By Henry Uche
Former Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, in a monitored interview on Channels TV, spoke on the Supreme Court Ruling on Local Government financial autonomy, among other issues.
Local Government autonomy: Is this one kind of a chokehold of the neck of good governance on the judgment of the court?
I want to be quite clear, I have not seen the judgment and I refrain as a matter of principle from commenting on judgments I have not read. So I will not comment on what the Supreme Court is reported to have said. Having said that, I don’t think that the issues are as easily compartmentalized as people would like to report. I think the question of local government accounts, what happens to them is a little more complex than we try to make out.
Now, is it this about to step back a little. This is not just about taking money, you know, sending money to local governments. This is about how we derive the legitimacy of the mandate to govern in Nigeria and here, the Supreme Court has to be held responsible for generating various quality jurisprudence that have given us verdict elections. All right. Elections are lacking in legitimacy as a result of what the Supreme Court has done, not today, but over the years since at least 2003. And, as a result, it is difficult to see a situation in which local government chairpersons controlled by the state governors can really be autonomous because most of them with a few exceptions, most of them lack the legitimacy that they can trade in for the authority to call the state governors to order, I think we commit grievous error thinking that sending money straight to local government chairpersons will all of a sudden create what does not exist.
So in your view, how necessary is this judgment in the long run?
Frankly, I don’t think the issue is where the money goes to, the question in my view is, how legitimate is the mandate of the person to whom the money goes to? I’ll give you an example. In 2017, Benue State organized local government elections, the elections took place on a Saturday, the following morning on a Sunday, the chairperson of the Benue State Independent Electoral Commission announced that the ruling party which was the APC then had won all the seats and all offices that were contested in that election. When he was asked what the tallies were, they said there were still tallies, how do you tally, how do you announce the outcome of a result of an election in which the tallies had not yet been done? Now, if you are elected as a local government chairperson, from that kind of election, you don’t have the legitimacy to tell the governor I will not give you the money that I have received from Abuja. Okay, this is the problem. And where does that come from? It comes from the Supreme Court giving jurisprudence that says elections are things in which everything can go, that is entirely at the doorstep of the Supreme Court. And so what am I saying? The Supreme Court cannot say on the one hand, they can organize anything and call it elections. And on the other hand, well send money directly to the local area councils. Those two distant streams of jurisprudence are entirely at odds with one another; illegitimate mandates lead to lack of democratic dividend.
I don’t know if you were in Abuja the other day, did you see that all the politicians, all important politicians in the country, were attending the swearing in of judges, by the Chief Justice. Do you know why? Because the people who have the votes to put politicians in office now are no longer the voters, are no longer citizens like you and I; it is the judges. That is where the politicking takes place. The tyranny of illegitimate mandates created by the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court renders the Judgment they have given today all in my view, quite private.
Are you referring to the 2023 election to be precise?
You heard me say from beginning, from at least 2003 elections, I was very specific, I said at least, beginning from at least 2003 elections. It didn’t start today, this is not an event; it is been a cascade to where we are now. And I gave you the example of Benue State If you get stuck in what I said, I can’t help you. But I think it is because all of us are Nigerians, I’m not going to come to your programme and start lying to you, as I saying things I don’t believe in. Because if anybody picks me up, I want to say I believe in what I say if you want to kill me, shoot me.
And I’m telling you that this Supreme Court is responsible for illegitimate mandates and coming to tell us where money goes is irresponsible of this Supreme Court.
How do you mean that is irresponsible of them?
I am a citizen of Nigeria by choice. What these people do affects me as a Nigerian and so when I speak as a Nigerian I don’t quiver. It is irresponsible on the one hand to tell us that anything can go as an election.
That elections can be conducted without standards. Go back and read the judgment of the Supreme Court, in Buhari against Yar’Adua in 2008. That exactly is what the Supreme Court decided. Okay. They decided that we could organize elections without serialized ballot papers, but they decided that elections did not have to be governed by underlying principles with respect to credibility. Nikki Toby delivered that judgment. When you read that judgment, and then you read the consequences that have followed since then, you will understand why I am saying what I am saying, that when you have created the jurisprudence of illegitimate mandates, you cannot then expect local governments to be accountable That is why the country is being pauperized. Because politicians who lack legitimate mandates cannot give you democratic dividends.
All of that has been decided. Now we are moving forward, how should we ensure accountability going forward?
