The Controversial Presidential Order 6 Should Point To Buhari The Need To Get His Priorities Right

The recent signing into law and the application of the controversial presidential fiat known as Presidential Executive Order 6 by President Buhari has no doubt raised much dust in these past few days. And yet it has generated what I think could be an interesting conversation among Nigerians both at home and in the Diaspora. In summary, more Nigerians, most of them well informed, spoke against the timing and the very implementation of the PEO6, describing it as not only draconian but also aimed at cowering real or imagined opposition against Buhari’s bid for a second term in office, come February 2019.

Comrade Timi Frank, one-time deputy national publicity secretary of Buhari’s ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, even went a step further to “reveal” the names of the 50 prominent Nigerians who were supposed to be trapped in the presidential ban on travel outside the country. According to him, the list involved those the presidency planned “to deal with” through the use of the now controversial PEO6.

And on the list are: Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, General Ibrahim Babangida, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, General Aliyu Gusau, Senator David Mark, Senator Abubakar Bukola Saraki, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Dogara, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, Governor Nyesom Wike, Governor Waziri Aminu Tambuwal, Governor Ibrahim Dakwambo, Governor Udom Emmanuel, Governor Ayo Fayose, Prince Uche Secondus, Chief Femi Fani-Kayode and Chief Olisa Metuh.

Others are Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa, Alhaji Kawu Baraje, Alhaji Sule Lamido, Otumba Gbenga Daniel, Senator Rabiu Kwankwanso, Senator Dino Melaye, Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, Senator Isa Misau, Senator Bala Mohammed, Mrs. Patience Jonathan, Mrs. Toyin Saraki, Ambassador Goodnews Igali, Tunde Ayeni, Bishop David Oyedepo, Bishop Matthew Kukah, Sheik Abubakar Gumi, Chief Raymond Dokpesi, Mr. Jide Omokore, Chief Jonah Jang, Elder Godsday Orubebe, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili, Mr. Steve Oronsanya, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, Ibrahim Shema, Senator Esther Nemadi Usman, Bashir Yaguda, Dr. Abba Moro, Amudu Fintiri, Alex Badeh, Warapamo Dudafa, General Azubuike Ihejirika and General Kenneth Minimah.

Mr Frank said it was obvious that the President planned to suspend the constitution which guarantees freedom of association to Nigerians and the right to own property, insisting that the plan to deal with opposition figures was real and that Nigerians and the international community needed to face this reality.

Among those who seriously criticised the exercise was a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and Human Rights lawyer, Femi Falana who asked the President to immediately withdraw the travel ban. The Director of a civil rights group, ‘Access to Justice’, Mr Joseph Otteh, saw the PEO6 as a gratuitous piece of dangerous precedence that could open the door to an uncontrollable dictatorship and which could be used arbitrarily and vindictively to fight and muzzle political opposition and promote wholly politically partisan objectives. ‘Access to Justice’ called for the total cancellation of the entire PEO6, which it argued was unquestionably anti-democratic and a veiled snare for citizens’ rights.

Former President, Chief Obasanjo’s Coalition for Nigeria Movement was not comfortable with Buhari’s imposition of travel ban on 50 politically-exposed Nigerians. The CNM Director, Strategic communications, Akin Osuntokun said the ban was a subversion of the rule of law, reminiscent of military decrees, describing the new executive order as an attempt to muzzle the opposition. The CNM accused President Buhari of planning to use security agencies to achieve a hidden agenda hence his decision to compromise the nation’s security architecture. The statement recalled that journalists were jailed on account of a similar decree that criminalised any reporting that embarrassed his government. Against that background, it said, the Executive Order 6 portended a significant step towards the creation of a police state. It is also against this background that the personalisation of the national security architecture makes sense, it said. “Otherwise, there would have been no need to continue to reinforce the lopsided and parochial subversion and subordination of the security agencies to a personality cult agenda, at every available opportunity.”

Another anti-corruption advocacy group, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, condemned the travel ban, warning that it would be counterproductive to the government’s anti-corruption campaign. The group, in a statement by its Deputy Director, Timothy Adewale, said that the ban was “clearly arbitrary, repressive and illegal,” and demanded that the Federal Government lift it immediately. SERAP, in its statement, argued that the travel ban violated both domestic and international laws that protect citizens’ human rights. SERAP said that the order banning 50 alleged high-profile corrupt Nigerians from travelling abroad without any legal basis and a judicial authorisation is clearly arbitrary, repressive and illegal, as it breaches constitutional rights and the country’s international obligations which protect the rights to freedom of movement, to leave one’s country, to privacy, and to due process of law. Rather than performing its declared objective of preventing dissipation of stolen assets, the travel ban would seriously undermine the government’s expressed commitment to combat grand corruption and violate the country’s international human rights obligations. “The travel ban will play right into the hands of high-profile corrupt officials by feeding into the narrative that the fight against corruption is targeted only at political opponents,” SERAP statement said.

