Buhari snub of South-South leaders: Matters arising

If the leadership community of the South South geopolitical zone see and refer to their recent denigration by President Muhamadu Buhari a

If the leadership community of the South South geopolitical zone see and refer to their recent denigration by President Muhamadu Buhari acting in concert with the deep state in the country, outside the consideration of their zone as nothing beyond a vassal entity, then they are misreading their ranking in the political space of the country. In a development that accentuates the need for Nigerians to interrogate the scope of unending administrative incontinence in the Presidency, a high level meeting scheduled to hold in Port Harcourt last Tuesday between officials of the Presidency and the political leadership of the South South zone was scuttled unceremoniously, at the instance of the former. This was even as the latter were already seated in Government House Port Harcourt, waiting for the arrival of the Presidency. The team from the Presidency was to be led by the Chief of Staff to the President Professor Ibrahim Gambari.

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According to a statement by Presidential spokesman Garba Shehu, the delegation from the Presidency failed to make it to the meeting due to a last minute change in plans by the team, whereby some critical members of the delegation were to attend an emergency security forum, ostensibly more important than the Port Harcourt parley.

Expectedly there have been reactions and protests in the wake of the development from the South South delegation comprising all six governors of the zone, as well as prominent traditional rulers and other politically significant persons in the zone.  Most significant among such responses was the demand for an apology from the Presidency to the South South leaders and the zone entirety. Beyond this feeble gesture which is hardly a slap on the wrist and which Garba Shehu in characteristic style, could easily issue in as terse a script as would not even be worth the ink with which it is written, the development is as good as gone with the wind. Just as well too is the contemplation that given the mood of the South South zone, hardly will the issue of their denigration define their subsequent official interactions with the Presidency.

Yet the experience of the South-South leaders serves eloquently in many dimensions as another metaphor highlighting the new normal in the country’s political framework whereby the Presidency is operating as a monarchy as the Constitution now remains invalidated to the extent of all of its provisions which profile Nigeria as a democracy. Nigeria has rather turned into an empire or even a kingdom, with President Muhamadu Buhari as an emperor and king, who can summon, and dismiss any body including state governors at will. This is just as Buhari would have been promoted as having been endowed with the authority of assigning anybody whatsoever with a mandate to execute any function in any part of the country and against any person as may suit his volition and maybe, that of his assignee.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the likelihood that the incongruence of the failed meeting may not be   captured beyond the mere circumstance of the inability of the Presidential delegation to attend. Hence the lame demand by the South South leadership for an apology from the Presidency. On the contrary if the situation is considered in perspective, that was a meeting which the South South leaders should not have contemplated participating in, except with the guarantee that President Muhamadu Buhari was to be there in person.  Seen in perspective of the Constitution along with the Official Order of Precedence which guides who follows and sits by who in government, it is just incongruent that the political leadership community of any part of the country comprising chief executives of states, would meet to be addressed by any government official lower than the President himself or at the worst the Vice President who would be acting acting on behalf of the President.

Against the backdrop of this contention can fly any argument, especially one that may justify a   nebulous power of the Presidency to ride rough shod arbitrarily in conducting aspects of governance of the country. That however remains inconsistent with the tenets of democracy in Nigeria as enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution, and on which this column, runs. Even with the indefensible complacence of the country to review and rationalize the extant Order of Precedence guiding the ranking of public officers in any government business situation, the state governors come next to the President in hierarchy for the simple fact that they are chief executives of the component states of the federation. That is why the delegation from the Presidency led by the Chief of Staff to the President Professor Ibrahim Gambari remains inconsistent with rectitude, and should not have been accepted by the South South leaders in the first place. Little wonder that just as the Kalabari proverb has it that if a prince conducts himself unseemly he suffers the penalty of a slave, the same Presidency which the South-South leaders failed to call to order for a faulty scoping of a meeting, ended up embarrassing them with a last minute call off of the parley which the former had placed significant premium on.

Against the backdrop of the foregoing, the way forward for the leaders of the South-South; given the   context of their true ranking in the country’s politics, remains a matter of concern not just to them but to as many of them that have issues with the Presidential snub of their leaders. While in all likelihood, the South South governors may take issues in their routine stride while the chiefs and elders follow the lead of the potentates, it is the reaction of the more restive youth of the zone that calls for discretional   handling. If nothing else the Presidential snub reinforces the long held suspicion among them that contrary to whatever official assurances offered the zone by the status quo, the terms of real politics as dictated by the deep state constitute a different matter.

That unfortunately is one of the rather ominous take-aways from the botched meeting between the Presidency and the South South leaders.