President Muhammadu Buhari between Vice Professor Yemi Osinbajo the
Secretary to the Federal Government , Babachir David Lawal | NAN Photo
When
last week, President Muhammadu Buhari decided to suspend the secretary
to the government of the federation, Babachir Lawal, and the director
general of the Nigeria Intelligence Agency, Ayo Oke in order to allow
unfettered investigations of both public officers, the most striking
immediate reaction was the SGF asking: who is the presidency?
State
House correspondents had accosted the then SGF as he left a meeting with
the vice president. It is standard practice at the State House for
correspondents to lay ambush. Babachir Lawal obviously did not know that
he had been suspended from office.
If the vice president knew, he did not
tell him. Again, that is how the Nigerian presidency works. Once you
fall out of line or favour due courtesies may not be extended to you. I
was instructed on many occasions to wait until certain persons left the
Villa, before issuing their sack statements. I once announced the
disengagement of an important public official from the Presidential Wing
of the airport, as our aircraft taxied on the runway en route France.
In Babachir Lawal’s case, he was asked
to react to something he knew nothing about. When he sought
clarifications, the correspondents told him that the presidency had
suspended him from office. Anybody in his shoes would have been just as
shocked as he was. He was right there in the Villa, and nobody told
him there was a knife at his back. Besides, he occupies a very strategic
office. The SGF’s office is the engine room of the Presidency.
The chief of staff may be the political,
administrative head of the State House, but the engine of the
Presidency is in the office of the SGF. He is in charge of council
meetings, the ministers must interface with him, the civil service also,
and he is directly in charge of more than 30 government agencies and
parastatals. No key government event or appointment can take place
without that office. Presidential power is delegated and distributed.
The office of the SGF arguably has a larger share, in other words, in
real terms, that office is probably more influential than every other
office in the Executive arm of government.
The problem with privileged people in
government, holding political appointments, however, is that they often
get carried away. They forget that they are mere agents, exercising
delegated authority. The illusion of power and the delusion of agents
constitute one of the major threats in the corridors of power. But the
delusion of relatives, associates and wayfarers is even worse. I have
seen ordinary relatives of the President threatening to be powerful, and
mere acquaintances claiming to be in charge of the Presidency. It got
so interesting at a point that a colleague, who had a first class and
whose only dream was to get a Ph.D. in his lifetime, kept insisting that
he would devote his doctoral thesis to a study of the impact of
informal agents on Presidential powers and authority. If waka-pass
characters in the corridors of power can lay so much claim to power,
there can be no doubt that privileged persons with big egos would be
worse.
At that moment therefore when Babachir
Lawal asked the question: who is the Presidency?, he must have thought
of all the powers and influence in his custody and imagined himself as
being indeed the main engine of the Presidency. His response to the
correspondents was actually a retort: “who will dare take such a
decision behind my back? I am the Presidency and I have just held a
meeting with the VP. You reporters don’t know anything. You are telling
the Presidency that the Presidency has suspended him from office?” By
now, a week later, Babachir Lawal must have learnt one basic lesson
about power.
The lesson is simply that it is power
that gives power, when power withdraws power, what is left is
powerlessness. For example, another person has since taken Babachir
Lawal’s place in acting capacity and there is nothing he can do about
that. Some other politicians are also already being positioned to take
over that office eventually, so far three names have been mentioned-
Ogbonnnaya Onu, Adams Oshiomhole and Olorunnimbe Mamora and it looks
like there is a serious hustle for that office. Nobody is likely to
reject the job if Babachir Lawal loses it. Meanwhile, the Presidency
continues to move on while Babachir Lawal is under interrogation. In
the last week alone, the suspended SGF should also have learnt a few
more lessons about human beings. He may no longer ask that question: who
is the Presidency? He is more likely to be asking: who is Babachir
Lawal?
But that is a private question. No
matter how concerned we may be, we can’t answer it for him. It is a
kind of question, manifesting in form of a cross which every person must
carry at certain critical moments in their lives. When he asked that
other question however: who is the Presidency?, Babachir Lawal, beyond
his egoistic slip, threw up something anagnoristic, which is of
significant public interest. I offer to attempt an answer to the
question.
The simple answer is that the President
is the Presidency – office, power and system unified in one person.
Under the type of Presidential system that we run, the President of
Nigeria is more or less a unilateral person. He is Head of State, Head
of Government, and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. His powers
are derived from the Constitution, under which he is elected and which
he swears to uphold and defend, and it is also subject to it, that he is
expected to exercise his powers. The idea of our American-styled
Presidential system is further hinged on the doctrine of the separation
of powers.
