UNABLE and unwilling to wean himself of his martial roots, the outgoing President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), repeatedly rode roughshod over the rule of law, infringed basic rights and flagrantly disobeyed court orders during his two terms. He violated press and religious freedoms and trampled on the judiciary with impunity. Often elevating himself above the law, his eight years in office constantly reminded Nigerians of his first coming as the head of the repressive military junta from January 1984 to August 1985. He was decidedly a misfit as leader of a democratising polity.
Old habits die hard. During his eight-year tenure, Buhari proved that he had only paid lip service to atoning for his brutal past. At Chatham House, United Kingdom, in 2015 he had solemnly vowed, “Let me say without sounding defensive that dictatorship goes with military rule, though some might be less dictatorial than others. I take responsibility for whatever happened under my watch. I cannot change the past. But I can change the present and the future. So, before you is a former military ruler and a converted democrat who is ready to operate under democratic norms….” His posturing as a “born again” democrat, however, proved to be a massive deception.
The rule of law, an independent judiciary and a free press are the bulwarks of democracy. The UN General Assembly reaffirmed in 2012 that “human rights, the rule of law and democracy are interlinked and mutually reinforcing and belong to the universal and indivisible core values.” The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said the rule of law “is arguably the most basic requirement of any civilised society,” while freedom of expression and of the press are fundamental in a democratic society. Buhari never understood this.
His disregard for citizens’ liberties and the rule of law prompted The PUNCH to take a firm, principled stand in December 2019 to call him what he is: a military dictator in borrowed civilian robes, and his government a regime. To this end, all PUNCH titles across the print, online and social media platforms, to global admiration, resolved to thenceforth address him as the “President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.),” until he weaned himself of his martial and dictatorial disposition and accorded respect to constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and the rule of law. Sadly, till his last hours in office, he remained trapped in his martial default mode.
Once in power, he bared his fangs, moving against human rights, the media, and the judiciary, using the fight against corruption as cover. In November 2015, security agents besieged the Abuja home of the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, accusing him of corruption over the $2.1 billion arms purchase deal. The courts granted Dasuki bail five times to no avail. He spent 31 months in detention. The regime’s pattern of disobedience of court orders had begun.
The security agencies, including the Nigerian Army, the police, and the State Security Service, sometimes detained citizens without regard to the law mandating that suspects should not spend more than 48 hours in detention without a court order.
In 2019, security agents raided the home of Omoyele Sowore, an online publisher, alleging that he wanted to overthrow Buhari. Like Dasuki, the court freed him on bail. He was not released, spending 134 days in detention. Objectionably, security agents once invaded the court in broad daylight to re-arrest him after he had been granted bail.
The regime treated democracy with contempt. In 2018, the SSS arrogantly invaded the National Assembly, obviously to allow All Progressives Congress lawmakers to remove the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and his deputy. Yemi Osinbajo, the then Acting President, offered a brief ray of sanity by promptly sacking Lawal Daura, the SSS Director-General, for his effrontery. When Buhari returned from his medical trip overseas, he replaced the acting SSS DG with one in his image, Yusuf Bichi, and threats against perceived ‘enemies’ of the regime, and defiance of the rule of law and court orders have since persisted.
In October 2020, implausibly alleging threats to overthrow him, the regime sent soldiers after the youth peacefully protesting police brutality at the #EndSARS rally in Lekki, Lagos. A revealing report by CNN said the military and the police attacked protesters. No proper accounting has been done till date. The Central Bank of Nigeria thereafter blocked the accounts of some of the protesters; some fled overseas for fear of retribution by the vengeful regime.
That clampdown remains a permanent stain on the Buhari regime. But he was not done yet. During the economically damaging naira redesign project, Buhari brazenly disobeyed the Supreme Court, setting another dangerous precedent.
With impunity, he overruled the court in February authorising the use of the N200, N500 and N1,000 bank notes as legal tender. He said only the N200 banknote was legal tender. It was a distasteful, impeachable offence. CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, followed up this affront by also refusing to obey the court until March. Nigerians suffered much from the impunity of the duo, and the economy took a battering.
Buhari ran an authoritarian regime. From 2016, the annual Economist Intelligence Unit democracy survey has ranked Nigeria poorly. It finished at 105 out of 167 countries in 2022, scoring 4.23 out of 10. With 4.11 in 2021, it was 20th out of 44 countries rated in sub-Saharan Africa, scoring 4.11 (2021), 4.10 (2020), 4.12 (2019), 4.44 (2018), 4.50 (2017) and 3.85 (2016).
