti-corruption agencies were deployed against perceived political enemies. Human rights of Nigerians were not respected. It reached to the extent that Obasanjo perceived Nigeria as a conquered territory that could be manipulated in such a manner that could make him govern without term limits. He sought and failed to secure a third term agenda which ended his dream to metamorphose into a President for life.
What occurred during Obasanjo’s regime exposed the necessity for a virile, patriotic legislature, which should check and balance the executive. At the commencement of the fourth republic, Obasanjo was in total control of the legislature. He single handedly supported the emergence of Evans Enwerem, to become the Senate President and Chairman of the National Assembly, against the wish of his own party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which preferred the emergence of Chuba Okadigbo as their Senate President. Obasanjo had to use the support of the opposition parties to ensure that Evans Enwerem won. He also threw his weight behind Salisu Buhari as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. It didn’t take long before both Evans Enwerem and Salisu Buhari were thrown out of office. Evans Enwerem was impeached for no other reason other than he was brought in by Obasanjo against the wish of his party and functioned in a manner that compromised the independence of the legislature. He was seen as a lackey to Obasanjo who will do all his bidding. The Speaker was found guilty of forgery of his age and his University certificate, which he claimed he obtained from a Canadian University.
The instability in the legislature throughout Obasanjo’s regime ensured that they couldn’t check and balance the powers of Obasanjo. Five Senate Presidents worked with Obasanjo within eight years, averaging less than two years for a Senate President. At the end of the day there was no oversight functions against Obasanjo at all. The spate of assassinations including the murder of his own Minister of Justice was not investigated by the legislature till date. The reasons the refineries did not function throughout his tenure was not investigated. The only time the legislature stood up against Obasanjo was to deny him the power to remain President for life. This confirms the fact that the ultimate power in a democracy lies with the legislature not the executive and whatever they do not want in a democracy can not stand. It’s also unfortunate that the legislature only fights the executive when their political ambition or money is threatened not when the welfare of Nigerians is concerned or compromised.
This unfortunate situation of the complacency of the legislature pervaded the entire regimes after Obasanjo, and came to a ridiculous extent during Buhari and Tinubu regimes. In Buhari’s regime, the legislature retroactively approved more than N22 trillion which was illegally incurred by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Senator Lawan, the Senate President, recognised that what the executive did, by incurring expenditure, in excess of their legally allowed limits, without approval by the legislature, was illegal, yet he urged his members to approve it. Ridiculous! Everything Tinubu had taken to the legislature has been approved. No oversight functions are being seriously carried out. If we are ready for democracy, the legislature must rise up to its duty of checking the excesses of the executive or else there’s no difference between the military regime and the present civilian dictatorship.