Another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Chief Mike Ozekhome, argued that the travel ban was a usurpation of the power of the judiciary by the executive. Ozekhome argued that the ban was targeted at the members of opposition political parties and voices critical of the Federal Government and described it as “an extreme panicky measure of desperation” by President Buhari ahead of the next year’s general elections. Ozekhome said the ban was a violation of the principle of separation of powers.

However, presidential spokesperson, Mr. Garba Shehu, explained in a statement that was made available to journalists that the travel ban followed a recent judgment of the Federal High Court validating the Presidential Executive Order 6 which provides for interim seizure of assets connected with criminal investigations or ongoing trial to prevent the said assets from being dissipated.

In the same vein, the Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership, CACOL, backed the travel ban placed on high profile Nigerians by President Buhari. CACOL, in a press release to journalists by its coordinator of media and publications, Adegboyega Otunuga, said those who have stolen from the country should face the consequences. “We recollect that one thing almost every informed Nigerian was very concerned about in the fight against corruption in this country was the clear absence of adequate and comprehensive laws to handle the menace in such a way that suspected culprits and enablers of this social menace would no longer have a field day with the pilfering of our commonwealth and use the weakness of the subsisting anti-corruption laws to elope from the country where they could easily treat themselves to the same loot they acquired by denying other Nigerians the benefits of a good life,” he said.

Many other well informed Nigerians have spoken and written on this interesting development, a few for the presidency and a lot more against the presidency.

But whether we are for or against the implementation of the PEO6 at this point in the evolution of Nigerian democracy, it is important that the stakeholders in the Nigerian experiment understand where they are going to and what they expect to see at the end of their sojourn.

Nigerians need to understand that the so-called “fight against corruption” will never work if it is not tackled the right way. What we have right now is a hang-over of the military spirit of vendetta, where people who are dissident to constituted authority must be punished in one way or another. President Buhari exhibits this military tendency quite often. Not that he should be blamed because at the end of the day, he spent most of his formative years in the Nigerian military and as we say, once a soldier, always a soldier. And again, the leopard can never change the colour of its skin, even if it tried.

I shared this knowledge with Bishop Matthew Kukah in his book: “Witness to Justice” and in mine: “The Presidential Years: From Dr. Jonathan to Gen. Buhari”, that by training and orientation, the army is structured to always obey a hierarchical command. The army is like a one-party government. Strict orders are issued from the top to the bottom and every member of the military organisation is expected to fall in line. And no one argues with his or her superior officers. You just take orders from them, whether they are right or wrong and whether you like it or not. It is as simple and yet as complex as that.

On the other hand, democracy demands shared values by people who have the same understanding. When issues arise, they are debated if people differ in their views or opinions, and the opinion of the majority is the determining factor.

So, essentially, military generals who have the type of training and orientation of President Buhari are not equipped to manage pluralistic societies such as Nigeria because of their training and orientation. Moreover, Nigerians should also understand that there are some underlying tendencies that motivate the military in their quest for relevance in the country.

The first is the lust for power on the part of the top Nigerian military officers. As I noted in the second volume of my book which will soon be released for sale, the issue of being obsessed with absolute power has been dealt with by many writers. But in summary, when one is obsessed with the desire to acquire absolute power, there are demands. First is that one becomes emotionally bankrupt. The quest for absolute authority totally deprives one of any form of emotion, and later denies one of a conscience. At that point, one can do just about anything to remain “strong and relevant”.

The second is the need to settle scores within military circles. This attitude of Nigeria’s military brass has unfortunately dragged itself into their way of managing the country when, after their military career, they join the political bandwagon to seek for public offices through the ballot box. And, perhaps I may not be far from the truth if I suspect that this is what is happening today with the sudden emphasis on PEO6 by the presidency. The third and perhaps the most compelling is greed for material wealth that creates a condition where each Head of State can see himself as senior to those who occupied the same position but did not make as much money while in office.

It is a well known axiom that the taste of power is never relinquished without a fight. This is perhaps why it looks like nothing is working in Nigeria today. This is why government is finding it difficult to call for a referendum, for instance, so that Nigerians can decide for themselves whether or not they are still interested in living together as one huge, united country or if the federating states now want to go their separate ways because things seem to have fallen apart and the centre can no longer hold. This is why the government has refused to address the lingering issue of resource control among federating states. This is why General Buhari says that the unity of Nigeria is non-negotiable. In a true democracy, it should be negotiable if any of the federating states feels it is no longer comfortable with the social or political arrangement in its contemporary context. And that is why General Babangida argues that the only way to ensure that the blood of millions of Nigerians who died as a result of the Nigerian civil war was not shed in vain was to keep the country together.

