“No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.”
– Gideon J. Tucker
A Governor Bola Tinubu of Lagos would not vacate his seat for anyone appointed illegally from Abuja – or from anywhere. If the heavens wanted to fall, he would ask them to fall. He would not go hide somewhere in his wife’s handbag, and from the safety of his ghetto be issuing gutless press releases. If Abuja insisted on his suspension, he would mobilise the law and lawyers for eruptions of seismic proportions. He would ask the Supreme Court to determine whether the president could sack or suspend elected governors, appoint caretaker governors and take over the role of state Houses of Assembly. He would ask the apex court to reconcile this case with its earlier verdict which outlawed caretaker governments for one of our tiers of government. He would put everything he had into the mix; he would count the teeth of the tiger in Abuja. But Rivers is not Lagos, and Siminalayi Fubara is not Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The difference between both is the difference between courage and cowardice.
Until Saturday when he spoke on the Rivers State problem, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan walked the terrace of power with utmost carefulness. He avoided speaking truth to power the way the barefooted avoids walking a floor of broken glass. But on Saturday, he came out of his zone of reticence, and dared the dark, dangerous sherds of impunity. Jonathan spoke following President Bola Tinubu’s deployment of a Supreme Court judgment to meddle with and seize control of the nuts and bolts of our federation. In a fit of daring, calculative move for political advantage, Tinubu suspended democracy on a floor of the structure. And days after the act, without a whim of resistance, he got legislative approval for the mess. He left no one in doubt that all the powers and principalities of this realm are with him and that they work for him.
The three arms of government in Nigeria have become a triangular cult of iniquity. If the executive is after you, the other two quickly join in the clobbering. Jonathan identified the spring head of the problem. He saw: “a clear abuse of office, clear abuse of power, clear abuse of privileges, cutting across the three arms of government — from the executive through the parliament and to the judiciary.” Now, when those three institutions of democracy become citadels of abuse, what remains and what is next for us?
Yesterday, 23 March, 2025, was the 92nd anniversary of the enactment of Germany’s Enabling Act which gave Adolf Hitler the power to make laws without parliamentary approval.
Nazi Germany had a parliament known as the Reichstag. The decay and destruction of that institution started in very innocuous bits, very small. It took off by saying yes to everything the leader did or took before it. The parliament members, incrementally, thought the leader deserved not their check, but their cheeks. Reichstag began its descent and quickened its suicide by enacting laws without any real debate or opposition. Then it took many other self-destruct steps; the climax came on 23 March, 1933, when Reichstag passed the historic Enabling Act transferring its powers and functions to the head of the executive.
In this Rivers matter, the Supreme Court cast the foundation, the president laid the blocks, the legislature roofed the edifice of an emerging autocracy. Jonathan spoke on the executive dictating judgments to judges. He described Nigeria as a country where “government functionaries can dictate to judges what judgment they will give.” That was a huge one. We expect a reaction or denial from the judiciary now or never. The ex-president also spoke on the operatives of the three branches of government not giving a damn as the country burned. He said they were feigning sleep while a flood of badness swept through the land. What he spoke on was the treachery of the judiciary and the perfidy of the legislature, both of which act as palace courtiers, and as whores of benefit who have surrendered their functions, power and glory to the president.
Checks and balances. How often do we ask what they are and why they are at the core of this democracy? Destruction of checks and balances creates excesses that take rest of mind away from the society. Absolute power creates all the antonyms of peace and stability. It makes the nation the ultimate sick man on a roller coaster. It was exactly so for Hitler and his Germany. The Nazi leader, on 23 March, 1933, got the powers to make laws. The ease with which he got it made him think it was time for further consolidation. Thus, on 7 April, 1933, the leader put officials of his political party in charge of all local governments. On 14 July, 1933, Reichstag became a one-party parliament. January 1934, the ruling party took over all state governments. On 19 August, 1934, the leader announced himself president, chancellor and head of the army. The Fuhrer was born!
