Sonala Olumhense
As a critic, I do not often find ground to support Nigerian leader Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Before I read his pardon and clemency list of 175 persons, I was going to rise in applause.
No, I do not believe that Tinubu believes in democracy or the rule of law. He has extended the APC tradition of inflicting only lip service on those ideals.
For instance, two months after he assumed office in 2003, I wrote that his government would never account for Nigeria’s recovered loot as the judiciary had again demanded.
That conclusion followed an order by Judge James Kolawole Omotosho of the Federal High Court, directing the Tinubu government to disclose how much of General Sani Abacha’s stolen funds it has recovered since 1999, and how the money was used.
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The order was categorical: “The exact amount of money stolen by General Sani Abacha from Nigeria, and the total amount of Abacha loot recovered and all agreements signed on the same by the governments of former presidents Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Jonathan and Buhari.”
Citing previous court orders—in 2016 by Justice Mohammed Idris and in 2017 by Justice Hadiza Rabiu Shagari, which the APC government under Muhammadu Buhari ignored resoundingly, I said the new one demanded probity from a government with eight years of experience during which standards and ethics had dropped significantly lower.
In a pronouncement that would be matched by the verdicts that followed, Justice Idris said that President Buhari and his predecessor governments since 1999 must “account fully for all recovered loot…including on a dedicated website,” saying they had “breached the fundamental principles of transparency and accountability for failing to disclose details about the spending of recovered stolen public funds.”
But “That is not going to happen,” I predicted of the Tinubu government in July 2023. “APC will protect itself, which means protecting PDP so they can both laugh at Abacha.”
I have been proved right: Tinubu preaches democracy and the rule of law well, but that is just politics. The same, apparently, is his concept of justice: someone reminded him he has pardon and clemency powers under the constitution, and he ordered, “Bring me a long list.”
I was going to praise Tinubu for being motivated by the desire to right historic and legal wrongs and uphold higher principles.
But a look at the long list that Tinubu subsequently signed and announced to the world yielded both bewilderment and embarrassment.
First, his clemency list is dominated by offenders involved in unlawful mining and drugs—a subject that, given his own personal and painful experience, he ought to have steered clear of, knowing how negatively it would resonate with Nigerians.
Still, he granted clemency to 47 people who, in just the past year, received three-year jail sentences, and another large number of persons convicted of drug-related crimes across all categories.
Maybe Tinubu hoped to be seen as being sensitive to small-time drug offenders in a country where jail cells are overcrowded.
Instead, he came across as being sympathetic to offenders in the drug business whom someone had the audacity to send to jail, knowing that he, Tinubu, had taken control of presidential power and would never allow such “nonsense” to stand!
Second, Tinubu granted posthumous pardons to 11 persons, perhaps with a view to being admired as a president trying to address historic injustices, including the Ogoni Nine.
But he compromised that effort by somehow conjuring up an alien subject named Sir Herbert Macaulay, who is unknown to Nigeria and Nigerian law.
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There was no Nigeria before Macaulay, and he could not have been on the records or annals of Nigerian law or the Nigeria described in the constitution.
But in an embarrassing political and legal overreach, Tinubu dug him up from his political grave, prised him from the fingers of the British Crown in Lagos, which jailed him in 1913, and tried to layer Nigeria on his flesh and to bless him in a future nation he never knew.
Third, Maryam Sanda, who was sentenced for murder, was going through an appeal process that Tinubu abruptly expunged, imposing himself atop the law and supplanting justice.
Fourth, there were just two mentions of corruption on Tinubu’s list: Farouk Lawan, the former legislator, and Shettima Maaji Arfo, who, sentenced in 2021 to seven years for corrupt practices, had his sentence reduced to four.
I found it bizarre that in a country as beholden to corruption as Nigeria, only two instances on the list relate to this menace. None of them was a former governor, minister, or permanent secretary, either: those are to be found hiding in the National Assembly making pompous speeches, or in the hallways and byways of the major political parties in Abuja, moving and shaking government contracts.
The truth is that Nigeria is a nation characterised by injustice. And when injustice attempts to order justice, this is the kind of mess that you get. It is perhaps why, just days after Tinubu’s pardon and clemency bazaar, his government declared it to be premature.
Keep in mind that it is just four months ago that we were reflecting on the latest National Honours List, which raised similar concerns.
On that note, you may have heard that Edo State Governor, Monday Okpebholo, has warned his new commissioners about an official new sartorial standard: they must invest in an ‘Asiwaju Cap’ when they attend his cabinet meetings.
“I will not forgive any commissioner who is not wearing this cap,” the governor threatened last Tuesday. “In our exco meetings, if you are not wearing a suit and you are coming to the meeting without this Asiwaju cap, you will go back.”
That is because Okpebholo attributes his “victory” in the governorship election that brought him to power not to the electorate, but to Tinubu.
“This could not have happened if we did not have a ‘responsible’ president,” he said, implying that the only elections that are valid are the ones “we win,” which is not democracy.
Okpebholo forgot that in the Fourth Republic, Tinubu gave the Lagos State governor’s crown to three men, none of whom has imposed the Asiwaju shrine on his commissioners.
Nonetheless, the Edo selection is over. Okpebholo must focus on the Edo people, not on how to be Tinubu’s best worshipper. If he is focused, he can significantly elevate Edo in these four years, including through:
Digital Governance and Public Service Delivery reforms, to make Edo one of Nigeria’s most digitally governed states; agro-Industrial Value Chain Development, toward transforming Edo into a regional agro-processing hub; human capital acceleration, to rapidly raise the productivity and employability of young people (including scaling EdoBEST education reform into secondary and vocational schools, integrating digital learning and soft skills); and green infrastructure and urban development, to position Edo as a model of sustainable urban growth in Nigeria.
One of Nigeria’s most prominent governance issues is that once sworn in, governors forget how many days make one year. And then it is too late.
