Back from the Brink?

Nigeria has this dangerous habit of perpetually getting close to the edge of the precipice before stepping or being dragged back. Our political leaders have elevated brinkmanship to an art form, and sometimes their stunts blow up in all our faces. In the first republic, the imposition of the Akintola Premiership on the West against the ruling of the Privy Council in England and against the will of the majority of his Action Group members; the subsequent declaration of state of emergency in that region; the controversy over the organisation of the 1964 Census; the dissolution of the NPC/NCNC federal coalition; attempts to suppress the Tiv and other minority elements in Northern Nigeria; and the blatant rigging of the 1964 federal elections and 1965 Western region voting eventually resulted in a disastrous civil war.
The dribbles of the clever General Ibrahim Babangida over the return to civil rule programme between 1989 and 1993 (and Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) membership) eventually resulted in the Orkar Coup of April 1990 and later Abacha’s ascension to power. Abacha himself was an expert at brinkmanship. He seemed to get his high from danger and confrontation and soon took Nigeria very close to a second civil war, or perhaps an implosion of the country itself. Even President Obasanjo, perhaps the most senior member of a clique which may be regarded as self-appointed guarantors of Nigeria national unity (along with Generals T.Y Danjuma, Abdulsalam Abubakar, IBB and Aliyu Gusau-and others on the periphery) also practiced the art with his “third term” bid and the conduct of the 2007 general elections.
Now the latest people to take us close to the brink is a small clique of Turai Yar’adua, Tanimu Yakubu, Sayyadi Abba Ruma and others around the President. Probably the narrowest power clique to attempt a monopoly over power in Nigeria’s history, the group mostly hails from Katsina. They are essentially defined by personal ties to President Umaru Yar’adua (UMY)-his wife, his ex-appointees while he was Katsina State Governor who have followed him into the federal government, his personal security aides and child hood friends and his business man friend. Their power base derives completely from their dependency on the president-on their own they do not have any political legitimacy, and in a sense, it is this knowledge that without presidential cover they are politically naked that explains their determination to preserve UMY’s regime beyond its medical expiry date!
In constitutional terms, the rule by this clique beyond a point at which it was clear that UMY was in control of his faculties amounted to a coup-an unconstitutional take-over of power by persons, and in a manner not envisaged by the constitution. The constitution does not recognise a first lady, any minister or other appointee of a president and certainly not his personal security aides and childhood friends as legitimate inheritors of political power in the event of the absence, indisposition, medical leave or incapacitation of a president. In this understanding, what the Senate and House of Representatives then did by their actions of last week, to the extent that it also did not accord strictly with the terms of the 1999 Constitution may also be interpreted as a counter-coup! Of the two coups, the one by the Turai Clique and the National Assembly one, it is clear which ought to enjoy better legitimacy!!!
At least the actions of the National Assembly restore constitutional rule in Nigeria after 78 days of the Turai Coup. Clearly the interpretation of the purported interview on BBC by a voice resembling Yar’adua as amounting to a transmission of a letter under the terms of Section 145 of the Constitution was an innovative stretch designed to outwit the Turai Clique and beat them at their game. The invocation of the doctrine of “necessity” rather than the explicit terms of the constitution confirms the stretch of the intendment of the framers of the 1999 constitution. But then, as I said earlier, that action of the National Assembly may be supported as helping to restore constitutional rule as others constitutionally entitled to act-the Executive Council of the Federation (under section 144) and the President (under Section 145) had wilfully refused to do so. The only other option open to the National Assembly-impeachment (under Section 143) may have been politically unfeasible. While I support the insistence of civil society elements on full observance of the constitution, they must do nothing that puts them unknowingly in support of the Turai Coup.
I regarded the tensions we were enduring since November 23 2009 as perhaps a move towards self-destruction by Nigeria’s corrupt ruling class. It may have been interesting as I wrote in a recent article to watch the “system” prepare its own wake-keeping. Perhaps that is why everyone-Obasanjo, Shagari, Shonekan, Bola Tinubu, media owners and editors, Justice Kutigi (who a few weeks earlier had become a de facto accomplice in the Turai Coup) and everyone else sought to exculpate themselves from the dangerous direction the country was drifting towards. Perhaps the “system” has stepped back from the brink? Perhaps not?