This makes the President the custodian
of Executive powers and provides constitutional checks and balances on
those powers through the legislature and the judiciary. The Constitution
requires the President for example to seek the National Assembly’s
approval for appropriation and certain appointments, and grants the
legislature the powers to impeach the President or pass a vote of no
confidence, although this oversight power is hardly exercised. The
Judiciary is constitutionally independent, and whereas the Executive
approves the appointment of judges, it is not granted the powers to
dictate to the judiciary. There are also certain independent bodies
like the Electoral Commission, the Federal Civil Service Commission, the
National Judicial Council and the Code of Conduct Bureau, which in the
eyes of the law are required to be free from partisan control. The
President also cannot take certain decisions without consultation. He
consults such bodies as the Nigeria Police Council, the National Defence
Council, and the Council of State, even if their advice is not binding
on him. In making appointments he is also required to respect the
Federal Character principle as stated in Sections 14(3) and 147(3).
The sum effect of the constitutional
powers of the President under the 1999 Constitution in addition to the
residual and implied powers of that office is that what we have in
Nigeria at the moment is an imperial Presidency, far more imperial than
the imperialism of the American Presidency contemplated and analysed in
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr’s book of the same title. Sections 5, 11, 157,
158, 215, 216, 218, 231, 305, and 315 of the 1999 Constitution grant
the President of Nigeria enough powers to compromise the authority and
impact of the other two tiers of government.
The exercise of so-called residual and
implied powers makes the situation worse. The President can hire and
fire, enter into covenants on behalf of the country, send police men
onto the streets, send troops to war and seek legislative approval
later, he can give national honours, grant pardon, spend money and seek
approval within a time-frame, insist on the declaration of an emergency,
and act as he may wish in the national interest.
This imperialism is a throwback to the
monarchical nature of primeval societies. It is sustained sadly by
contemporary myths, the thinking that the President is a mythical
repository, a superhero- the man who has all the answers and who can do
all things. Other players within the system at all levels, be it the
legislature or the judiciary, the private sector or the civil society,
also actively promote this myth and concede to it. The result is that
power becomes centripetal. The people unwittingly submit their
sovereignty. The idea of the President as a savior is a sad re-imagining
of our democracy, which in full flight over-extends the symbolism and
powers of the Presidency and threatens to make the legislature and the
judiciary irrelevant and thus displaces the people from being partners
into consumers of government propaganda and tyranny.
By regarding their Presidents or Heads
of states as super-heroes, Nigerians place them above democracy and
short-change themselves. This has been our dilemma since 1960. Tafawa
Balewa, Nigeria’s first and only Prime Minister was the super hero who
received the instruments of independence from the British colonialists,
but by 1966, he had led the country into trouble. Yakubu Gowon, a
soldier, took over. He was the super hero who led the country through a
civil war and held it together, but he was soon shoved aside by another
super hero, Murtala Muhammad, also a soldier. From Muhammad to
Obasanjo, the military held sway until 1979 when the military returned
power to a civilian “super hero”, Shehu Shagari. Shagari’s task was to
prove that civilians could take charge of their own affairs, but the
civilians messed up and the soldiers returned: Buhari, Babangida,
Abacha, Abdusalami Abubakar, all super heroes who deployed power in
different ways. Fast-forward to 1999 and the return to civilian rule
since then.
What seems clear is that the extent to
which every Head of State and Head of Government exercises Executive
powers is a function of personality and the surrounding myths and
circumstances. President Olusegun Obasanjo was such a total embodiment
of Presidential powers every knee bowed before him. Those who resisted
him regretted doing so in one form or the other. If he had actually
insisted on a Third term in office, he could have possibly gotten away
with it. He understood the full extent of his powers as President and he
was not afraid to put those powers to test. He was succeeded by Umaru
Yar’Adua who became President primarily because some powerful persons
didn’t want some other people in that office and merely to pacify
certain interests but eventually illness and death truncated President
Yar’Adua’s potential.
President Goodluck Jonathan became
acting President and later President also as a superhero. Nigerians used
him to remind the North that in a Federation, no single region is “born
to rule,” and that all Nigerians have full rights under the
Constitution. The North never forgave Jonathan. In his case, he seemed
to have played into the hands of his opponents by refusing to use
Presidential powers to their fullest extent. He publicly declared on
more than one occasion that power should not be wielded like a whip. He
conceded a lot, some say too much to God, and to the opposition, and for
this reason, many courtesans of power in Nigeria have also not forgiven
him especially for being humble and for allowing power and office to go
in the opposite direction.
His successor is a war-hero, a former
soldier, who is not shy about being a Nigerian super-hero. He is
wielding power and using it. The only problem is that a fully imperial
Presidency creates its own contradictions, most of which the subject
teaches us, is internal and therefore far more damaging to the system
and democracy itself. Under no circumstance should an elected leader
appear more powerful than the people, and the checking and balancing
systems so vulnerable. The note-taking on this and the long-term dangers
in the context of Nigeria’s democratic process and experience is, for
now, a work in progress… Babachir Lawal, I hope I have answered your
question. I hope you now know who and what the Presidency is.
Dr. Reuben Abati
was spokesperson and special adviser, media and publicity to President
Goodluck Jonathan (2011 – 2015). He tweets from @abati1990.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer.
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