Murtala Nyako needn’t go to court

I give much of the credit of my knowledge of the events to technology. However, my familiarity with our convoluted type of democracy had made it easy for me to forecast, with a large measure of accuracy, the outcome of the drama.  Nyako could not have made it because his legislators’ appetite for materialism had […]

I give much of the credit of my knowledge of the events to technology. However, my familiarity with our convoluted type of democracy had made it easy for me to forecast, with a large measure of accuracy, the outcome of the drama.  Nyako could not have made it because his legislators’ appetite for materialism had grown beyond the ousted governor’s capacity. In other words, the issue was not whether or not Nyako committed any of the offences he was accused of. He may even have done worse than was alleged and could also have been entirely innocent of all or some of the charges. None of these is relevant in any impeachment exercise in Nigeria. As far as the subject is concerned, what normally matters is what best serves the material interest of those who for the time being are our law makers especially at state level.
Thus those who claim that Nyako deserved his fate because he was allegedly highhanded got it wrong because the state legislators themselves had said a few months back that the former governor was dynamic, people oriented and the best governor the state ever had. Indeed, a few days before he fell, Adamawa women and youths were in the Governor’s residence to register their solidarity and support for him. There, Hauwa Abba described as the state women leader formally disclosed how over 10,000 women and youths benefited from Nyako’s economic empowerment programmes in the state. It does not therefore appear rational to premise the Governor’s impeachment on poor governance. He was impeached essentially because the legislators were determined to use the end to justify the means bearing in mind that others did likewise in the past and got away with it.
For example, everyone including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission knew as of fact that the immediate past Deputy Governor of Imo State, was so dealt with simply because the State House of Assembly was well serviced to do a hatchet job. The purported impeachment of some former Governors such as Ladoja of Oyo State and Peter Obi of Anambra followed the same pattern. In other words, people get impeached in Nigeria not because of any offence but because of commercialized politics. Unfortunately, the politicisation of the impeachment process in our clime has always derogated substantially from the otherwise weighty import of the scheme. It is therefore unnecessary for those who become victims of impeachment plots to feel too bad. In the case of Murtala Nyako, there is doubt if he needs to fight his impeachment in court. This is because having benefitted earlier from the manipulation of judicial proceedings; Nyako should expect that it would adversely affect him one day.
Here let us recall our article in this column on October 21, 2012 titled “Using the Judiciary to win elections in Nigeria”.  The article reviewed the governorship election held in Adamawa State on February 04, 2012 in which the incumbent Governor Nyako was declared winner by the Independent National Election Commission (INEC). According to the story, the then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) challenged the said victory of the incumbent at the election tribunal but Nyako’s victory was upheld. Thereafter, the opposition filed an appeal against the ruling of the tribunal. But rather than deal with the case expeditiously in view of Section 285 of our the Constitution which provides that such an appeal must be heard and disposed off  within 60 days, the Court of Appeal did nothing. At the end of August 2012, when the case had become over-ripe for hearing by as long as 2 weeks, the ACN alerted the nation on the grave implications of the failure of the Court of Appeal to act. Again, nothing was done.
On September 18, 2012 when the deadline for handling the case was only 4days away, the opposition frantically petitioned the National Judicial Council (NJC) alleging the obvious that the Court of Appeal was at the verge of allowing itself to be used to fraudulently win the election. 72 hours to the deadline, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) reportedly intervened and directed the Appeal Court to do its job.  The panel which was hurriedly constituted arrived in Yola, the state capital, 48hours to the deadline. The next day, that is, 24hours to the deadline, the panel sat, wrote and hastily delivered a judgment in favour of Nyako making it constitutionally impossible for the aggrieved to take any further step.
The election petition of 2012 and the impeachment exercise of 2014 have much in common. To start with, that the Appeal Court had to be compelled to begin the process of playing the role for which it was set up suggested that there was an official hidden agenda to help the defendant to delay justice. The judges might have acted a script which is what Nyako’s supporters are now saying of the state acting Chief Judge who for no reason reversed his former decision that faulted the impeachment process.  Second, the appeal court had 60 days to handle the election petition but ‘recklessly’ did it in one day. In the impeachment case, the Assembly finished the matter in 2 days though it had 3months to work.
Again, if the legislators worked to the answer to remove Nyako, the latter too worked to his own preferred answer by evading service and declaring some inexplicable public holidays to frustrate the process of law. In which case, many things went wrong with the handling of both the election petition in 2012 and the impeachment process in 2014. Significantly, the judicial process was in 2012 manipulated to keep Nyako in Office; ironically, it was done again in 2014 to remove him. While it is true that two wrongs do not make a right, there is also nothing really wrong with retributive justice-a veritable aspect of natural justice which postulates that people will always reap what they sowed. Hence, Nyako should rest his case.