BY JUSTIN S. AMASE
I have always told anyone who cares to listen that we are not yet practising the basic tenets of a true democratic system of government in Nigeria, in spite of the perception by many that it takes time for democratic culture to evolve and take root in many societies. Maybe I am alone in this apparently uncharitable conclusion, but from the vantage point of my keen observation of the practice of democracy in Nigeria from the third republic to date, I have been compelled to strongly conclude that what we received from the army on May 29,1999 and have been experimenting with as democratic governance since then is nothing but a modified martial law gift from the barracks. To paraphrase the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti – it is nothing more than an ‘army arrangement’!
But if you doubt the honesty and logic of this seemingly harsh label of our democracy, you may check out the who is who of the arrangers and the fixers, the winners and the losers, key benefactors and beneficiaries of the so-called democratic political succession from 1999 to date – from the president down to the Governors, and other key actors and appointees – who have been setting both the agenda, direction and the thermometer of our civil political succession temperature. It has always been the voice of Jacob but the hand of Esau!
Beyond the context of the above fundamental evidence, fellow believers in my thesis can readily confirm the veracity of this deduction from the series of frequent assaults on the constitutional rights of Nigerian citizens all the way from the leadership selection process to the very negative manifestation of the practice of democracy in Nigeria since the inception of the Third Republic in 1999, quite similar to that obtainable in a totalitarian state. Indeed, in many social settings, very often style determines substance and form dictates function. This is the most fundamental context in which successful democratic institutions respond to the revelation of the true manifestation of the primary tenets of the practice and idea of democratic freedoms, in character and in practice.
Granted that you are still in doubt about the credibility of the above thesis, then what interpretation and meaning will you draw from the July 16, 2018 arbitrary withdrawal of landing rights at the Makurdi Airport by the Makurdi Airport authorities for the plane conveying the progressive southern leaders en route Makurdi to attend the Restructuring Rally planned for the Benue State capital on 17 July 2018 with other Middle Belt leaders? Democracy and arbitrariness are historically strange bedfellows. And so, this singular act of the Airport authorities, apparently based on ‘instructions from above’, constitutes one of the biggest blows to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, just as it exposes the lie we have been conferring on our democratic credentials.
The essential character of that landing rights withdrawal is found in the clear assault on and the deliberate subversion of the rule of law which underlies constitutionalism. In more specific constitutional terms, two of the eleven fundamental human rights guaranteed every Nigerian citizen under the 1999 Nigerian Constitution (as amended) that were violated with impunity by the Airport authorities are those enshrined under Sections 40 and 41. The former section entitles all Nigerians to the right of free and peaceful assembly as well as free association for the protection of their interests, while the later section guarantees every Nigerian citizen freedom of movement and residency throughout Nigeria. Viewed against the backdrop of the fact that these two sections of the constitution personify the very essence and life blood of institutional democratic practice, citizenship and federalism as opposed to autocracy and totalitarianism, it can be seen that the action of the Makurdi Airport authorities significantly undermined not only the Nigerian constitution but Nigeria’s democracy, the rule of law and the quest for a peaceful resolution of the Nigerian national question. It is only safe to conclude that what happened could only have been possible under a military dictatorship, a monarchy or a totalitarian autocratic dispensation.
In boarding the plane to come to Makurdi, these senior Nigerian citizens who were stopped from exercising their fundamental human rights of free movement and association had assumed that these constitutional rights were freely theirs in a nation under democratic rule, and in which they are entitled to all citizenship rights guaranteed by the Nigerian constitution. They also took it as given that the Airport authorities will respect this constitutional imperative. It was indeed puzzling to them and to the rest of us while the authorities chose to flagrantly violate this constitutional guarantee with such disdain in a democracy. That a similar event was later held successfully in Abuja on July 18, 2018 under the auspices of and sanctioned by the ruling party without a similar withdrawal of the landing rights of delegates shows not only the paradox and duplicity of the ruling political elites, but also the irony of the needless drama in Makurdi. Was it really necessary? Isn’t such brazen partisan display of double standards involving the selective application of the law for different privileged groups while at the same time deploying maximum strong-arm tactics to ride roughshod the rights and freedoms of other less powerful groups unheard of in a true democracy? It is clear that in this matter, the law is no longer blind but it is a respecter of persons!
