Riding on the crest of a wave of popular approbation on the declaration of emergency, President Goodluck Jonathan is all the more convinced that he took the right step in his effort to pacify the restive Northeast region. The details of the proclamation, which were not immediately available but came many anxious days later, show conclusively how far-reaching the provisions are, and how fateful they could become in the coming months and years for the sustenance of democracy. Notwithstanding which part of the divide we find ourselves – for or against emergency – or how uncritically we embraced the panacea even before we knew the details of the proclamation, it is time for us to move on to even more germane but troubling matters, especially considering that emergency has become a fait accompli.
I suspect that the president took a few more days than he planned to transmit the proclamation to the National Assembly because he was astounded by the overwhelming support Nigerians gave him. He probably felt he would not injure his goals, whatever they were, if he tweaked the provisions of the proclamation to tighten his hold on the Northeast. Any sound democrat – and there are few of them in Nigeria – or sound thinker should be alarmed by the provisions of the proclamation. Sadly, neither the public which whooped for emergency nor the National Assembly saddled with the greater responsibility of safeguarding democracy, has shown any disquiet or even discomfort with the details. The mostly conservative Senate has raised barely a whimper against emergency, and the often populist House of Representatives has only offered feeble protests.
So, for now, we are stuck with emergency in the Northeast, even as fears grow in sane quarters that given Dr Jonathan’s constant immoderation and propensity for brinkmanship, he could yet widen the areas under emergency proclamation. Before the details of the proclamation were made public, this column had concluded that the governors of the affected states would become ceremonial rulers and the military commanders the de facto rulers. This observation flies in the face of the president’s pronouncement that he had not tampered with the democratic structures in the three states, and that the governor, Houses of Assembly and the local government areas were intact. It was inconceivable that the said democratic structures could function in the teeth of emergency, I warned. Surprisingly, lawyers, academicians and newspapers argued that by leaving the democratic structures in place, the president was jeopardising the success of emergency and prolonging the misery of the Northeast.
Such undisciplined reasoning was not totally unexpected, considering that there had been a progressive attenuation of disciplined thinking and research in Nigeria for many years. I had nothing to base my suspicion on, of course, other than my intuitive distrust of Dr Jonathan’s bona fides, whether in relation to his depressing political pragmatism, his lack of ideological persuasion, or even his annoying abjuration of the role and place of philosophy in the government of any society, ancient or modern. When he finally publicised the details, it was clear that Dr Jonathan, like his superficial mentor, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, had unlimited contempt for the principles and practice of democracy. He entertains the quaint belief that it is sometimes necessary to destroy a thing in order to save it. The unsuspecting National Assembly, the bewildered public, and the querulous press apparently agree.
In the proclamation, Dr Jonathan has completely and undisguisedly subordinated the governor, local government chairmen and, by implication, the Houses of Assembly in the affected areas to the military commanders in the three states. The military commanders, as emergency rule in Ekiti showed in 2006, are in turn subordinated to the president. In short, Dr Jonathan has the distinguished Lugardian honour of imposing indirect rule in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. The National Assembly’s harmonised version of the proclamation tried to circumscribe the subordination of governors and LG chairmen to the president’s whims by limiting the orders he could issue to matters relating to “maintaining and securing peace, public order and public safety in the emergency areas.” The reality is, however, far different, and this needn’t be argued.
But if this was the only evidence of power grab in the Northeast, it could be pardoned. In another far-reaching provision in the proclamation, the president is empowered to utilise the funds of the affected states for the purpose of executing the state of emergency. The president’s original proposal to spend state funds is truly frightening. But the National Assembly’s harmonised version futilely attempts to limit the usage of the funds to “provide for the protection, documentation, return, re-integration, resettlement, rehabilitation, compensation and remuneration of persons affected by this order.” It is hard to know exactly what was on the minds of the framers of this provision, for the responsibilities listed in that clause are actually much better performed by the states and LGs than the federal government, let alone a military commander. In fact, it is clear that the president originally intended this provision to underwrite the cost of the emergency itself.
This column had warned last week that, “The governors will be ceremonial leaders throughout the emergency, even as the affected states may be coaxed into parting with a part of their monthly allocations to the war effort.” That warning was neither prescient nor comprehensive enough. There is nothing in Dr Jonathan’s proclamation or the legislature’s harmonised version to indicate the degree of tampering allowed the president. The governors are already browbeaten, and the public mood against them unsparing. They will, therefore, tamely submit to all forms of violation and indignity.
The president already has enormous powers to do anything he wishes with the country, and is more powerful than any democratically elected president anywhere. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the Fourth Republic, no president has been circumspect or innovative in the use of those powers. Emergency in the Northeast now indirectly deposits more powers in the hands of the president than he used to have. He will henceforth begin to see all sorts of possibilities in accreting in influence and control in hostile states. He now understands how to grab power and how to fund that grab, irrespective of what positive ends he puts the grab to. Technically, he now knows what to do to extend emergency rule, and he will not be incommoded by shortage of funds, nor, quite embarrassing to every Nigerian, will he be in short supply of support.
The Joint Task Force has proudly announced its troops have completely overrun Boko Haram camps in the emergency states. No less was expected. It would be stupid of the militants to stay and fight. The only time they did so in 2009, they were worsted, and their leader, Mohammed Yusuf, extra-judicially murdered. Since then they have adopted guerrilla tactics and war of attrition that enervate even the most sophisticated army. When emergency was proclaimed it was expected that the Boko Haram militants would flee their camps, regroup at a future date, re-strategise, and re-launch their terror war in more lethal fashion. It is that uncertain and sanguinary aftermath that the JTF and the Jonathan presidency should be worried about.
I restate my perspective once again that Dr Jonathan’s leadership style is inconsistent with the highest ideals and principles of great leadership. State of emergency is superfluous in the circumstances of the rebellion in the Northeast, as it was superfluous in Plateau and Ekiti States under Obasanjo and in the defunct Western Region under Tafawa Balewa. If Dr Jonathan had not taken a dim view of the matter by embracing melodrama, he would have discovered that deploying additional troops and pacifying the region did not need the agency of a state of emergency, not to talk of needlessly and surreptitiously weakening democratic structures in the affected areas and indeed everywhere, tampering with the fundamental principles of federalism by proposing to spend state and LG money, and unjustly and unfairly blaming and subordinating elected governments to military commanders.
Moreover, there is a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the crisis facing the country in the Northeast. The rebellion in that region may have socio-economic undertones and a veneer of politics, but it is also much more disturbingly a potpourri of sectarian and class revolts rooted in malformed medieval ideologies. Such revolts, which often come and go within a generation, do not respond to force as facilely as many hope. But to the consternation of the sober and the mirth of the hysteric, Dr Jonathan has reacted to the crisis simplistically and imprudently. On its own, the National Assembly, in particular the Senate, has failed to react to the president’s prognosis with the kind of legislative aplomb a modern and activist legislature should summon.
Giving free rein to the president’s subversion of democratic structures in the affected states is bound to have repercussions in the near and distant future. Obasanjo was not checked in 2006, though he never imposed emergency in more than one state at a time. Now, Jonathan has imposed emergency in three states at once, and seems set to foment trouble in a fourth, Rivers. And by harshly and abruptly discarding the little progress the country has made in consolidating democracy, and by stifling opposition efforts to propound alternatives, the president and his supporters have injured the body politic much more obnoxiously than Boko Haram is ever capable of doing.