With the internationally shaming, domestically economic debilitating and mass poverty inducing shenanigans going on between the three arms of government in Nigeria since nearly four years now, especially, the balaclava masking, macabre drama going on between the executive and the legislature, with the executive, exhibiting overt tendencies and feeling of entitlement, that the legislature MUST be under its control, it has become critically essential that we revisit the textbooks, to ascertain if the French Judge and political political-philosopher, Baron Montesquieu was blind-sighted or erroneous when he formulated the ‘trias politica’ theorem, which Nigeria practices under its presidential political system. It must be expressly pointed out that Montesquieu never advocated for absolute or ‘Berlin’ wall separation of powers. This is borne out of the fact that there is need for the three arms, while maintaining respective independence, still work seamlessly for the over-all benefit and advancement of the country. The three arms ideally should be ‘checking and balancing’ themselves out via a healthy push and pull scenario.
No system of government exemplifies the harmonic fusion of the three arms of government better than the parliamentary which the ‘creators’ of Nigeria, Britain bequeathed us, and have ever been practising. In effect therefore, parliamentary government through its fusing and inter-twinning of the three arms of government, have best exemplified the essentiality of having them work together, while being ‘separated’. The robust parliamentary debates, shadow opposition cabinet, Prime Ministerial Question, and ‘in-your –face’ opposition checks have effectively ensured that Montesquieu separation theory is robust enough. It is in Presidential system however, that most Executive arms invariably enjoy a studied distance from the Legislative arm, and this could even in the most advanced of democracies, cause the Executive to exhibit dictatorial and superior tendencies; a study of the perennial frictions between the present occupants of American White House, which is the Executive Arm, and the American Legislative Arm, as compared to the relatively more smoother operations between these crucial arms of government under immediate past Obama’s administration; the secret is that President Obama and Vice president Biden were both directly coming from the Legislative Arm. The espirit-de-corps and camaraderie that existed between the two arms of government could only be compared with that of the John F. Kennedy era, and guess what; JFK and his Vice, LBJ were both equally coming from the legislature too!
Both Ghana’s current President, Nana Akufo Addo, whom the world attest is doing great, and his predecessor, John Mahama, were also severally members of the Legislative arm, and hence the ability to run smooth governments which enabled sustainable growth. Even President Uhuru Kenyatta’s recent ability to unite all hitherto extremely bitter and irreconcilable presidential rivals is equally traceable to the fact that they were all buddies at the Legislative arm. Right now, Uhuru, who was once in and out of the infamous International Criminal Court as a potential convict for mass murder, is unarguably Africa’s leader before the western world and this is DUE to sustained peace in his domestic political arena. How Nigeria could do with any of the above described developments enabling peace between its arms of government.
The Nigerian perspective: For any nation to aspire to greatness, it must figure out the things it is doing wrong, which need be corrected, and must start the corrections with the most seamless of such errors. When we study the secret behind the success in practice of the federal system of government across the world, we will all readily admit that our unique but flawed centralised ‘pool-and-disburse’ resource allocation system is at the heart of all our developmental albatross. Despite knowing the cause of our development impasse, yet, we can do nothing within democratic confinements to change the status quo, given that the fault-line is enshrined in our 1999 constitution. The Niger Delta militants, the south west Odua People’s Congress and the eastern Nnamdi Kanu led IPOB, and lately, the Middle Belt forum have all learnt to their frustration and chagrin that adrenalin- fuelled youthful agitation rarely scratches a constitutionally etched problem.
It is therefore time for us to learn from global governance history and best practices to APPLY subtle but highly impactful change. That is where our advocacy for the legislative arm to produce the next Nigeria President becomes cogent. If the coalition of parties can choose right, and give Nigerians the option of a battle-tested, fearless, peer-proven, virile, well respected, moderate, well educated, well-exposed leader and ascertained controller of ego-laden Nigerian federal legislatures, we can be certain that we will get restructured along development oriented lines. The caveat here is that since the major parties have allotted the 2019 Presidency to the north, we must then make certain that the Senator to be voted in as President, while satisfying the politically set criteria, yet, comes from an area that does not benefit from the present resource bazaar, thereby making him have the political will, personal conviction, resolve and constituency support to want to amend the constitution. Giving that democracy is a game of persuasions and coercions; hence there are terms like; majority and minority leaders, whips, caucuses, lobbyists and other terms that suggest skilful horse-trading, as the futility of the Obasanjo’s ‘ghana-must-go’ money era and its serial executive manipulated removal of senate Presidents, as well as the present executive-engineered legislative principal officers’ persecutions have proven to Nigerians, democracy, no matter how rickety has a spirit and guiding principle, and that is; negotiations, persuasion, trust, dialogue and mutual respect; IN EFFECT, CONSTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT. That is what the examples of smoother development engendering eras of John F Kennedy and Barak Obama teaches us, in comparison with Mr. Trump’s combustive friction-full era. It must be remembered that the economic advancement the USA enjoys today is coming off Obama’s creditable handling of the recessed economy he inherited from G. W. Bush, while Trump in turn inherited a sound economy from Obama.
Conversely speaking, as Nigerian economy is on the throes of death with the worst ever accumulated debts standing at N21.7 trillion, which is 40% higher than ever accumulated under any government, occasioning rising inflation, deteriorated electric power, deterioration of most essential services and educational sector rapid decay, as well as no growth in any economic sphere, it behoves on delegates to the PDP coalition presidential primaries to understand the solemn duty they owe Nigeria. We should remember and always bear in mind that the Office of the President requires a sharp and cerebral mind who has an institutional memory of the workings of Government at the highest level and its internal dynamics and chemistry, understands the transformation mindset of the people and the capacity to network with international development institutions, the working of the legislature, and the promotion of multi-sectoral and stakeholder partnerships to actualize the vision of the founding fathers of Nigeria.
Anyone short of a top senator as is the case in development oriented climes will be an unmitigated disaster, and Nigeria can ill afford another wasted four year tenure of in-fighting between the arms of government;- we need a proven senator as President for 2019, and it will even be smoother, more productive and more positively impactful if we can go one step further as America often do when in need of digging itself out of economic trouble, by electing both our next President and Vice President from the Legislature, we pray the delegates to the PDP coalition primaries understand what the nation needs.
Written by Dr. Yusuf Ahmed.
igitng@yahoo.com
