Nearly one year after, electricity supply across Nigeria remains woeful, no new jobs have been created, the price of basic goods have gone through the roof, one US dollar now exchanges for over three hundred naira instead of the utopian 1-1 promised by Buhari, fuel supply today is far worse than in the Jonathan era, including the artificial scarcity contrived by the APC just before the elections of 2015. The slaughter of innocent Nigerians continues unabated. Kidnapping is still a daily occurrence in Nigeria. The ruling party that controls the Presidency and both Chambers of the National Assembly still continued to play tango with the 2016 budget. The wahala is endless. But I digress. Let’s just limit ourselves to that one promise.
After making his famous speech, President Buhari hid his hand for a very long time and gave no one the chance to know whether he was bought or was in deed for all Nigerians. But once President Buhari started making his appointments, it became very obvious that he was and remains a Northern irredentist. In announcing all his personal aides, he completely excluded the South East of Nigeria. In his loose moment he tried to justify his exclusion of the Igbo nation from his initial appointments by saying that he owed more to those who gave him the votes. As if that was not enough, he has since cemented his scorn for the Igbo nation by giving them the choppy ministerial positions such as Labour. Yes an Igbo man is the External Affairs Minister. But that is only in name. The President does that job every day as he continues to fly around the world “to redeem Nigeria from being a pariah nation”. I tell you, if it was not a constitutional imperative, no man or woman of Ibo descent would have been made a Minister by Buhari.
Penultimate his assumption of office as C in C, there had been a mass agitation for an independent state of Biafra. The movement took a dimension under his watch with a global audience. There were reported cases of military killings of Biafra agitators. Thereafter came the herdsmen approach resulting in the mad cow massacre of the middle belt and down the Lower Niger from Agatu to Nnibo and many other communities across the country. Herdsmen are now licensed to kill humans for cows. Yet, it is coming to stay while the C in C ostensibly still presides with this genocide becoming an ethnic cleansing rejoinder.
A QUICK REMINDER!
How many of us remember the widely published Open Letter to Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari by Bruce Fein, a Constitutional Lawyer of the American extraction and Author when he wrote thus
"When you visited the United States Institute of Peace last July, you pledged that you would be "fair, just and scrupulously follow due process and the rule of law, as enshrined in [the Nigerian] constitution" in prosecuting corruption.
Such loftiness is laudable. As the Bible instructs in Amos 5:24: "[Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
But to be just, the law must be evenhanded. It cannot, in the manner of Russian President Vladimir Putin, be something that is given to punish your enemies and withheld to favor your friends. If so, the law becomes an instrument of injustice bearing earmarks of the wicked rather than the good.
In the United States, you declared a policy of "zero tolerance" against corruption. You solicited weapons and other assistance from the United States government based on that avowal. But were you sincere?
During your election campaign, you promised widespread amnesty, not zero tolerance. You elaborated: "Whoever that is indicted of corruption between 1999 to the time of swearing-in would be pardoned. I am going to draw a line, anybody who involved himself in corruption after I assume office, will face the music."
After you were inaugurated, however, you disowned your statement and declared you would prosecute past ministers or other officials for corruption or fraud. And then again you immediately hedged. You were reminded of your dubious past by former Major General and President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, who succeeded your military dictatorship. He released this statement:
"On General Buhari, it is not in IBB's tradition to take up issues with his colleague former President. But for the purpose of record, we are conversant with General Buhari's so-called holier-than-thou attitude. He is a onetime Minister of Petroleum and we have good records of his tenure as minister. Secondly, he presided over the Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, which records we also have.
We challenge him to come out with clean hands in those two portfolios he headed. Or we will help him to expose his records of performance during those periods. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. General Buhari should be properly guided."
You then swiftly backed off your zero tolerance policy because you would have been its first casualty.
In the further words of Bruce Fein,
"You opportunistically announced that zero tolerance would be narrowed to the predecessor administration of Goodluck Jonathan because to probe further would be "a waste of time." That conclusion seems preposterous. In 2012, the World Bank's ex-vice president for Africa, Oby Ezekwesili, estimated that a stupendous $400 billion in Nigerian oil revenues had been stolen or misspent since independence in 1960. The lion's share of that corruption spans far beyond the Jonathan administration.
Your zero tolerance policy seems to come with a squint to avoid seeing culpability in your political friends. A few examples are but the tip of the iceberg."
He further said "A Rivers State judicial commission of inquiry found that N53 billion disappeared from the Rivers State Reserve Fund under former governor Rotimi Amaechi. Former Lagos governor and head of your campaign finance team Babatunde Fashola was accused of squandering N78 million of government money to upgrade his personal website. The EFCC has ignored these corruption allegations, and you have given both promotions: the Ministry of Transport to Mr. Amaechi, and the Ministry of Power, Works, and Housing to Mr. Fashola.
In contrast, you have played judge, jury, and prosecutor in the newspapers to convict former PDP Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke of corruption.
Is this evenhanded justice?
United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson taught: "[T]here is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected."
To investigate or prosecute based on political affiliation or opinion also violates Articles 2 and 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is unworthy of a great nation like Nigeria.
Bruce Fein further argued "Make the hallmark of your administration justice, not retribution, and you may live for the ages.
In his closing claims he declared " I am a United States citizen and lawyer. I have no political standing in Nigeria. Some might argue that my speaking about the administration of justice in Nigeria bespeaks impertinence. But you chose to visit the United States to solicit weapons and other assistance from my Country's government of the people, by the people, for the people. The United States government represents me. What the United States government does reflects on me. I thus have an interest in addressing the actions of foreign governments that receive United States government aid.