You see, this is the problem, we like to move ahead without looking at where we are coming from, it’s not possible my brother. This is exactly why we’re here. And when you ask the person they say, oh, we’ll give it to God. God does not vote in Nigeria. God is not a registered voter. God does not work in INEC, God is not a police officer. God does not rig elections, human beings do. So we cannot move forward from things that are dreadful, because those are the consequences that will get us precedent. And those are the consequences, those are the outcomes that added us with the consequences that we live with. As I said, if you go to meet a local government chairperson now, who has been installed in a rigged election, controlled entirely by the governor, what this person is going to do is collect the money and hand it back to the governor. So all you’re doing is altering the sequence by which the money gets back to the governor, but the money will still get back to the governor. And the reason the money will still get back to the governor is because the mandate as a matter of jurisprudence settled by the Supreme Court is not with the people. The mandate is with the politicians and the judges. Until we address that, we are wasting time devoting too much effort and practising the jurisprudence that I have not read.
Okay, how do we safeguard against what you said (an installed chairperson giving back the money to the governor)?
It is up to the politicians? Look, you know, the President now went through the same thing with Obasanjo when Obasanjo held up their monies. If that is the consequence of when he was governor of Lagos State, if that is the consequence they want to live with, or they want to afflict others with, you see, the thing about politics is that you live by the swings of the pendulum. Sooner or later, these things will come around, it may take one decade, it may take 20 years, but it’s going to turn around and the incidence of impact will be someone else probably on the people inflicting it today. Twenty years ago, it was PDP doing the inflicting, today it is the APC doing the inflicting. Until we settle the origins of the mandate, until we address the legitimacy of the political authority at all levels, federal, state and local, that people lay claims to, on the basis of which to administer the public good and the common wealth, we’re going to be dealing with all these bad eggs.
How should local government be funded in your own view, and what should be the relationship between them and the state government?
I will focus on the legitimacy of those who exercise power in order to use money, and I’m telling you that as long as the legitimacy is fractured and fundamentally and structurally flawed on the basis of Supreme Court jurisprudence, you cannot, the conversation as to funding of local government is not very helpful because howsoever that money comes, if the legitimacy is not founded in the legitimate will of the people, that money is going to be funneled back into the
same corrupt criminal franchises that we have today masquerading at different levels of power. And therefore, there’ll be no differentiation. The democratic beneficiation that we are expecting to inure in favor of the people will not happen, and I am sure that both of us can agree that what we’re looking for here is how best to look after the interests of our people. And if local government works,. And local governments were legitimate, that would happen. But if it is not legitimate, that will not happen.
Qualifications of who becomes a judge
I’ll give you an example, the wife of Yahaya Bello was cleared by the state judicial Service Commission in Kogi State to be appointed a judge of the Kogi State High Court. She has never practised as a lawyer, she has never taught, she has never researched, she has never administered in court, and one thing she has administered to the best of my ability was the bedroom of her husband. And the only thing that precluded her from being appointed ultimately by the National Judicial Council recommended for appointment was that her husband fell out with you know, under what circumstances I’m not going to go into the details of that. Now was she qualified, of course, she was qualified. What are the qualifications? She has been a lawyer admitted to practice for 10 years, not the number of people who make that trade. So the idea that somehow, the only people now who are qualified to be judges are people found in the bedrooms of politicians, top politicians, or in the bedrooms of senior judges, is utterly nonsensical, utterly nonsensical. Now you look at the list that has been produced of new judges of the ….High Court, 8 of them out of 12, over 60% of them are the children of serving or recently retired judges, how mathematically, statistically possible is that? It’s a totally rigged process of mutual intercourse between politicians and judges, the politicians learn the charges to get them into office. The judges rely on politicians to advance them into transactions. This is I tell you what, it’s sickening.
Let’s not impugn on the integrity of the entire institution, given the practices of some of the judges
I am not impugning on anybody, I’m giving you proportions and numbers. I said, there are 12 people, I have not abuse anyone, I’m just giving you the facts. You see, this is the problem here. Even the facts you are afraid of; are you afraid of these facts
In an ideal situation, how should local government be funded?
I cannot give you an ideal situation because I’m not Babalawo, one, two, even in a real world, the real world is what we’ve got to try and iron out. And I’m not going to run shy of that real and start manufacturing an ideal situation and that we are unwilling to contemplate because that ideal situation we want that begins with local government councils that have political legitimacy in which people who exercise leadership at the local government level are directly and lawfully and manifestly elected by the people. When that happens and you send money to the local government, the persons who run the local government will have the authority to be able to tell governor, no, I am the person who will suffer the political consequences of you trying to steal this money, so I will not do what you want me to do. But the governor has installed this person in the expectation of a quid pro quo, the person will not have the authority to push
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