Buhari Has An Anachronistic Approach to Law and Order- Idowu Akinlotan of NATION

Incredibly revelatory media chat

Posted By: Idowu Akinlotan on: January 03, 2016

If eloquence or elocution was all that is needed to prove one’s bona fides or demonstrate competence, President Muhammadu Buhari would prove a woeful failure. In his maiden media chat last week, he struggled to communicate, and worse, even struggled to form his thoughts. He did not have problem with his tenses, nor if he did should that worry us. At least the country understood their president, and from his responses, the president in turn claimed and indeed appeared to understand his countrymen, especially how sometimes difficult they can be. It was his first media chat, and doubtless his coaches must have worked on him, schooling him on difficult and anticipated questions, and gently admonishing the ramrod straight retired army general to rein in his emotions, soften his taciturnity, and crack some jokes. His coaches will now need to do more, and if need be, ensure he can tell the difference between excise and exercise, for one has to do with customs and the other military drill.
Overall, notwithstanding his problematic elocution, President Buhari came across as honest, down to earth, dependable, and someone Nigerians can trust with their money — absolutely. But to trust him with their lives, Nigerians will have to school him on the constitution afresh and extract promises of his fidelity to the laws of the land. For now, he sees both the constitution and the law as hindrances and handles them with the expedience of his military antecedents. Former presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan spoke clearer and more fluently, and had better, wider and more complex grasp of issues; howbeit the former was imperious with his guttural voice and elocution, and the latter, with his clipped speech and tremulous voice, suffered from persecution complex.
This is President Buhari’s first chat. Despite his age, education and inflexible approach to issues, he is expected to improve considerably and in many ways. But in some other critical ways, Nigerians must not expect any improvement, because there won’t and can’t be any. The president rightly drew a parallel between his first coming as a military head of state, when he railroaded suspected thieves to jail and put the burden of proof on them, and his latest coming as an elected president, when the burden of proof lies with his government. Yet, he sounded plaintive, and could barely hide his irritation with the procedural handicaps the rule of law imposed on him. Worse, when asked why he seemed impervious to the bail granted some of his quarries, perhaps particularly former National Security Adviser (NSA) Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.), the president bristled at the question, one of the two times he nearly lost his composure during the chat, and drew attention to the severity of the allegations and evidence against the retired colonel. At that point, and for him, the issue was no longer the law. It surprisingly bothered him little that he could be accused, very reasonably it seems, of pursuing vendetta against the former NSA.
It is hard to say why President Buhari’s approach to the rule of law has changed very little since his military days. He won the presidential election without apologising for the execution of three drug suspects in 1985, one of whom was clearly a victim of judicial murder. But he accepted responsibility and claimed that if elected, he would subject himself to the laws of the land; for as he put it, he had sworn to uphold the constitution. Yet, he is not discomfited by his peremptory conclusion that suspects would jump bail if granted. How did he come to that conclusion? Why could he not prove that conclusion before the courts that thrice granted the former NSA bail? And if the courts turned down his request, why would he think the courts were unctuous and ingratiating with criminals or complicit in perverting justice to society?
The problem, it is obvious, is not just the former NSA and whatever issues he had with the president dating back to the 1985 coup d’etat. The problem is that from President Buhari’s responses, he seems in fact fundamentally disposed to autocratic, messianic and sanctimonious leadership. He seizes upon the egregious felonies of the suspects undergoing trial or interrogation to whip up emotions among the outraged public. Whether as it concerns Col. Dasuki (retd.) or the killing of obstreperous Shiites in Zaria, or yet the matter of Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) leader, Nnamdi Kanu, the president has an anachronistic approach to law and order. He gave no room to the delicate and magnificent nuances of law and order and the rule of law. It was enough for him that the offences the three people and groups were charged with were shocking and scandalous. It made no sense to him that much more than the danger to the republic constituted by the offences, he stood the even more coruscating risk of coming across as someone who viewed the law from the point of expediency. All that mattered to him, he implied, was the frightening scale of the offences, not the letter nor the spirit of the law.
THE NATION