June 23, (THEWILL) – Tomorrow, Monday June 25, 2024, the State High Court in Kano will either raise or douse by its ruling, the tension that has been building to breaking point since a Federal High Court in the state presided over by Justice A. M Liman nullified all steps taken by the Kano State Government, sequel to the Kano Emirate (Repeal) Law of 2024, which reinstated Muhammadu Sanusi 11 as the 16th Emir.
On that day, the government, which had failed to get the Commissioner of Police, AIG, Usaini Gumel to carry out its order to evict deposed 15th Emir of Kano, Aminu Ado Bayero from his Nasarawa palace ahead of a scheduled demolition, renovation and reconstruction, will know its fate on the eviction order for which it filed a case in the court.
In the meantime, the government had since raised the ante following the ambiguity in what Constitutional lawyer, Professor Auwalu Yadudu, described as a “muddled up” judgement delivered by Justice Liman, who in what seemed like a doublespeak, said, “I hereby order that every step taken by the defendant in pursuant of the Kano State Emirate Council Law is hereby annulled and set aside.”
But Liman added: “However, this does not affect the validity of the law, which is the subject matter, and I refuse the prayer by the applicant to nullify the law.”
The state government at the weekend immobilised Bayero’s Nasarawa palace with a security ring, pending tomorrow’s judgement. Yet Bayero, like Sanusi continued their rivalry on Friday when both held separate Jumat Prayers on Friday.
Elsewhere in the country, the court holds the ace to dousing the prolonged tension that boiled over last week when partisan youths demanded an end to the tenure of elected local government chairmen in Rivers State.
In the ensuing confusion, which had its background in the long-drawn supremacy battle between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor, Nyesom Wike, Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, a Police Inspector and a member of the local vigilante were killed, forcing the police to mount guard at the council secretariats until the court made a pronouncement on the tenure of the local government council Chairmen.
Meanwhile Fubara has gone ahead to appoint Caretaker Committee chairpersons to replace the forcefully ejected chairmen.
The pending court case is between Martin Amaewhule and 24 others against Victor Oko-Jumbo and others, which the Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital, last Thursday reserved judgement till July 4, 2024, and directed the parties involved in the matter to maintain status quo.
The three-man panel, comprising Justice Jimi Olukayode Bada, Justice Hama Barka and Justice Balkisu Aliyu, made this decision during its virtual sitting on appeal number CA/PHC/198/2024.
Amaewhule and 24 others are challenging the interlocutory injunction of Justice Charles Wali of a State High Court in Port Harcourt, which validated the declaration of their seats in the state House of Assembly vacant, pending the determination of the suit before it.
In the same week, youths in Kaduna State under the auspices of Kaduna Citizens Watch for Good Governance and Kaduna Accountability Network stormed the Government House in Kaduna and called on security agencies to arrest former Governor Nasir el-Rufai and for Governor Uba Sani to officially forward to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, the Assembly’s Ad-hoc Committee report indicting the former governor of alleged N423 billion official graft.
“What we are witnessing in these three big states in the country, Kano State, Rivers State and Kaduna State, is a very serious threat to democratic governance, but we have not seen it yet. It will continue because we have made institutions weak and individuals stronger. So, the institutions are at the mercy of individual politicians who are at the helm of affairs in the country. The Western man who is giving us grants to strengthen our institutions has more problems than us, but the institutions over there are stronger,” the National Chairman of Inter-Party Advisory Council, IPAC, Alhaji Yusuf Dantalle, told THEWILL on Friday.
SIMILARITY IN PREVAILING SITUATION
In Kano, Rivers and Kaduna, the same political undercurrents prevail. The first is godfatherism and the second, which is linked to the first, is the politics of 2027.
Wike whom Governor Fubara anointed and installed in office fell out with his godson whom he accused of tampering with his political structure in Rivers State, a euphemism for sabotage of his future political ambition.
Wike was a presidential aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in the last general election. Although he lost in the party’s primary election, he has not stopped nursing the ambition to rule the country.
In Kaduna, former Governor Nasir el-Rufai’s dispute with his successor, Governor Sani, whose political fortune he helped to nurture from the Senate to governorship, started when Sani pledged his full loyalty to President Bola Tinubu and chose to chart his own, inclusive administrative style, in stark contrast to the past at a time el-Rufai was having ministerial nomination blues at the centre, thus fueling mutual suspicion between them.
El-Rufai is widely reported to be nursing a presidential ambition in 2027 and his recent highly publicised visit to the leadership of the Social Democratic Party, SDP raised some eyebrows in Kaduna. His spokesperson, Muyiwa Adekeye however denied the reports and explained that his principal’s visit was personal and had no political undertone.
In Kano, the long-drawn struggle for dominance of the political space between presidential candidate of the New Nigeria Peoples Party, NNPP, in the 2023 election, Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso and his one-time protégé, Dr Abdullahi Ganduje, the immediate past governor of the state and currently National Chairman of the governing All Progressives Congress, peaked in the 2019 election when the incumbent Governor Abba Yusuf almost defeated Ganduje but for the supplementary poll afterward conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Emir Muhammadu Sanusi Lamido II is known to be an ally of Kwankwaso and Yusuf, who vowed during electioneering in 2023 to reinstate the Emir who was deposed by Ganduje and his emirate broken into five.
Moreover, the voting strength of these three states hold an attraction for presidential aspirants. Apart from Lagos, which had 7,06,195 registered voters in 2023, Kano, Kaduna and Rivers followed next in that order with 5,921,370 registered voters; 4,335,208 voters and 3,537,190 voters, respectively.
