Pro-Jang govs are not democrats — Ngige, SAN
JUNE 2, 2013
Mr. Emeka Ngige
A Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Mr. Emeka Ngige, in this interview with ALLWELL OKPI speaks on the controversial election of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum and its implications for 2015 elections
Questions have been raised about the legality of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. Is the forum constitutional?
Yes of course, it is constitutional. The governors have a right to form an association. Freedom of assembly and freedom to belong to an association are fundamental human rights. Just the same way people can form political parties, clubs, unions and associations, the governors can form the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. That association is actually registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission under Part C of Companies and Allied Matters Act. So, the NGF is a legal organisation; a body corporate, which can sue and be sued.
Following recent crisis in the NGF, some people have suggested it should be scrapped, more so because it was not mentioned in the constitution. Can this argument hold?
The argument cannot hold. What happened in the election is unfortunate and it is reflection of the degeneration the Nigerian society has been undergoing, especially in the past 14 years. We have been degenerating from bad to worse. What happened during the election is not enough reason for the organisation to be scrapped. NGF is a pressure group; it has more advantages than disadvantages. One of the advantages is peer review, where they meet and compare notes on what is going on in their various states. Also, you remember how the governors’ forum rallied round President Goodluck Jonathan and got the legislators representing their various states in the National Assembly to support the vote for the motion for the adoption of the doctrine of necessity, which brought Jonathan in as Acting President. It was the NGF that stabilised the country that time. If they had not intervened, the country would have continued in discordant note when former President Umaru Yar’Adua was very ill. What has happened in NGF is unfortunate but we cannot throw away the baby with the bath water.
What does the outcome of the NGF election portend for the country, ahead of 2015 elections?
It is clearly a pointer to what is coming in 2015. It shows that if we are not careful, there would not be any election that year. If 35 people cannot peacefully conduct an election, without rancour and disagreement, it means that an election of 65 million people cannot hold. That is the implication of what has just happened.
How would the NGF crisis impact on the next general elections, considering that most of these governors would be in control of their states?
What has happened has an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage of what has happened is that we now know those of them that are democrats and those of them that are pretenders. Considering what we have seen in the video that was on the Internet and television, we now know that there is no hope for us, particularly in the states where some of these governors come from. Those supporting Jonah Jang are not democrats. The good news there is that if we are a serious country, the Independent National Electoral Commission led by Prof. Attahiru Jega, should tidy up its affairs and ensure that it does not allow these governors to influence the outcome of any election in their states. INEC needs to identify those states where these pro-Jang governors come from and make sure out votes count in those states.
The Jang faction is arguing that the chairman of the NGF, since inception, has been chosen by consensus. Was it not wrong for Rotimi Amaechi to change the tradition?
Everybody knows that democracy is better that consensus. Election is democracy, consensus is imposition. That has been the way they have been doing their primaries in the Peoples Democratic Party. They have always done primaries by consensus, which means if you want to contest against somebody that has been chosen, it means you are no longer a member of the party. We remember what happened during the election of the party’s national secretary, which was to be contested between Olagunsoye Oyinlola and Ebenezer Babatope. They forced Babatope to step down for Oyinlola. Babatope came out there and was almost weeping. He was furious and told them that he would step down because the party was forcing him to step down. He left the convention and went home. Is that democracy? People were forced to step down for Kema Chikwe, one woman that was asked the step down, came out crying, all because the party wanted to choose its leaders through consensus. Let everybody test their popularity. Bring the ballot box and let people vote secretly. That is the only way you can get people’s exact opinion about you. In the NGF, they forced Abdullahi Adamu of Nassarawa State to become chairman under Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime. They also forced Bukola Saraki of Kwara to become NGF chairman still under Obasanjo. Has Amaechi committed an offence by contesting the election against the wish of the PDP? Why must they be so intolerant of competition? What they were doing was PDP consensus, which is imposition. It is undemocratic.
But imposition of candidates is not restricted to PDP, it happens in other parties.
The other parties are emulating PDP. Nigerians are good at copying, especially bad things. Even now at village meetings, people now favour consensus. They don’t see any reason for two brothers to contest an election. They are destroying the spirit of competition and democracy; a situation where people would come out and convince people to vote for them due to their manifesto. It’s PDP that started it, but it has spread like virus to other political parties.
Shouldn’t Amaechi have stepped down to allow a committee preside over the election as it is done in many associations?
By not stepping down, Amaechi has shown that he is an intelligent politician, because if he had dissolved that body, they wouldn’t have allowed the election take place. He beat them to their game. However, when we watched the video, we saw Emmanuel Uduaghan standing by the side of the Director-General of the NGF. So, Uduaghan presided over the election. He was the supervisory presiding officer. He stood there and ensured that the votes were properly sorted and counted, after which the result was declared. That Amaechi was still chairman, didn’t affect the outcome of the voting. Should we now ask Jonathan to resign as President of Nigeria, because election is coming? Or will some of the governors resign during their re-election bid? They are just looking for excuses. This has also taught us a lesson that if you are going for any election, you should go with your phone and record the proceeding at the polling units. Maybe that way, we can stop rigging. With the video, we now know that there was voting, sorting and counting of votes.
With two factions of the NGF now in existence, can any of the sides go to court to stop the other, considering the immunity of governors from prosecution?
They can go to court. But why should Amaechi go to court? He remains the elected chairman of the forum and they cannot restrict him from having access to the NGF secretariat and all the documents of the forum. If I were Amaechi, I will ignore the Jang faction and allow them fizzle out. The Jang faction will end up dissolving into the PDP Governors’ Forum, which Godswill Akpabio leads. The problem is that the Presidency has not helped matters because of its interest. Apparently the Presidency wanted to split the forum, but soon it will regret it. An occasion might soon arise, where the President will need all the governors to unite on an issue. Then, it would become a difficult situation.
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