SERAP + Zamfara = one step forward

Two interesting developments compelled me to return to the Zamfara State law that abrogated the state pensions law. In my column last week, I expressed fear that the bill would most likely be shot down by the state governor, Bello Matawalle, because signing it into law would amount to shooting himself in the foot. Few, […]

Two interesting developments compelled me to return to the Zamfara State law that abrogated the state pensions law. In my column last week, I expressed fear that the bill would most likely be shot down by the state governor, Bello Matawalle, because signing it into law would amount to shooting himself in the foot. Few, if any men, like to do that. The governor would be a beneficiary of the 2007 pensions act at the end of his tenure, four or eight years hence.

It turned out that I feared fear itself. The governor has promptly signed the bill into law. He too, like the state legislators, was persuaded that the law was “detrimental to the socio-economic wellbeing of our people.” Awesome.

Secondly, a federal high court in Lagos last week delivered what give the Zamfara State act its national backbone. The judgment described as a landmark ruling, ordered the federal government to “recover pensions collected by former governors now serving as ministers and members of the national assembly. (It also) directed the attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, to challenge the legality of states’ pension laws permitting former governors and other ex-public officials to collect such pensions.” The recovery order affects N40 billion. Not a trifling amount of money in a country that goes a-borrowing.

It was indeed a landmark ruling with deep and wide implications for how we are ruled and how our public finances are managed in favour of the few haves at the expense of the vast majority of the have-nots. The ruling followed a writ of mandamus filed against the attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice by a human rights, non-governmental organisation, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP. SERAP has been in and out of the courts for quite sometime now courageously challenging government actions and decisions it deemed detrimental to the interests of the people and the good health of the polity. The states’ pension laws presented it with a special case in its struggle for a country that should care more for the have-nots as a matter moral and governmental obligation and moderate the me-first tradition.

In 2017, SERAP wrote to the attorney-general of the federation asking him to challenge several obnoxious states’ pension laws that awarded jumbo payments as pensions and other benefits such as houses and cars, free medicals, etc., to former state governors, their deputies, former speakers and their deputies and other sundry former public officers. Some of those former governors are ministers and senators, drawing salaries and other perks attached to their offices in addition to their generous state pensions. Few things could be more thoroughly immoral.

The attorney-general either ignored SERAP or thought that his silence would silence these redoubtable human rights fighters. He was wrong. SERAP took the matter before Justice Oluremi Oguntoyinbo of the federal high court, Lagos. The judge was persuaded that SERAP stands on solid legal and moral grounds and was right to ask the attorney-general to do well by the people, not by the lords of the flies. She dismissed the minister’s argument that he could not challenge the states’ pension laws. He is legally and morally bound to do so, she implied in her ruling.

She said: “In my humble view, the attorney-general should be interested in the legality or validity of any law in Nigeria and how such laws affect or will affect Nigerians, being the chief law officer of the federation.”

It is difficult to quarrel with that. Malami is the primary custodian of the nation’s laws. Whether laws are made by the national assembly or the state legislators, they are supposed to be for the good governance of the whole country. Malami’s argument seems to be that this being a federation, the right of the states to make laws for themselves is a given and could not be supervised or challenged by the attorney-general of the federation without doing some damage to the autonomy of the federating units of the federation. But even in settled federation, such as the United States, the federal government frequently challenges state laws that clearly violate the letter and the spirit of the constitution. No state can claim to be an island unto itself and therefore free to do as it wishes with public funds in a manner that is unjust and immoral.

Lagos State was the first to institute the pension act for its former public officers. Today, the same law, with varying provisions, has been adopted by nearly all the states. The pension laws are uniform in their obnoxiousness. They are uniform in putting the interests of former governors and their deputies, as pensioners, over and above of those of retired civil servants turned pensioners. Justice Oguntoyinbo, in her judgment, has given the human rights community the courage to dare. The ramparts of privilege, like the Berlin Wall, would surely fall.

The deputy director of SERAP, Kolawole Oluwadare, said of the ruling: “This ground-breaking judgment is a victory for Nigerian workers and pensioners who have not been paid by state governors for several months and struggle to make ends meet whilst former governors now serving as ministers and senators continue to collective double emoluments and enjoy opulent lifestyles.”

It would be too soon to drink to that. It is not yet over. There is a long, long struggle ahead. The battle might have just begun. Malami may choose to ignore the court ruling. Obeying court rulings does not come easily to this administration. At his confirmation hearing, Malami said he reserves the right to choose which court orders to obey and which to ignore. Do not be surprised if this is one of them.

However it plays out, the people are listening and they are watching. Zamfara has become the reference point about what is possible in a nation of impossibilities. It has shown that it is possible to people the first by scrapping laws that permit the egregious rape of state treasuries. Zamfara and SERAP may have chiseled at the granite but the chippings leave their marks on the granite for sure. That is dramatic enough. I know the remaining 35 states will carry on as usual while the chief law officer of the federation resignedly shrugs off anti-people laws. Talk of a big shame.