A Victim of 'Order From Above' [opinion]

Jul 17, 2014 (The Guardian/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- THE recent incident during which soldiers on guard duty at a hotel in Kaduna insisted on searching the official vehicle of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, as he arrived for a high profile international conference at the venue has once again thrust into the limelight the frosty relationship between him on the one hand and the President Goodluck Jonathan administration and the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) on the other hand.

It also underscored the extent to which the dreaded 'order from above' that was one of the nightmarish features of Nigeria's better forgotten era of military dictatorship is once again running loose in the streets of democratic Nigeria. This must be a source of great concern to patriotic Nigerians worried about the state and direction of our democratic experiment.

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Incidentally, Tambuwal is himself a member of the PDP and a very high ranking member at that. But this fact does not seem to weigh too heavily on the minds of those who for reasons best known to them are hell-bent on meting out to him the 'special' treatment they usually reserve for their perceived enemies and opponents. That there are influential elements in the ruling party and the government who prefer to see Speaker Tambuwal as an enemy to be neutralised instead of a vital member and key asset to be cultivated and celebrated speaks volumes of the murkiness of the minds of certain elements that influence and dictate events in Nigeria's corridors of power. Little wonder Nigeria is in such dire straits.

Perhaps it is time for Nigerians to take the government ham-handed treatment of Tambuwal as a cue to take a very good look at the Speaker and ask ourselves why this government continues to feel so threatened by this man. Perhaps, as William Shakespeare's Macbeth states of his fellow general Banquo whom he later proceeded to murder, "before him my genius is rebuked". Put in another way, Tambuwal must be making these people feel inadequate. Perhaps he possesses something they lack and wish they had. Perhaps they have perceived a glimmer of his light and are determined to snuff out the light before Nigerians see the full glow. Perhaps they see an eagle about to soar and are determined to clip its wings. Whatever is their agenda, their efforts appear destined for futility.

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Unfortunately, however, the shabby treatment of Tambuwal by soldiers in Kaduna on Monday 23rd June represents more than an attempt to humiliate one man. It was an assault on an exalted office. The office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives is one of the highest positions in the hierarchy of Nigeria's democratic leadership. Indeed the Speaker is the third in the line of succession to the Presidency of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, coming only after the Vice President and the President of the Senate. I cannot readily recall any incident in any other democracy where a government official of such exalted rank, the Leader of the Legislative Branch of the government no less, has been subjected to such an unseemly treatment by agents of another branch of government, the Executive Branch. A situation whereby the Executive Branch deploys military and security personnel under its control to harass, intimidate and humiliate high ranking officers of either of the other two branches of government (the Legislature and the Judiciary) threatens the very foundation on which the pillars of enduring democracy rest and upsets the equilibrium of respect without which three separate but equal branches of government cannot function in a smooth relationship of productive partnership.

It is time for all Nigerians to rise above the fog of blind ethnic, sectarian and partisan loyalty to begin to take an objective stance on issues that threaten our fragile democracy regardless of the personalities involved. If the soldiers on duty at that hotel in Kaduna, acting on orders from above insisted on a search of the official car of the Speaker, the instruction issued to them from above must have been based on the suspicion that it, indeed the Tambuwal himself, constituted a security risk. Nigerians must ask the government to reveal the facts upon which their suspicion was based. Their suspicion that necessitated their action must have been so strong that they could not afford to take the risk of letting the Speaker go unsearched. The evidence at their disposal must have been very persuasive as to warrant such a blatant desecration of all rules of official protocol and abandonment of all written and unwritten rules of mutual inter-branch respect, cooperation and cordiality. Nigerians must demand to know the facts that informed the order issued from above down to these soldiers.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Nigeria's current security challenges are being seized upon by the government as an excuse to inflict a black eye on its opponents, real or imagined. Whether it is clamping down on a section of the media, infringing on the constitutional right of Nigerians to freedom of assembly, infringing on the constitutional right of opposition party state governors to freedom of movement, or desecrating the person and official vehicle of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, (and who is to say they will not soon enough go so far as to invade his official residence?) the ready excuse by the agents of the government is always that they are acting on 'orders from the above', and the ready defence of the government by its apologists is always that the security situation in the country warrants extraordinary measures. It does not.

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It has been thoroughly litigated and firmly settled in other democratic nations that have undergone similar or even worse security challenges than Nigeria is currently confronted with, that the choice between national security and civil liberty is a false choice, because national security does not have to be protected at the expense of basic decency or at the detriment of the established constitutional order. This is an established fact that the Nigerian government and the security forces under its control must accept. More importantly, it is a fact that the Nigerian people must not allow the government to forget, but Nigerians are not fooled. We know that this new culture of shabby treatment of those whom the government perceives to be its opponents and this sudden flood of 'orders from above' have nothing to do with national security. Nigerians know it is all about the 2015 elections, and Nigerians have a sacred duty to stand up and condemn those who would sacrifice Nigeria's hard won constitutional rights and democratic principles on the altar of their personal political ambitions.

Udalor, a lawyer, writes from Lagos

Copyright The Guardian. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

by Kennedy Jones Udalor