A lame-duck president
There is a familiar pattern with this president. He is not aware of anything embarrassing done by his appointees or subordinates, even if the buck is supposed to stops on his table. Perhaps, that is why he doesn’t say much and delegates virtually all his duties to aides and subordinates so that if anything goes wrong, he could deny responsibility. That is why the president has denied virtually all his campaign promises in 2015 because they were made by the party and not by him directly. Notice he has also handed over his re-election campaign to others. Should he be elected and he can’t fulfil all the promises that are being made in his name, he will again deny the promises.
But there’s also a genuine fear that he is not really in charge, being walled-off as it were, by a retinue of his appointed aides and told only what the aides wants him to hear. That is why, for instance, the former Inspector General of Police, could disobey his direct orders and he will not know for two months. Even after getting to find out, he could not take any action to discipline or sanction the erring officer. In like manner, the former DSS DG and his kinsman will directly sabotage his appointee, Ibrahim Magu, sending to the Senate damaging report about the proposed EFCC chairman twice and urging the upper chamber not to confirm him. Is it any wonder then that even the first lady has been shouting herself hoarse, complaining that the presidency has been hijacked by a cabal of two or three persons and control her husband thereby limiting his ability to perform to the expectations of Nigerians. But he appointed all the aides and they are answerable to him.
Following the shambolic and illegal arraignment of the Chief Justice of Nigeria at the Code of Conduct Tribunal and a motion that he recuse himself and stand down from office, the Vice President has come out to say the president was not aware of the arraignment of the Chief Judge and only got to know on Saturday.
True or false, this is very bad and dangerous for the country. It could be that the whole thing was done with the approval of the president and now that it has hit a brick wall, the presidency is engaging in “plausible deniability,” a practice popular in the US where the CIA carry out operations and the president of the US always deny knowledge of such actions. That is consistent with the character of the president or his administration and cannot be ruled out. It could also be that the president truly, wasn’t aware of the whole operation. We feel that is even more dangerous for the country.
That a group of unelected aides or appointees of the president could conspire to prosecute the Chief Justice of the federation – the third and coordinate arm of government – and seek to illegally remove him from office without the knowledge of the president is outright dangerous and Nigerians cannot afford to ignore that threat. Even the wife of the president has been shouting herself hoarse over this same issue, alleging that her husband’s government has been captured by a powerful cabal. Yet, critical stakeholders in the Nigerian project hide their heads in the sand and pretend as if all is well. As we have often maintained, “in a normal democracy, the legislature, who constitutionally performs oversight functions on the executive, will publicly name and quiz such individuals and protect the Presidency from being hijacked.” But in Nigeria’s case, even the parliament is not totally immune from the influence of this cabal.
The threat to the nation is clear: There is likelihood that a shadowy group is operating and running the government and the country independent of elected government personnel and are threatening to destroy the country and all its institutions in the process. It is a threat that cannot be allowed to continue for long else we will wake up one day to realise we are in a worse place than we set out from in 1999.