Civil rights lawyer, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, in this interview with GBENRO ADEOYE, speaks on President Muhammadu Buhari’s ministerial list and other issues concerning governance
Do you think the names on the ministerial list are worth the wait?
I think that the general reaction to the release of the names of the proposed ministers by President Muhammadu Buhari is that of total disappointment. The reason being that as of the time we were putting pressure on the President, he went to the United States and asked for patience because he said he was looking for clean people to work with. So the impression created thereby was that he was looking for saints, people who had no blemish, no corruption bags to carry, no allegations and people not involved in any controversy. So we were patient, hoping that he would get such people to run with his vision for Nigeria. So when we saw that list, it was a total disappointment; not because the names listed did not merit to be appointed as ministers. With all due respect, Mr. Babatunde Fashola has been an excellent performer in Lagos State notwithstanding the controversies. Kayode Fayemi comes across as someone who is well grounded, an intellectual to the core. He has governed a state and successfully midwived the national convention of the All Progressives Congress. Dr. Chris Ngige was said to have performed well when he was governor of Anambra State. So I have no problems with the personalities but you will recall that in Lagos State, there are allegations against Fashola that he spent N78m of state resources on a personal website. There are allegations that Fayemi built the secretariat with over N2bn when the salaries of workers could not be paid. So you would be looking for people with no blemish and then you would think that it would cut across the entire gamut of the Nigerian society. But there are no youths among them; they are all aged people, with someone like the same Audu Ogbeh, who has been running this country since 1979. So you look at the list and say ‘what were we waiting for?’ Fashola raised money for Buhari’s campaign; Rotimi Amaechi provided the jet with which he was going all over Nigeria. So what was he waiting for before announcing Fashola or Fayemi? If these are the people to work with him, he should have constituted his cabinet immediately, since May 29 when he was sworn in. The general conclusion is that two things seem to be playing out from the list he submitted. Either the President, with all due respect, is confused and has no vision about what to do as an agenda, or the process of decision making is flawed, slow and elongated. If we are taking four months to announce ministers, then how long will it take us to fix the power sector, education, hospitals and health system, corruption or the judiciary? You then see that he will come across as somebody who probably has no vision and is unserious about governance. He has a limited term of four years and has wasted four months to announce the names of his friends like Lai Mohammed? It was a total disappointment.
If you don’t have any problem with the names on the list, is it then about the allegations or petitions against some of them?
I don’t think it’s so much about the petitions against them. I thought that part of the process of waiting was to conduct proper screening either through the Department of State Security, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, or the relevant statutory agency of the government saddled with the responsibility of determining the credentials of those to be appointed into sensitive positions. I think Nigerians are generally angry because the country has been at a standstill since May 29. In the ministries, there has been no clear direction. They are being run by civil servants in confused states, because civil servants wait for directives from the heads. In places like the stock exchange, we are losing a lot. In the financial market, the exchange rate has continued to plummet and investors are afraid to come in because there is no direction or economic policy. There is nobody in charge of the Ministry of finance; there is no Attorney General who can give us a picture of what the administration of criminal justice will be in Nigeria. So it is not just the petitions against these people but also about the individuals who have been announced, do they deserve to have kept Nigeria waiting for four months? Did the President have to wait for four months to tell us that he would work with Mohammed, who has been his party’s spokesperson and so visible. It is totally an embarrassment to tell me that you are waiting for four months to announce such a person in your ministerial list.
Some people expected more technocrats in the list, but there are more politicians there. Does it really matter?
What is clear to us from this is that the President is under some form of bondage, if I can use that word. It is clear that by bending towards hardliners of the APC, he is under the control of politicians. He can no longer say that he is a President for nobody and for everybody. If you look at the list properly, you will see the name of Amaechi, who is being compensated for putting the financial chest of Rivers State at the behest of the President and making the resources of the state like the private jet available to him during the campaign. If I look at Fashola, he is being compensated for being the fundraiser for the President when he was campaigning. Fayemi is being compensated for ensuring that the primary of the APC at the Onikan Stadium went well. Mohammed is being compensated for running such a smooth propaganda by which Nigerians were swindled into believing that Buhari will be a miracle worker. To me, it is clear that this list is not about delivering the dividends of democracy to Nigerians, because it is not as if their names are attached to particular portfolios. For instance, to say Fashola will be the Attorney General, look at his vision for the justice system, Fayemi will be the Minister for Foreign affairs, etc. From the look of things, clearly the president does not believe in working with anybody, and so he is not looking for technocrats. He has the attitude of bullying people. He has the attitude of not listening to people. He has exhibited the attitude of being a man of his own mind without any regard to the inputs of professionals. Look at it from all the snippets of information we have heard, the candidates of Osinbajo were not chosen. Mr. Femi Falana (SAN) was supposed to be the candidate of the vice-president for ministerial appointment, but he has not been chosen. Dr. Pat Utomi was also supposed to be the candidate of the VP, but he has not been chosen. So the President surely is working as a lone ranger. He went to France and said that ministers were noisemakers and that it is only civil servants who are running the government.