ASSESSING THE SITUATION
In his assessment of the situation a former National Commissioner of INEC, Prof Oke Obienu, thinks that what is at play in Rivers and Kaduna is a crisis of succession, while in Kano it is politics of opposition.
Prof Obienu who currently teaches Developmental Studies at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, spoke with THEWILL in an interview on Friday.
He said, “I think they may look like different circumstances, but they are essentially the same underlying problem. And that is the problem of managing succession in Nigeria. It is not a new thing, it has always been there. It is what I call the crisis of succession.
“Obviously, for a long time, people thought that if they chose their successors, then that would be a good way of managing succession. It probably worked for a while, but it is clearly unraveling.
“The character of the political elite in Nigeria is where the problem lies. Succession in a democracy should be clear and total. When you have done your beat, you move on. But that is not what it is; people want to retain control and influence, which is normal to expect, but it cannot be at the cost of the stability of the system.”
Contending that what is happening in Kaduna and Rivers points to the fact that Nigerians are practising democracy without democrats, he noted that the democratic attitude and aptitude means that the predecessor and successor should know when to give up and move on.
“I think that is what we are seeing in Rivers and probably in Kaduna. For both the predecessor and successor, the democratic attitude is lacking. The democratic attitude is characterised by bargaining, negotiation, temperate language and all that. It is lacking because everybody wants to muscle his way.”
The situation in Kano exemplifies the political crisis that follows the succession from one political party to the other.
According to the former INEC official, the kind of bitterness that the political class deploys in managing the succession in that situation is also mind boggling.
He said that in a situation where everybody wants to take over power and completely decimate opponents is antithetical to democracy.
“That is not how a democracy works, a democracy works by recognizing opposition, so you do not decimate those you have defeated. You have to accommodate, negotiate with them being that the ultimate aim is for the stability of the system. So, I find it hard to understand how politicians behave, especially in our system when today you are in one party and tomorrow, you are in another. They do not recognise that tomorrow they can be in the same system again.”
He has a strong word for politicians in the country: “To be a good politician requires more than being able to win elections. It requires a certain kind of accommodating attitude and understanding that governments come and go but governance continues. Once people fail to recognise that in a democracy we have to accommodate others, we have to bargain, negotiate and so on and recognise that there is a world of difference between election and governance, we will continue to have problems like these, and the system will be unstable.
WAY FORWARD
IPAC’s Alhaji Dantalle suggested a surgical rehabilitation of the political system while he called for the slashing of the remunerations of political office holders as a first step to making the contest attractive to selfless people to join the fray, he also thinks that the electorate must look for pro-people politicians to vote into power and hold them to account.
“Local government autonomy must be allowed. That is why I support the Federal Government’s suit through the office of the Attorney- General of the Federation and Minister of Justice (Lateef Fagbemi, SAN) seeking interpretation of the Supreme Court on the law on LGA autonomy.
“The State Independent Electoral Commission must be scrapped. It is the strongest weapon of oppression possessed by governors. You cannot have democracy at the federal level when it is absent at the last tier of governance, at the grassroots, which is closest to the people. This failing is responsible for most of the social and political ills plaguing the country in the form of insecurity, banditry, poverty and apathy because the local government councils are not empowered to do anything meaningful. Once the autonomy is granted the grassroots would be able to elect, closely monitor the activities of politicians and react accordingly just as they do with chieftaincy and land boundary issues which touch their livelihood.
“A lot of the LGA Chairmen are just boys in the hands of the governors. They follow the governor wherever he is going. And most of the governors are absentee governors, they seat in Abuja. Also, I think that election related matters should be resolved by the courts before swearing- in. Until we can address all these things, we may not have any head way.”
He called for a new mode of appointment for the INEC Chairmen. According to him, it amounts to a player appointing a referee when a serving president appoints the boss of the electoral umpire.
Speaking from experience, he said the earlier position adopted by the government on extending grants to political parties should return because it had a way of insulating the parties from the dictates of money bags.
“In the past political parties were strengthened through grants but today, individuals fund the parties and determine what happens in each of them. So, the political parties are at the mercy of the individuals, who are richer than political parties.”
Professor Obienu expressed optimism that the warring parties in the aforementioned states would somehow manage their differences, though, regrettably, at the expense of good governance.
“This will not be the first time we are seeing it. Somehow, they will manage the situation. Probably some people will move into another party and move back and forth. And then the next election comes. But it is ultimately not good for governance because it can be distractive. Instead of spending all their time trying to implement the mandate they were giving they are busy going in and out of courts, mobilising thugs.
The people are caught in the middle of all these and that is not good for the democratic system. People become disillusioned because nothing has changed.”
Obienu lamented the dearth of real political elders whose voices and stature should be able to command respect among warring parties.
“In a situation like this, there should be elders who people listen to and resolve their differences for the system to stabilize. But what you find today are those taking sides and fanning the flames.”
Mr Femi Falana a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, urged courts to stop compounding the justice system and adhere strictly to the observance of the law during adjudication. I
n a position paper on Friday on the Kano Emir dispute, he wrote: “The intervention of the Federal High Court in the dispute arising from the deposition of Emir Ado Bayero and co, as well as the restoration of Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi is a brazen repudiation of the Supreme Court in a celebrated case of Tukur v Government of Gongola State wherein it was held that,
“The question raised in this claim is not a fundamental right question. As in the first prayer, the right of the Emir is not guaranteed by the fundamental Rights provision of the Constitution and the Federal High Court has no jurisdiction whatsoever in the matter. The Court of Appeal was therefore not in error of law to hold that the Federal High Court has no jurisdiction to grant the two reliefs.”
About the Author
Amos Esele is the Acting Editor of THEWILL Newspaper. He has over two decades of experience on the job.
