Impeachment is a dangerous game

My own take on both papers was that Nyako did not adduce tangible proof to support the very serious allegation that he made against the Federal Government. Just as the latter did not take kindly to his charges, Nyako’s supporters did not take kindly to my stance. I received several text messages accusing me of […]

My own take on both papers was that Nyako did not adduce tangible proof to support the very serious allegation that he made against the Federal Government. Just as the latter did not take kindly to his charges, Nyako’s supporters did not take kindly to my stance. I received several text messages accusing me of either being paid by the presidency to attack Nyako or of having an inordinate hatred of him. Both charges were untrue, as far as I know.
Now, fast-moving events in Adamawa State in recent weeks concerning a move by the State House of Assembly to impeach Nyako may easily be a continuation of that affair in which we all burnt our fingers. Nyako’s memo to Northern governors became an issue at a Council of State meeting. We heard from three governors that everyone at the meeting condemned the memo. Nyako said nothing of the sort happened. The current attempt to impeach Nyako is inevitably seen by many Nigerians as an effort by the Presidency and PDP to get even with him. If so, this is a dangerous gambit that in the long run will further erode the credibility of Nigerian democracy and contribute to its ultimate ruin.
Impeachment has been a bad word in Nigerian politics since the Second Republic because it has never been done in this country for the right reasons. The worst example was the impeachment of old Kaduna State’s PRP Governor Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa by an NPN dominated state assembly in 1981. Apart from Balarabe, no other governor was impeached in the Second Republic but many deputies were impeached or otherwise forced to resign, all of them for political reasons. They included Kano State’s Ibrahim Bibi Faruk, Oyo’s Chief Sunday Afolabi and Ondo’s Akin Omoboriowo.
In this Republic, governors impeached since 1999 include Chief D.S.P. Alameiyeiseigha of Bayelsa, Ayo Fayose of Ekiti, Joshua Dariye of Plateau and Rashidi Ladoja of Oyo; the latter two were restored by the courts. Even though all four men probably did some criminal things, most Nigerians believed that their removal from office was entirely due to their falling out with then President Olusegun Obasanjo. In all four cases EFCC played a heavy handed role in their ouster.
In addition to these men, deputy governors were removed or forced to resign in Kebbi, Lagos, Sokoto and Cross River under similar circumstances. Also, three Senate Presidents, many state assembly speakers as well as numerous local government chairmen have been impeached in this Republic. In almost all cases the real reasons were political, though allegations of misdeed levelled against some of them were probably true.
In the unfolding case of Adamawa, matters have gone quite far with the appointment last Friday of a 7-member panel by acting Chief Judge Justice Ambrose Mammadi. The panel is to investigate the allegations levelled against Nyako and his deputy, Bala James Ngilari. This is the first time in Nigeria’s political history that a governor and deputy are to be impeached at the same time. For that matter, the two men belong to different political parties because Ngilari did not follow Nyako when he defected to APC from PDP. The real reason for this double impeachment could be religious. Given the sensitivity of religion in Adamawa politics, Muslim members of the assembly may not back a move that would hand over the state to a Christian governor, hence the need to remove both of them.
On the face of it the allegations against the two men are weighty. Nyako is charged with 20 offences. They include a charge that he fraudulently diverted N10 billon in workers’ salaries for September and October 2011, diverted N120 million in workers’ emolument for May 2014, paid N1.7 billion to his Special Assistants and issued a fictitious N8 billion contract. He is also accused of diverting N120 million “to sponsor fictitious visit of General Muhammadu Buhari to Adamawa State,” appointing his family members to dominate the MDGs Office, SPPU and Ministry of Health; extra-budgetary procurement of fertilizer, diverting N400 million out of N500 million Federal Government Intervention Fund for flood victims and appointing his wife Dr Halima H. Nyako as chairman of Adamawa State Action Committee on Aids (SACA) contrary to the agency’s law. The impeachment notice was signed by 19 of the 25 state lawmakers. Ngilari on his part is accused of extra-budgetary expenditure of N390 million as overhead cost from January to December 2013, among others.  
Nyako has already tried some tactics to ward off impeachment. He travelled out of the state to avoid personal service of the charges but was served by substituted means. His aides now claim that Acting Chief Judge Ambrose Mammadi’s 3-month tenure expired yesterday so he cannot swear in the impeachment panel today as planned. Since the governor appoints acting Chief Judges, he is likely to stall on appointing a new one. Now, one big loophole in the impeachment procedure is that the charges must be dropped if the panel finds the men not guilty. Hence, there was a desperate effort by both sides to handpick the panel members.  
Nyako also tried to stall the process in court but Nigerian courts usually refuse to interfere in impeachment cases, preferring to review them after the deed is done. Court cases would have been unnecessary if Nyako had enough support among the legislators to thwart impeachment. As things stand, his party APC does not have a single member in the Assembly. Not one of the 20 PDP members followed him when he defected. The 5 lawmakers that he met in APC also defected to PDP, which says something about Nyako’s political abilities.
Of the two obvious beneficiaries of this dangerous gambit, Nyako exonerated one while the APC North East vice chairman implicated the second. Nyako said the presidency is not behind the impeachment move as widely suspected. Instead he blamed influential citizens of the state based in Abuja, clearly meaning Bamanga Tukur and possibly Jibril Aminu and General Buba Marwa. APC vice chairman Engineer David Lawal however said it was Speaker Umar Fintiri’s “greed, malice, envy, revenge and inordinate ambition” that was driving the process. If both Nyako and Ngilari are removed, Fintiri will become the acting governor for three months and could well perpetuate himself in the by-election.
 Whoever they are, the powers that are propelling this impeachment move should tarry awhile and consider an issue of a philosophical nature. During the Clinton impeachment saga of the 1990s, I heard a Harvard law professor speaking on CNN on the meaning of impeachment. Translated in Adamawa terms, it means 20 people are about to revoke the result of an election in which all the state’s voters took part. This, according to him, is an act that should be done only in the gravest of circumstances. An officer elected to a certain term in office should be allowed to serve out that term unless his continued stay in office imperils the Republic [or in this case the state] such that we cannot wait for voters to pass their judgement in the next election. That is what impeachment means.
If people elected to offices for fixed terms could be removed by small teams of legislators merely to confer political advantage to some parties and groups, then it makes nonsense of having elections in this country. Impeachment should be done, as the Harvard professor said, only in the gravest circumstances. Admiral Murtala Nyako is a cantankerous man, as I personally noticed when I met with him for five hours some years ago. That, however, is not in itself an impeachable offence.