Nyako’s impeachment and Nigeria’s return to wilderness

One must start by saying that democracy as a system of government is not new to Nigeria, save that in the last 50 years, those who have managed the country have not learned any meaningful lesson; those who are currently in charge have stubbornly refused to learn any lesson; and the people who should challenge […]

One must start by saying that democracy as a system of government is not new to Nigeria, save that in the last 50 years, those who have managed the country have not learned any meaningful lesson; those who are currently in charge have stubbornly refused to learn any lesson; and the people who should challenge this microscopic few, and either force them to learn those hard lessons or be thrown out of power, have been maniacally robbed of their capacity to do so.
From the time the British colonialists surreptitiously abandoned the government and the people of Nigeria in the hands of their cronies in the then fading colonial enterprise, the Nigerian Project has continued along a familiar line of history. Thus, while the helpless and apparently orphaned nation did continue to change hands, with each change having about the same set of characters reshuffling themselves under different guise, each of these sets of ruthless beneficiaries of the British-imposed confusion made sure they left the country worse than they met it, and each made sure that the same familiar history their unkind parents told them of how the country was run aground, was successfully retold by them.
For anyone, who is right-thinking, the impeachment of Adamawa State governor Murtala Nyako this week did not come as a surprise. Verily too, whatever plot may be in the works against Governor Umaru Tanko Al Makura of Nasarawa State is not going to end up as something new. Such events only represent a familiar chain of transaction when ruthless politicians seize the soul of a nation. It doesn’t matter what Nyako did or did not do, that counts for nothing when federal power decides that grabbing power in your state is a matter of do-or-die.  Those who sponsored Nyako’s removal are not unknown – just the same way those who sponsored the removal of Adegbenro in 1962 were not unknown. They are in the seat of power in Abuja. After all, if Nyako had remained in PDP, giving strength to the PDP number, no matter what his offence may be, it would simply have been treated as a family affair.
But that is Nigeria’s familiar story; a story of history ignored, history repeated; a story of the worst governing the best. It is funny how Nyako was quickly impeached, yet worse acts of gross misconduct that have serially been carried out  in PDP-held states remain largely ignored. The same way, it is only in Nigeria that Governor Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State will still be in power and Nyako will be out.
Again, it seems so funny, how it is so easy to impeach a governor and quickly discard him as a tissue paper, and yet so difficult it is to impeach a president, no matter how much he may be ignorantly leading the country. If the same grounds that were used to impeach Nyako were to be taken as valid, should those who sponsored Nyako’s impeachment not have been removed a long time ago?
It is settled in law, that the greatest impeachable offence any president can commit is to grossly violate the constitution he so swore to uphold and protect. Yet, this has been a celebrated and recurring decimal under the current administration, with not as much as a whimper. Not only has the current administration violated the constitution so manifestly, it has nonchalantly corrupted itself with arrogated power that it does not have, consistently making the country a laughing stock in the international community. Yet, these acts remain permanently under the carpet, in a high-powered desperate political conspiracy to actualise 2015 at all cost. This is what happens when desperate politicians have learnt no lessons and do not have the capacity to learn any. They care less about the number of evil plots they can commission to remain in power, as long as they can take flight once the ship capsizes.
It is against this backdrop that it is no wonder that the Nigerian president never remembered that the Chibok girls really had families until Malala Yousafzai came to remind him. Thus, in a country of more than 160 million people, the president had to wait till when a 17-year-old girl from Afghanistan came to remind him of meeting with the families of more than 200 abducted girls in his country. What else can be more embarrassing than that?
When Sgt Bowe Bergdhal was kidnapped in Afghanistan, I wonder whether President Barack Obama had to get the advice of a 17-year-old before meeting his family. Again, at the height of Gilad Shalit abduction by Hamas guerrillas, did any 17-year-old have to chastise President Benjamin Netanyahu before he met Gilad Shalit’s family? Of course, it is given for sure that the day that happens, either of the above presidents would not last a day in office before they are impeached for lacking common sense. Well, maybe now that the Chibok girls’ families have refused to be a part of any half-hearted meeting based on the compassion of a 17-year-old foreigner, the next strange happening that can happen is for the Presidency to say that Malala Yousafzai works for the Opposition and is using those families to work against Jonathan’s re-election.

Adegbite, Esq., is a lecturer in the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife ([email protected])