Unless the authorities that gave the order to abort the landing of the plane in Makurdi are privy to any other privileged security information not available to the rest of us, it is quite safe to conclude that this order was executed at the expense of and in utter breach of two legal as well as constitutional implications of the mission of the airborne delegates. The first is recognized in the fact that those denied their rights were bona fide Nigerian citizens and prominent leaders, and indeed statesmen who have served the nation faithfully and meritoriously over the years in very senior leadership capacities. They were not merely small-time crooks, criminals or hoodlums whose planned assembly was perceived to have posed any threat to security of lives and properties of any Nigerian either in Makurdi or elsewhere. Neither were they known to have planned any breach of the Nigerian constitution either in Makurdi or any other constituent part of Nigeria. Under these circumstances therefore, they were totally undeserving of such dismissive treatment at the hands of the Airport authorities. Such treatment can only be reserved for confirmed criminals and subversive aliens who are enemies of Nigeria’s democracy, peace and security.
The second and of course most critical implication of their planned mission under the law and the constitution is the fact that rather than take up arms against their country in order to violently overthrow the status quo, or undemocratically impose their vision of true federalism within the Nigerian federation, these respected citizens chose the constitutional and legally acceptable path of peaceful assembly and discussion of their grievances against the prevailing constitutional order and subsisting structure of Nigeria, as well as the practice of its constitutional federalism under the current democratic dispensation with a view to peacefully negotiating their grievances within the framework of the rule of law.
In every rational sense, therefore, the conveners of the planned parley can be said to be law-abiding citizens merely out to exercise their constitutional rights to free association within a legal framework, with a view to strengthening Nigeria’s democracy and the Nigerian federal structure without an established motive of pre-empting a potential supra-constitutional or crisis-induced balkanization of the Nigerian nation state. Their conduct therefore represented the acceptable path of true democracy, just as it evidenced the hallmark of true democrats. By their exemplary conduct and comportment, these leaders neither deserved to be vilified or hunted, but deserving high commendation rather than condemnation.
Lest I be branded in some cheap and undeserving partisan colours, let me clarify at this point that while I am not a partisan advocate of a particular group in this drama, I am at once not ashamed to admit that I am an unrepentant partisan for constitutionalism, the rule of law, the inviolability of all human, citizenship and democratic rights, as well as the sustenance, growth and transformation of the current Nigerian democratic experiment into a viable, matured democratic system in which the rights of every Nigerian citizen are not only guaranteed but also respected within the letter and spirit of the Nigerian constitution, and in which all Nigerians are equal before the law. This is the only genuine path to optimizing our national potential and achieving national greatness under a sustainable democracy. Anything to the contrary will merely amount to postponing the evil day.
In the search for a lasting solution to our National Question therefore, Nigeria will by far be better off allowing her constituent nationalities jaw-jaw rather than war-war in an atmosphere guided by the rule of law. Such a solution cannot be attainable either through a totalitarian repression or suppression of the rights of the citizens, or in a season of anomie, and certainly not under a state of anarchy triggered by negative institutional partisanship. Neither will the application of gestapo tactics as was deployed by the Airport authorities on July 16, 2018 to repress and muscle free association along with free expression resolve these potentially explosive national contradictions. Lest we forget also, the very manifestation of every element of our political conduct will go a long way towards nurturing the growth of democratic values or the gradual enthronement of dictatorship in the guise of imposing law and order that may be alien to the sustenance of democratic culture and values.
It is indeed needless to remind the perpetrators of this constitutional rape about the late Karl Marx’s once chilling admonition to all anti-democratic forces that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable! No peace-loving Nigerian patriot would under normal circumstances, ever pray for any form of violent change of the Nigerian status quo or the existing federal structure at this point in time given the bitter lessons of the Nigerian civil war and the lean years of the locust harvested under 35 years of military rule that still hang so fresh in living memory. Therefore, collectively, we shall resist the temptation to allow the repetition of history to turn the Nigerian existential condition first into a tragedy and finally into a farce as warned by Marx.
- Hon. Justin S. Amase, a former Benue Commissioner for Information and Orientation, can be reached on: justinamase@yahoo.com