In an ongoing case, the regime has infamously spurned several court orders to release Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra. This has aggravated the movement’s militancy in the South-East, its wanton criminality and illegal ‘sit-at-home’ orders. When Kanu escaped overseas in 2017, security agents raided his country home in Abia State.
Kanu was forcefully renditioned to Nigeria in June 2021 from Kenya. Buhari told South-East leaders who asked for Kanu’s release that the court would determine his fate. But when the courts ordered him released on bail, Buhari demurred.
He also went all out against Sunday ‘Igboho’ Adeyemo, a self-determination activist campaigning to rid his Oke-Ogun community in Oyo State of the Fulani herdsmen rapine. The SSS invaded his Ibadan, Oyo State, home in the middle of the night, killing some of his aides and arresting others. Adeyemo fled to Benin Republic, where, with the connivance of the Nigerian Diplomatic Mission in that country, he was stopped from travelling to Germany and nearly renditioned to Nigeria in 2021. He was saved from that ordeal by Benin’s judicial system but remains in detention there.
Regime officials, particularly the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, and Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, wore authoritarianism like a badge of honour. After the arrest of Ibrahimel-Zakzaky, the leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, and his wife, Zeenat, in December 2015 after his followers blocked the convoy of Tukur Buratai, the then Chief of Army Staff, they spent more than five years in detention despite several court orders to release them. An enquiry by the Kaduna State government found that about 370 persons were killed in a follow-up attack by troops on the Shi’ite settlement in Zaria.
Agba Jalingo, a journalist, was accused of treason, and locked up by the SSS for months. The SSS detained and blindfolded Abiri Jones, a Bayelsa-based journalist, in an undergrounded cell for two years before his release in 2018.
At Mohammed’s prompting, the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission levies fines for real and perceived breaches at will. Bizarrely, Mohammed looked up to Communist one-party China for his rancid, undemocratic ideas on liberty and the mass media. This manifested when a microblogging site, Twitter, was banned in Nigeria between June 2021 and January 2022 for allegedly “aiding the disintegration of Nigeria!”
Consequently, Nigeria ranked 120 out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders, in the same league with Afghanistan, Jordan, Zimbabwe, Palestine, Qatar and South Sudan.
The malfeasance percolates down; the police, and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission have been cited for contempt of court at different times.
Freedom House, an NGO, in its Freedom in the World 2023 report, categorised Nigeria as “partly free,” scoring 43 out of 100 (political rights, 20/40; civil liberties, 23/60). “Officials restrict press freedom by publicly criticising, harassing, and arresting journalists, especially when they cover corruption, human rights violations, separatist and communal violence, or other politically sensitive topics,” the report stated.
Extra-judicial killings have been rampant, involving the police, military, and Customs. Amnesty International said security agents slaughtered 122 persons in the South-East alone in 2022. Police and soldiers killed 18 Nigerians extra-judicially while enforcing the nationwide lockdown imposed by the Federal Government over the COVID-19 pandemic, the House of Representatives heard at a plenary in May 2020.
The judiciary witnessed a shock to its system as early as October 2016. At midnight, SSS officers invaded the sanctuary of some judges’ homes, arresting them and vandalising their property. Once again, Buhari employed a dictatorial method for a good purpose. At the end, his use of brute force to rein in corrupt judges failed.
Controversially, he suspended Walter Onnoghen as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, replacing him with Muhammad Tanko in 2019, just before that year’s general elections. Buhari claimed that he sacked Onnoghen because he did not declare his assets. Tanko himself resigned unceremoniously in 2022.
Religious freedom receded, harmed by state and non-state actors. States enforcing Sharia penal codes became more emboldened. Leah Sharibu remains in captivity since her abduction with other 109 schoolgirls in Dapchi, Yobe State, by Boko Haram terrorists in 2018. All the other captives were rescued. Her only offence was that she rejected conversion to Islam.
In May 2022, religious extremists – who were her classmates – murdered Deborah Samuel at the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto State, accusing her of “blasphemy,” an offence strange to the 1999 Constitution. Her killers are still walking free.
So are the killers of Esther Elisha, who was murdered in Kubwa, Abuja, in 2016 for engaging in early morning evangelism. Florence Chukwu, Abdullahi Umaru, Methodus Chimaije Emmanuel, and Bridget Agbahemeall suffered similar brutal fate from religious extremists. States illegally adopting the Sharia penal aspects in the North have sentenced a couple of persons to death for ‘blasphemy.’ The religious police in 12 northern states brazenly violate fundamental rights.
Thus, in 2022, Freedom House ranked Nigeria one out of four in religious freedoms.
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