Nigerians must see through this veiled logic. Nigeria remains one as long as it is unitary in administrative practice like a one-party government or like a military establishment. Nigeria remains one as long as power is centred in Abuja. If you are the governor of a state and your people say you are not doing well, you run to Abuja and get military support. By the time anyone knows it, the military is performing “snake dance” on your doorsteps, to forestall any dissenting voices of scared voters.

But come to think of it: if government really wants to fight corruption, the first place to start – and I have said this so many times over – is to legislate a law that will make it mandatory for employers of labour to pay workers as at and when due, just as it is done in the more developed democracies. But government has remained criminally silent on this. Even some states and local governments claim they are unable to pay the monthly N18, 000 minimum wage which is really preposterous. Government gives the impression that it cannot pass this law because it is the highest employer of labour and the one which will have to take the initiative at the end of the day. But why is it difficult? Is it that the country has not got the money or that the politicians have not got the political will?

Now, let us see it this way: when workers are owed salary arrears running into several months and they are not really sure when they will be paid, there is a tendency for them to resort to any fraudulent means, by hook or crook, to get the money they need at least to put food on the breakfast table for their families. So, the workers become corrupt at the lower level.

That condition gives leverage to those in the upper, more important levels to siphon huge sums of money because as it were, the master and the servant are in the same boat and there is no one to blow the whistle. The economy of the country continues to be milked dry by both the highly placed and the lowly placed public office holders and civil servants.

But, if workers are paid on time and they are able to plan their lives and those of their dependants, living within their means, the highly placed officers would be more careful about stealing public money because they know that they won’t have the support of their subordinates. And so the system will become automatically sanitized.

Another important thing which I have mentioned before in my article titled “What would President Buhari Prefer?” and published in Sahara Reporters of 2 February 2017, is that the idea of muzzling opposition cannot be the right way to attain true democracy.

Right now, two dominant mega parties have emerged on the political horizon, the ruling APC and the opposition PDP. And what the country needs to consolidate its democracy is not the vendetta-spirit of running after looters of the national economy. What Nigeria needs is to consolidate a Shadow Government that will enable the incumbent government to be more of a listening and action government. Nigerians cannot do that by hounding the opposition either by invoking the PEO6 or by any other means the government devises to keep a vibrant, responsible opposition caged.

In fact, if you ask me as one who can comfortably claim to know Nigerians as a people who have a large heart for forgiveness, I would suggest that what government could do with people found to have stolen public money is to literally “force” them to invest the amount they are proved to have stolen in the country’s development. The government can monitor such development and in fact decide what the development project should be, in the first place. There are rural schools and hospitals to embark on. There is clean drinking water to be installed for the rural villages. Good roads. Factories producing packaged food fruits and drinks and so on. In such a way too, government would show its magnanimity and its understanding of the Nigerian peoples’ way of life and instead of making political enemies, they make political friends by deliberately allowing the “rogues” to use their stolen money positively in government’s development programmes.

A situation where those who stole or are suspected to have stolen public funds are continuously harassed and kept on their toes will neither stop public officers from stealing public funds nor achieve the institution of a responsible opposition the incumbent government needs for its very survival. At best, it will challenge Nigerians to discover new ways of stealing public money that will defy detection. Trust Nigerians.

It is necessary and important at this point in the evolution of democracy in Nigeria that state actors recognise that Nigeria’s democracy is actually taking shape. In Britain, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party have been swapping positions at the national level to produce the Prime Minister since 1920. In America, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have alternated in producing the President since 1886. And these are the two main countries that enormously influence Nigeria and whose footsteps Nigerian democracy is about to follow. The other smaller parties could produce state governors and legislators at the level of state Houses of Assembly, the Federal House of Representatives and the Senate.

I think that in trying to add his blocks onto the building progression of the Nigerian nation, President Buhari should begin to put a premium on getting the APC government’s priorities right. And that means first, that PEO6 should not be another way of suppressing a vibrant, responsible opposition the APC needs for its very survival. Second is that APC should see the deliberate development of a Shadow Government as a priority contribution in the evolution of true democracy in Nigeria. And third is that rather than make political enemies in the process of recovering stolen money from Nigerians who occupied public offices before the incumbent public office holders, government could reach out in magnanimity to the proven thieves of public funds and get them to invest that money in the country rather than abroad. The APC government should try and get its proper bearing in building up the political system and the Nigerian nation. To all intents and purposes, the controversial PEO 6 should point to President Buhari the need to get his priorities right.