Our National Assembly would act Reichstag if it had not done so already. It spent the whole of last weekend denying taking bribes to approve the president’s illegal suspension of democracy in Rivers State. Our multi party Senate has 109 members; the House of Representatives has 360, elected from various parties. Yet, on a very critical day last week, members of the parliament collapsed their structures into a single party; they endorsed illegality with a single voice. The president suspended democracy, appointed and swore in a viceroy to serve as governor. He declared a state of emergency without parliament’s prior approval. He usurped the powers of the legislators and the legislators endorsed the usurpation without following the law. They used voice votes to announce that he was right!
Treachery has no other definition. What does it cost a leader to be told the truth? President Bola Tinubu himself called for truth two weeks ago. He told Catholic Bishops who paid him a visit that they should tell him the truth whenever he was missing the way: “I’m here open to you, ready to listen…I won’t shut my door,” he said. But he made that request to the wrong audience. The right audience for that demand is the National Assembly, a conglomerate of dank agents. They are his enemy. He also acts his own enemy, redacting his own records of resistance and activism.
Abuse of any power will happen where there are no checks. With the help of the legislature and the judiciary, Prime Minister Balewa abused the emergency law of his time. Olusegun Obasanjo did same. And, despite all the political and legal repercussions of what Balewa and Obasanjo did, Tinubu learnt nothing and has also done it. He now sits back, watches and smiles as we fret.
The president and all who cheer him would remember that this presidential democracy is not our creation. We copied it from America. And if they agree that we copied this system from the US, have they ever found out why an American president has never tried to suspend or remove a state governor under any pretext, including under emergencies which are provided for under their own laws? It is because US governors are not boys of the president, and both sides know this to be legally and historically correct.
Where the law is allowed to work, there are always consequences for aberrant behaviour. Whatever is happening in Donald Trump’s America today, the fact is that the US Congress had historically managed to contain the excesses of presidents who thought they were king. I cite an example:
President Andrew Johnson took over as US president following the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln. But Johnson does not enjoy as much favours of history as Lincoln does. Why?
President Johnson ran into problems because of his Kabiyesi stance on procedural and constitutional issues. On August 5, 1867, Johnson asked Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton to resign because the secretary disagreed with him over Reconstruction plans. The man refused to resign. The president gave him a week of grace, the man remained recalcitrant; then the president suspended him on August 12 without the approval of the Congress.
Four months after that act (December 12), the president submitted his reasons for suspending Secretary Stanton to the Senate. On January 13, 1868, Senate refused to approve Johnson’s suspension of Stanton. The following day, the man who had been acting as Interim Secretary of War, Ulysses S. Grant, informed President Johnson that in view of Senate’s decision, he was vacating his post for the rightful owner, Stanton. He left.
Stubborn President Johnson, on February 21, 1868 in gross violation of the Tenure of Office Act, formally removed Stanton and gave the control of the War Department to General Lorenzo Thomas. With the law behind him, sacked Stanton glared down President Johnson’s decision. For the next two months, he stayed put, he slept and woke up (holed up) in his cabinet office, barricading himself in there.
The US Congress watched with consternation as the president usurped its powers. It saw what the president did as a blatant violation of the Tenure of Office Act. It proceeded to commence an impeachment process against the Commander-in-Chief. On February 24, 1868, the House of Representatives voted 126-47 to impeach Johnson.
On March 5, 1868, the Senate began its impeachment trial with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. On May 16, 1868, the Senate voted 35-19 to convict President Johnson. The figure was, however, one vote short of the necessary two-third majority to get the man sacked. On May 26, 1868, the Senate gave the president a reprieve, it voted to acquit the president on two of the charges. It then adjourned and never voted on the remaining eight articles of impeachment.
Johnson escaped sack but the damage had been done. It was effectively the ‘end’ of Johnson as president. He never recovered.
