One of the most infuriating things about politics is the
effort expended by politicians, pundits and partisans to hide very simple
premises under layers and layers of self-serving bull crap. The government
immunity nonsense is no different, and while I’d urge you to annul and call
your Senators to review this clause, I’d also like to take a moment to point
out that this entire battle is over something that is so patently ridiculous
that it’s a national damn embarrassment is even calamitous. On 23rd January,
2008, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua announced in Davos, Switzerland that he
fully supports the removal of the immunity from prosecution conferred on the
President, Vice President, State Governors and Deputy Governors by the 1999
Constitution.
There is established law for how, when necessary, to conduct
whistle blowing on Nigerians misappropriation. There are provisions for
conducting critical, emergency surveillance without a prior arrest warrant.
None of this is complicated; the only complication is when the Yar’Adua
administration decided, long before the EFCC, that they did not want to make
even a token effort at either following those laws or seeking modifications to
those law. Instead, they went to the Anti-graft to seek cooperation for simply violating
the law outright, in order to accomplish the broad domestic surveillance
programs that they had been longing for before they ever gained office. And
except for one reason all the other governors went along with the illegal
activity.
That’s fine. Whatever. Hardly surprising, at this point,
that the Yar’Adua administration would seek to act illegally, and would request
the cooperation of an industry in order to do it. But what is surprising
is this audacious notion that, once the illegal acts were exposed, all involved
parties should simply receive blanket immunity for doing it.While the Nigerian
federal government has taken some steps toward greater transparency in its
accounting and spending its budget, the report said, it has had far more
limited success in encouraging similar practices by state and local governments
which are largely responsible for the administration of primary health care and
education.
In the past, local governments lacked
sufficient resources to fund even these basic programmes, sharp increases in
the price of oil — combined with a general increase in state and local funding
since the return to civilian rule in 1999 — have swollen the coffers of
Nigeria’s local governments. Those states from which the oil is pumped have
benefited the most. Under the law, state governments receive 13 percent of the
revenue generated from the oil pumped from their territory by the federal
government. At 1.3 billion dollars, Rivers state government, in 2006, had
the welfare of its five million people. By comparison, the entire budget of
and one of
was only slightly larger at 1.7 billion dollars.
Budgeting is no longer viewed as an exclusive exercise that is carried out by
ministries of finance, but rather a process that entails aligning national
development plans and goals and human rights commitments with budget policies
in a transparent and coherent manner. When that information is unavailable, or
difficult to obtain, the resulting graft can lead to an abdication of
governments’ responsibility to comply with social and economic rights to the
best of their ability, according to the report. Under Nigerian law, the federal
government is responsible for the development of general health policies, and
for monitoring and evaluating health facilities. The responsibilities of
building facilities, providing medicines, and paying salaries, however, are all
left to the local governments.
And while the federal government has intervened and sometimes stripped local
governments of the responsibility of paying primary school teachers, local
governments in Rivers state continue to fall short in providing classrooms, textbooks,
and desks, according to the report.
Instead, the report claims, local governments in the states have been investing
in “frivolous” construction projects that are often abandoned before
they are finished. Mind you, they don’t have to cooperate with
the investigations. They don’t have to outline the extent of what was done.
They can continue to even flatly refuse to say what it is they did that
was illegal — and at the same time, demand blanket immunity for doing it.
Whatever it was. They can continue to block the lawsuits under
“secrecy” and “executive privilege” claims that under the
Yar’Adua administration have expanded from the Oval Office into every
administrative body, corporate group and cowpile that anyone who once shook
ex-president Obasanjo’s hand at a fundraiser now is supposedly protected by.
They can continue, in fact, to break whatever laws it is that they broke. But
they at the same time want the House and Senate to pass a bill providing
blanket immunity for those still-abstract and unspecified acts to an entire
government functionaries — and the Congress is prepared to go along with
it because…well, why exactly?
What level of lobbying does it take in order to convince our
lawmakers that breaking the law should be penalized? If you put enough
corporate clout behind it when you do it? That the Senate should intervene
preemptively in lawsuits against them, for anything they have done, and
that they do not even have to tell Senate what that “anything” even
is?
Despite its new wealth, however, the money allocated to
Rivers state does not appear to be getting to most of its citizens. You would
have expected that [the increase in revenue] would have translated into a
qualitative improvement in health and human welfare, and it just hasn’t worked
out that way. There is tremendous leakage, to use a very charitable word, with
state and local governments — a lack of accountability. To ascertain how the
state’s money was spent portrayed a task proved extremely difficult. While
local governments are required to produce detailed reports for its receipts and
expenditures, the looters caused these documents to appear as something
generally treated as tightly guarded secrets. The report on the need for
reliable budgetary information reflects a growing trend in monitoring human
rights performance by governments, particularly their compliance with economic
and social rights, such as health, housing and education.
There’s only one constituency in this country that wants this absurdly broad
and transparently asinine immunity legislation: the people who broke the law.
And lo and behold, I imagine every person and citizens in
love to have an after-the-fact declaration of immunity for whatever they’ve
done that was illegal. Former military Administrators…ex-governor and past
council mayors…… the list could be endless. But in nearly all cases, we’re
not stupid enough to give it to them: we recognize laws exist for a reason, and
recognize the even more audacious notion that laws should actually still exist
even for the powerful among us.
Why can’t figure this out implies nothing but pandering and
corruption. Why other members of our party are not standing more forcefully
with some accused to denounce this obvious abuse is similarly insulting.
It is offensive in the extreme that we are having to battle
our own government and members of our own party , who inexplicably has tried to
shove this immunity-laden bill down the Senate’s throat for some time now —
over this very simple premise. You don’t pass legislation that says illegal
acts are legal if you’re “important” enough, or “connected”
enough, or have enough lobbyists.
The purpose of some “frivolous” construction
projects is to siphon money to contractors, and, when the money stops, so does
the project. While the state government is required to monitor the local
government’s performance to prevent such abuses, evidence exposed that it not only fails to do
so, but commits similar abuses, as well. One of the biggest questions in the
coming months is whether people will have the opportunity to put someone in
there who has an interest in trying to meet their responsibilities. Some of
those perpetrating violence on behalf of the candidates were allegedly funded
with money embezzled from state and local coffers.
I understand why the ruling party continues to push these
premises — as the party dedicated towards doing whatever the most powerful
figures want, good or bad, it’s predictable behavior. But the opposition party
should at least pretend at a higher sense of integrity. It’s shameful
and embarrassing, from Ahmadu Bello to all the others, and all involved parties
should pick themselves up and figure out where their basic sense of national
ethics has gone. If you’re not willing to stand up for the most central
principles of constitutional government — the rule of law applies equally to
all parties — at least have the common decency not to actively thwart
it on the behalf of those that may agitate for that.