Sunshine is said to be the best of disinfectants".
Today, this speaks for itself as self-judge.
Meanwhile, President Buhari finally appointed his ministers after more than six months in the saddle. Needless to say, the announcement of the Ministerial list was an anti-climax. Nigerians had waited for so long with baited breadth only to be fed with recycled politicians. Even ex Governors like Amaechi and Fashola who had massive allegations of corruption levelled against them were not only put in the mix of the Ministerial appointments but were awarded the most ‘lucrative’ postings. A man who spent N35 Billion on less than 2 (yes, TWO) kilometres of Monorail was made the Minister for Air, Land and Sea as the APC supporters in Rivers State would want to describe the Transport portfolio.
As though these were not enough to show that Buhari is actually owned by some person or persons, more sordid evidence exists. Even though the Federal government is yet to constitute the Boards of its Parastatals across the nation, an exception had to be made for the Minister from Rivers State. So, promptly, his spokeswoman and former Information Commissioner is appointed the acting Managing Director of NDDC. This act was done in complete contravention of the Act that set up NDDC and before the end of the tenure of an existing Board. And just days to the 19th March re-run elections in Rivers State, the gubernatorial candidate of the APC in the last election who had lost his case at the Supreme Court was named the Managing Director of NIMASA. As they say in these parts, “what Amaechi wants, Amaechi gets”.
Still the worst is yet to come. Two weeks before the March 19thelections, the Honourable Minister from Rivers State storms the State and practically sets the State on fire. He was in every TV and Radio newsroom and charted to every editor that had a minute. He said unprintable things about the State Governor and anyone who did not buy into his change mantra. He threatened and kept his word to flood the State with soldiers. His calls were so blatant that the Brigade Commander at Bori Camp in Port Harcourt had to make a Statement that the Nigerian Army was not under the thumb of any Minister. But that was too little, too late. The horse had bolted from the staple. In Yeghe, an Israeli-style action had already been carried out by the Nigerian Army. In addition to the loss of innocent lives including pregnant women, the house of a suspected opponent of APC was bulldozed to the ground by the Army, clearly re-writing our Constitution.
At the election proper, brazen acts of criminality were carried out by Amaechi and his supporters. Some of those nauseating acts even went viral in social media. But they have since been covered up by the Nigerian Army and the Police. Despite the Minister’s devious plans, the election results were woeful for APC. But the man who clearly owns Buhari has since seen to it that most of the results are cancelled or withheld by INEC which is clearly under Amaechi’s thumb. Where elections were cancelled and fresh elections were promised (as is mandatory under the Electoral Act), INEC has continued to keep mum more than one month after. And lest any man try to justify the position of INEC in not conducting the re-run elections or of Amaechi for littering the State with soldiers because of the insecurity in the State, we must state categorically here that no man has a right to try to create a state of anarchy and also try to profit from it. All along, Amaechi and his followers had promised to make the State ungovernable for Governor Wike.
The chicanery that occurred at the Tribunal and the Court of Appeal are clear cases of desperation by a group hell-bent on bringing down a Governor chosen by his people. Many bad boys who are engaged in kidnapping and other heinous crimes in Rivers State have since been apprehended by the Police but will never be prosecuted as their linkage with the Minister’s party trumps every other consideration.
If you are a die-hard Buhari supporter and you are still not convinced that the Minister of Transport who contributed 70% of Buhari’s campaign funds owns or substantially owns Buhari, here is the icing on the cake. It is a matter far worse than Watergate that brought an American President down in disgrace. Some weeks back a certain former Local Government Chairman was apprehended by the Police and charged to Court for Murder. As is expected, the hapless Magistrate did the only thing open to him-to order the remand of the suspect in prison custody while the file is remitted to the Rivers State Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) for advice. This is basic, standard practice. But once the Minister learns of the incarceration of his Boy, he is raving mad and orders the Commissioner of Police to withdraw the two-count charge. Expectedly, upon the insistence of the State Attorney General, this effort is thwarted. But the Minister does not lose battles so he ups the ante and now orders the Inspector General of Police to apply to the Magistrates Court to withdraw the charges on the flimsy excuse that the Police has yet to complete its investigation.
Now, the affable IG is a lawyer who knows or reasonably ought to know that if the investigation as contained in the case file transmitted to the DPP by the Police does not disclose the commission of a murder, then the DPP must enter an opinion that a murder case has not been established and perhaps more investigation ought to be carried out or the suspect must be discharged. He also must know that even if the DPP decides to be partisan as in APC/PDP divide, the accused person has his chance to exonerate himself, if not in the State High Court then all the way to the Supreme Court. But he decided to subvert the judicial process. For this unconscionable act of doing violence to the Nigerian Constitution and the Criminal Code, the IG deserves to be dismissed from his job by the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. To keep him in that job over the next 48 hours can mean only one thing and one thing alone: that either President Buhari or His Owner, Hon. Amaechi instructed the IG to act in this perverse manner. If it came from the Minister, the National Assembly and all well-meaning Nigerians must unite to insist that he is sacked from the Federal Executive Cabinet forthwith. If it came from Mr. President, it only confirms our view that our boy from Ubima owns him either in part or in whole. This is a clear case of an impeachable offence for which Nigerians should not gloss over lightly.
From the Platform of:
Livingstone Wechie
Political/Civil Rights Advocate
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