On 11 July, 2024, Nigeria’s Supreme Court declared that state governors had no power to sack elected local government chairmen and councilors and constitute caretaker committees to run the local governments. The court further declared that a local government council was only recognisable with a democratically elected government.
“A democratically elected local government is sacrosanct and non-negotiable,’’ the apex court declared.
The Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who was the plaintiff in that case saluted the Supreme Court for delivering justice. He said the judgment had effectively ended the practice of governors replacing democracy with autocracy by wantonly sacking elected council bosses and replacing them with unelected caretaker committees.
On Wednesday, 19 March, 2025, the same Fagbemi addressed a press conference in Abuja endorsing President Bola Tinubu’s appointment of a caretaker governor for Rivers State and the suspension of democratic structures there. “A lawyer’s truth is not the truth” (David Henry Thoreau).
Fagbemi is supposed to know (and he knows) that there is nothing like ‘suspension’ of governor or ‘suspension’ of the legislature in our constitution which governs all other laws and everything about our democracy. But he went further to threaten other governors with the fate of Fubara. He hinted them not to dare dare his boss: “It is Rivers State’s turn today, it can be anybody’s turn tomorrow, let the signal be clearly sent to those who want to foment trouble, who want to make the practice of democracy and the enjoyment of dividends of democracy a mirage to think twice.” In other words, when you slaughter a goat in the presence of another goat, the living will be sober; it will behave well.
But wait. If the emergency rule is declared by the president over the whole country, will he appoint himself sole administrator and suspend the National Assembly? Or who rules?
To Nigeria’s chief law officer, under an emergency rule, the president can become the electorate deciding who governs and who ceases to govern. He can also be the people of any or all the states; voters in INEC registers would become Shakespeare’s “blocks, stones …worse than senseless things.”
From the courts to the president’s office to the office of the Attorney-General, to the parliament, we could see the futility in hoping for acting right and talking straight. An incestuous triangle of the three arms or what David Wyatt called a “tyrannizing unity” of the powers, reigns.
Their ways remind us of a favourite passage in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’: “You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator. That laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.”
Emergency rule started in Rome around the 3rd century BC. The Romans used the law to create what they called ‘office of the dictator’ to solve specific public (safety) problems. They had two main categories of such. The first they named the dictatura rei gerundae causa (dictatorship for getting things done). The second was dictatura seditionis sedandae causa (dictatorship for suppressing civil insurrection). The Romans did not, however, create the emergency rules and laws for free roamers to exploit. They limited the dictators’ term to six months. They also struggled to contain abuse of their powers. But, apparently because of abuses such as we saw last week in Nigeria, the Roman senate took direct control of resolving crises. It replaced the office of dictator with what was called ‘Ultimate Decree of the Senate’ (senatus consultum ultimum). The present controversy presents us an opportunity to also rethink our emergency law and everything connected with it.
Strong, uncontrollable leaders always put their nations in trouble. Keeping quiet, excusing their excesses or enabling their illegality put everyone in danger. Where big men reign above the law and below decency, people pay for what they did not buy. Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini was created and nurtured by a culture of acquisence. His appointment as Prime Minister in 1922 was approved despite his party holding only 35 seats out of 535 in the parliament. With intimidation and harassment of voters, his party pushed up its figure to 374 seats in the April 1924 election. In January 1925, Mussolini, right inside the parliament, declared himself dictator. The legislators heard him and applauded him. They proceeded to grant him more powers. They passed laws that dissolved opposition parties and shut down free press. Mussolini dismantled democratic institutions that won’t let him breathe and emit fire. He got the constitutionally recognised Chamber of Deputies, Italy’s equivalent of our House of Representatives, replaced by something called the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations, a body controlled by his Fascist Party. He made the parliament in his image transforming it for his use in outlawing the opposition and the law.
The National Assembly that sat last week in Abuja may go that way unless Kabiyesi, our president, does not want it to.
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