He is only going to use these appointees as management consultants whose opinions he may choose not to listen to. So even if he had appointed technocrats, given the President’s antecedents, he is not going to work with them.
Some people will argue that the PDP failed because its party leaders allegedly used and dumped some members. Is it a bad thing in governance for political parties to compensate people who worked for the success of their party?
The first thing we will look at is that we are still enjoying some relief from the backwardness and misrule we experienced in the past 16 years in the hands of the PDP and that is what the President is still leveraging upon. Nigerians are happy to be rid of that particular era; I must tell you the truth. So in spite of the shortcomings of this government, we still prefer it to what we just experienced, at least in the last four years of former President Goodluck Jonathan. It was like hell. But having said that, the impression we got from the APC is that we are going to witness a change and that the policy of using offices to compensate people on the altar of merits would no longer be the case. There is nothing wrong at all if people who can pilot the nation forward are given appointments based on patronage. The point we are making is that it should have been done at the commencement of this administration. We have paid too much price for these four months of wastage in the financial, health, education and the other sectors of the Nigerian life. There is nothing wrong in compensating people as a mark of acknowledging their commitment and loyalty, but you do that in the course of your campaign. You should have made up your mind that Fashola and Amaechi will be among your ministers. There would be no need for this guesswork that he threw our nation into. The President seems to be enjoying putting Nigerians in some form of suspense. He is arrogating to himself a form of entitlement that says ‘I’m the only person who can rule you people. You have tried this person, he failed. You tried that person, he failed you. I’m the only one who has integrity and the other people are rogues and corrupt, so whatever I’m going to do, you have to tolerate me and bear with me. You have to accept it whether you like it or not’. But that cannot work. It is a military mentality which cannot work in a democratic setting. Gradually we will see that we have been misled into thinking that we were going to experience some sort of change. Four months down the line, we are back to running generators. So many people are losing their lives on account of bad roads and their poor maintenance and time is going. That is why we are so angry. There are things we should have achieved in the last four months, but the President is doing things according to his own fancy, not according to the expectations of Nigerians. And if that is the case, then there is no change at all.
Some people question the trial of the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, for fraud while the President is appointing the likes of Fashola and Amaechi with baggage of allegations and petitions against them. Do they have an argument?
Speaking strictly legally, section 36 (5) of the 1999 constitution states that every person who has been charged with a criminal offence is presumed to be innocent until the contrary is proved. So no matter the number of charges or petitions or gravity of allegations, they remain in the realm of allegations until there is judicial pronouncement from the court of law determining the guilt or otherwise of the person who is being speculated or charged. I don’t think that legally speaking, it is wrong to have forwarded the names of people who have allegations of corruption against them to be appointed as ministers. You will recall that in the course of the PDP administration, Senator Iyiola Omisore was accused of involvement in the death of the former Attorney General of the Federation, Bola Ige, and he was indeed charged for murder. He was remanded at Ilesha prison and was inside the prison when he contested the election for the position of senator representing Ife constituency and he won. Not only that, when he got to the senate, he became the Chairman of the Financial Appropriation Committee, one of the most powerful committees. Eventually, his case was determined and he was discharged. So you can imagine what would have happened if on the basis of those allegations, he had been denied those opportunities, only for him to be discharged at the end of the day. What that portends is that we cannot determine that the man is guilty just because people have raised allegations. Legally speaking, I have no problem with the people on the list. However, for a government that is claiming to be fighting corruption, it will be sending a wrong message to the people, in terms of administration and governance. You will be sending a wrong message to have these people who have very weighty allegations of corruption which seem to gain some prominence as your model for governance. For you to go to Bayelsa State and pick a governorship candidate that has not less than two criminal charges filed by your own government, which is EFCC, because it is part of Buhari’s government, or to go to Kogi and pick a candidate who has allegations of corruption. I’m saying that generally, the President would have been more tactical. It will be serious if in the course of governance any of the persons has a proven case of corruption. That will dent the image of the government irreparably, but legally speaking, there is no problem suggesting names of people with allegations of corruption for your cabinet.
