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Since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, no man is holy, wise, or intelligent enough to be entrusted with unlimited powers. Sin and corruption were responsible for the fall of man at the Garden of Eden. Man was so corrupt that he even disobeyed God who created him. If man disobeyed God, who is in doubt that man will much more disobey his fellow men and women. At a point in history, because of the evil perpetrated by men on earth, it grieved God that He created man. He destroyed men on earth, with the exception of Noah, for being the only righteous man on earth.
God equally disliked His destruction of all men He created and promised that He would not destroy the earth anymore. To ensure orderliness in society, God made some laws for peaceful coexistence of all humanity. The first law God gave to the human government is “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” (Genesis 9:6) This indicates that the security of life of human beings is paramount in God’s mind. It is also indicative of the fact that the constitutional provision of section 14(2)(b) which states that “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”, has a divine origin. Any government then which fails to secure the lives and property of its citizens is not only an enemy of the people, but also an enemy of God.
The law of God revealed that the best method to end the senseless murder of human beings is to ensure that the murderer is summarily executed. In this sense, the purported human rights advocates who are advocating for the elimination of capital punishment are not doing humanity any good. The blood of the murdered innocents cry to God for revenge and the only thing that assuages the anger of God over the nation is the assurance that the murderers are killed. Even Jesus made it clear, with respect to human government, that nobody should think that “I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34) He emphatically stated that “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” (Matthew 26:52)
To ensure checks and balance, God established government and institutions to govern the earth. God understood that having laws are not enough to ensure orderliness in society. Such laws must be enforced and implemented for peace and security to reign. This is why He commanded the execution of murderers to ensure orderliness.
Nigeria has been a nation bedevilled by insecurity. This insecurity has grown into a burgeoning industry. Kidnappers, terrorists, and armed robbers collude with some despicable elements in our security agencies to rob, dehumanise, terrorise, kidnap, and kill Nigerian citizens. Gen Theophilus Danjuma at the Taraba University made it clear that terrorists collude with the security agencies to carry out their nefarious activities against Nigerians. Gen Sani Abacha was of the opinion that whenever insecurity lasts more than 24 hours, the government has a hand in it. The modern brand of insecurity buffeting Nigeria started in 2009 during the regime of Umaru Yar’Adua. It has lasted for 17 years without any solution in sight. The obvious conclusion is that the government’s hand is in it. This involvement can be through incompetence or corruption. The greatest reason for this lack of capacity on behalf of government to tackle insecurity in Nigeria is lack of strong institutions.
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According to Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary General of the United Nations, “peace, development, and human rights are inseparable: strong institutions are the backbone of them all.” An institution is a well-established organisation, system, or foundational practice within a society, including a set of rules and practices that shapes and governs human behaviour. Security and welfare of the people shall be impossible without strong rules and practices coming out from a well-established organisation that compels human beings to behave rightly.
The institutions of democracy responsible for good governance in a country include the legislature, executive, and judiciary. The legislature is easily the most important branch of government and ought to be the most powerful. It makes the laws that establishes the institutions and approves the funds needed to run the institutions. It is the branch of government with the necessary vires to initiate the removal of the President. The executive implements the laws as made by the legislature. It spends the money as approved by the legislature. However, in a corrupt society, the executive wields more powers than the legislature because it compromises the members of the legislature with corrupt money and consequently lures them to surrender their democratic supremacy to the executive for a pot of porridge.
The judiciary is the non-elective branch of government. It is non-elective because the requirements of qualification are specific and peculiar. The qualifications can only be acquired through knowledge and qualified persons can only be fished out through appointment. Judges are normally appointed by the executive subject to the approval of the legislature. This situation places the judiciary at the manipulative foothold of the other two branches which obtain their powers directly from the people through elections. However, this disadvantage is ameliorated by the longevity of the judiciary in the course of service. The elected members of the executive and judiciary have four-year tenure while the judiciary serves until retirement age. The influence of the appointers wanes immediately their four-year tenure ends. Montesquieu however warned that “there is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive.” The reason for these three branches of government is for them to check and balance each other to ensure that no branch becomes despotic and infringe on the freedom and liberty of the citizens.
In Nigeria, the legislature is the weakest of all the branches of government. For the first time in the history of Nigeria, three budgets approved by the legislature are running at the same time in open disobedience of the constitutional provisions, which require that each budget must not last more than 12 months. This situation leads to unchecked corruption to the level that Tinubu’s unelected wife, Remi Tinubu, publicly and boldly commanded all the governors of All Progressives Congress (APC) states to use state funds to purchase vehicles for the women leaders of their party. She instructed the women to convert the vehicles to their names. She is neither an official of the party, nor an elected representative of the people. There is no provision in the law that empowers her to commit such an assault on state funds. It was John Locke who said that “wherever law ends, tyranny begins.”
This failure of the legislature in Nigeria leads to the unchecked powers of the executive and the corruption of the whole system. The failure is more noticeable in the area of insecurity. The clamour for state police started from 2009 when terrorists unleashed a brand of radical Boko Haram fundamentalism that beheads people. As a result of complacency on behalf of the security agencies and the government, till date, the insecurity is increasing and expanding. There are as many as 27,000 deaths by failure of insecurity in Tinubu’s regime in three years. Within a month, Major General Rabe Abubakar, former Director of Defence Information, and his wife were kidnapped in the North West. Students and pupils of schools in Oyo State, with their teachers were kidnapped and a teacher beheaded in the process. Former Minister of Power, Adelabu’s sister with her twins were abducted in Oyo State. Kwara State, which hitherto was a peaceful state, had turned to a war zone, with children dying from starvation in the internally displaced persons (IDP). Terrorists inform their victims in advance that they are coming, and would not be stopped by the security agencies when they come. Some communities prefer to negotiate with the terrorists and pay ransom to them to prevent them from being attacked. Same stories occur in Plateau, Benue, Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, indeed, all over Nigeria. We have become a nation of blood.
The solution is very simple. We must build strong institutions to tackle the menace. The most secure method of building strong institutions is to elect men of capacity, character, courage, and competence who would respect the rules of society and use them to strengthen the institutions of the nation to ensure the security and welfare of the citizens and guarantee orderliness in society. Free and fair elections will not come cheaply. It requires our determination to fight the status quo to liberate the country from undemocratic elements. According to Franklin D. Roosevelt, “in the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved. And this can be done only by strong, fair institutions.” Time is running out on all of us. If Nigeria does not establish strong institutions to govern its country, corrupt men will tear it down. Alexander Hamilton was correct when he said that “a government ill-constructed will never long endure.”