Can the anti-graft agencies be reluctant to go after a minister in the government, which could then dent Buhari’s fight against corruption?
Personally, if you are asking me, the so-called fight against corruption is just a gimmick to buy public legitimacy because I cannot see any evidence of the war against corruption. No evidence. All this while that the President has been elected, he has been telling us that corrupt persons were going to be prosecuted and dealt with, but he didn’t take any action. It took the intervention of an anti-graft agency in the United Kingdom to go after a former minister before the EFCC woke up in Nigeria to be running helter-skelter to seal up her house which had been in existence in Abuja all these years. What that tells you is that the President is not serious about fighting corruption. I don’t see why Diezani Alison-Madueke (former Minister of Petroleum) should not have been invited for questioning or arrested before now. This government is not serious about fighting corruption but it is aware that given the suffering, neglect and lack of governance in Nigeria, any fool or an idiot who jumps up in Nigeria and says that he will fight corruption, recover stolen funds, would be accepted by the masses. Nigerians would warm up to such a person even if he has no genuine agenda. So this is just a gimmick of the APC to pull wool over the eyes of Nigerians so that in spite of its lack of agenda from May 29 till now, it has been talks of corruption and corruption. I think that Nigerians should wise up and hold this government accountable to its campaign promises. You want to be giving meals to school children, it’s four months down the line, there is no such thing. You want to be giving money to retirees, there is no such thing. You want to build 3,500km highway roads to link states in the country; you have not even started with the Lagos-Ibadan Road. You want to build an airport in each state of the federation; you are not even repairing the existing ones.
What is your take on Buhari’s announcement in the US that he will occupy the position of petroleum minister?
He cannot do so; we are filing a case against that next week. The President cannot act against the constitution. Section 138 of the constitution states that the President shall not hold any other executive office. The office of the President is already an executive office by virtue of section 5 of 1999 constitution. The office of the minister under section 147 and 148 is also an executive office, you cannot combine the two. He has no choice in the matter.
Secondly, before you can function in office as a minister, your name must be approved and confirmed by the senate. You must go through the screening of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria before you can be a minister. So if he sits in Aso Villa without subjecting himself to confirmation of the senate and arrogate to himself the power of the Minister of Petroleum, he will just be acting illegally. He cannot sign documents; he cannot allocate oil blocs if that is his focus. He cannot lift any crude, unless he is doing so illegally. I think that the President should realise that he is no longer the Head of the supreme military council, which is what he was in 1984 when he took over power by force.
This is democracy dictated by the constitution that he has in his hands. If he doesn’t have sufficient experience based on his military limitations, he should consult his vice-president who is a professor of law and well-meaning Nigerians who are lawyers and experienced constitutional experts. There is no way the President can combine the offices. He can’t say he will do it because former President Olusegun Obasanjo did it.
But he has executive powers…
Executive power does not mean executive dictatorship whereby one person arrogates all power to himself. The executive power we talk of here is a single person at the head of the chain of command who gives directives and makes appointments. He does not pocket portfolios and begins to describe himself as President, minister or Inspector General of Police, there is nothing like that. We are filing a case in court against that for the court to interpret the constitution so that we would move away from the realm of confusion, controversy and speculation. We also want the court to determine whether under the Customs and Excise Management Act, it is legal to pick a retired colonel with no record of service in the Nigerian customs to head the organisation (Nigeria Customs Service), which has its own laws and bureaucracy.
How come Nigerians didn’t challenge Obasanjo when he acted as Minister of Petroleum then?
The fact that Nigerians did not challenge that impunity and illegality in former President Obasanjo does not mean that Buhari should replicate it because I suspect that he may be getting this advice from Ota, Ogun State (Obasanjo’s base). If that is the case, we are wiser and we will not allow that now. There is no basis for that in law.
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