By Suyi Ayodele
Democracy is sweet, especially when jeun soke is the doctrinal philosophy that undergirds it. Read this: “The chairman of the House Committee on FCT, Mukhata Aliyu Betara, has clarified to me that he only shared $5,000 to each member of his committee as ‘Sallah Gesture’ not an inducement to support emergency rule in Rivers State. According to him, he maintains the tradition-like Santa Claus—every year. As we say in Hausa, nothing but hind leg.”
The credit of the above quote goes to Jaafar Jaafar. Jafaar Jaafar, the founder and publisher of Daily Nigeria, you will recall, broke the news about the Abdullahi Ganduje dollar bribe story when the current All Progressive Congress (APC) National Chairman was the governor of Kano State.
At the official rate of N1,600 to a dollar, $5,000 equals N8 million. If we agree that this is just for one committee, how many other committees have distributed their own dollars? How many more will be distributed?
And if Reps in a committee get $5,000 each for ‘Sallah Gesture’, how much did their counterparts in the Senate get? Or what is the volume of ‘prayers’ sent to their mailboxes? They should talk too. Where is my own share? Where is yours? Or is equitable sharing of benefits no longer the meaning of democracy?
The dollar they are sharing is not fiction. What you have above are the results of last week’s state of emergency declared by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in Rivers State. The declaration was on Tuesday. The Senate and the House of Representatives endorsed the proclamation on Thursday. Thereafter, rumours broke out that the legislators were bribed to do so. The denial by one of the representatives, Betera, is what Jaafar Jaafar published, as quoted above.
Let us, for the purpose of this discourse, take it that Betera shared $5,000 each to his committee members for ‘Sallah’, may we ask the ‘honourable’ Reps member which ‘Sallah’ was he celebrating in the middle of March 2025? Can we also ask him why his witch cried at night and the precious baby of the family died in the morning? Again, how and where did he get an average of N8 million to give to his committee members as ‘Sallah Gesture’?
While settling that, can we ask ourselves this: Do we have a validly declared state of emergency in Rivers State? Or do we have a legally appointed administrator in the oil-rich state? I do not think so. And I am not alone in this regard.
Former governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, now represents Sokoto South Senatorial District in the Senate. Before becoming the governor of Sokoto State, Tambuwal was Speaker of the House of Representatives. He understands the workings of the National Assembly. He does not believe that President Tinubu’s state of emergency in Rivers State meets the requirements of the constitution. The Senate, Tambuwal lamented, did not meet the two-thirds majority to approve Tinubu’s proclamation of state of emergency.
His argument is valid. Tambuwal stressed that Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) mandates that two-thirds of all senate members must endorse the proclamation before it can become effective. The Senate is made up of 109 members. Elementary arithmetic gives two-third of 109 as 73 members. Senate president Godswill Akpabio knows that. The sensible thing to do to get a clear two-third majority is to do head count. Nay, Akpabio would not do that. Rather, the Senate President subjected the exercise to a ‘voice vote’ and then hit the gavel, declaring “the yea have it!” Think of perfidy, think of Akpabio’s voice vote. His counterpart in the House of representatives did the same thing. What followed was the $5,000 ‘Sallah’ gift to committee members in the House! Allahu akbar. God is great!
Tambuwal is not alone in his condemnation of the impropriety of the Tinubu’s state of emergency. Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan also spoke against the action. Jonathan warned Nigeria of the danger ahead with the way the other two arms of government, the legislature and the judiciary, have become appendages of the executive!
Jonathan spoke from experience because he also declared a state of emergency in more than four states in the past. On December 31, 2011, he declared a state of emergency in Plateau, Borno, Niger and Yobe States. That was his response to the activities of Boko Haram in those states. But he sacked no governor, he disbanded no legislature.
Since President Tinubu declared a state of emergency in Rivers State and got the like-putty-in-your-hands Godswill Akpabio-led National Assembly to endorse the same, I have devoted most of the week reading the literature of tyranny and dictatorship.
I can’t vouch for Tinubu’s appreciation of literature. But I suspect that a few of his aides do. I used to have on my bookshelf, a copy of Augusto Roa Basto’s novel, titled ‘I, the Supreme’ (Yo el Supremo). The 1974 novel was translated from its original Spanish to English by Helen Lane in 1986.
‘I, the Supreme’ falls under the dictator novel genre of Latin American Literature which challenges the roles of dictators in that clime. The synopsis of the novel, a fiction, is about the imaginary Paraguayan dictator, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, simply “Dr. Francia.” He is so powerful that he declares: “I don’t write history. I make it. I can remake it as I please, adjusting, stressing, enriching its meaning and truth.” Dr Francia makes the declaration because he believes that he is above all power, history and any other institution of State of his epoch.
Nothing mirrors Nigeria’s Tinubu of 2025 more than the protagonist of that novel! Tinubu, last week, practically rewrote the letters, the spirit and intendments of section 305 of the 199 Constitution (as amended).
The Nigerian president has no power whatsoever to suspend an elected official; we all know, not even a councillor of a ward! But like Francia, who has the power to ‘adjust, stress, enrich’ the ‘meaning and truth’ of our constitution, the president did not just suspend Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his deputy, Ngozi Odu, he added the legislature to boot. And appointed a sole administrator.
There are other novels in that genre (dictator novel). One of them is The Feast of the Goat (Spanish: La Fiesta del Chivo, 2000), by the Mario Vargas Liosa, the Nobel Prize in Literature Laureate from Peru. There is yet another one, ‘D The Autumn of the Patriarch’ (El otoño del patriarca, 1975), by Gabriel García Márquez, which the reviewer describes as a “poem on the solitude of power…” I read their synopsis. They fit here.
I also read the reviews of Gabriel García Márquez’s The General in His Labyrinth (El general en su laberinto, 1989); Enrique Lafourcade’s King Ahab’s Feast (La Fiesta del rey Acab, 1959); Jorge Zalamea, El gran Burundún Burundá ha Muerto (“The Great Burundún Burundá is Dead”, 1951), and of course, Miguel Ángel Asturias’s El Señor Presidente 1(946), which the review says: “…was inspired by the 1898–1920 presidency of Manuel Estrada Cabrera for his title character,…and “explores the nature of political dictatorship and its effects on society, and is an overtly political novel in which Asturias denounces Latin American dictators.”
Tinubu needed just a fight between Governor Fubara and his overbearing godfather, Nyesom Wike, to go for the jugular of Rivers State. The irony is that the la-di-da Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Wike, who is at the centre of it all, retains his position in Tinubu’s cabinet! Which is easier to do: call Wike to order as the appointing authority, or to send an elected governor, his deputy and the entire legislature packing?
The most unfortunate of the crisis is the justification by the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Lateef Fagbemi (SAN). Fagbemi is not just a senior lawyer. He is equally a prince of Ijagbo, Kwara State. He has seen both modern and traditional jurisprudence. But today, in a democracy, Fagbemi, SAN, is warning other state governors of similar fate should any of them dare the FG and undermine national security.
Nigeria’s democracy is threatened beyond imagination. The cord can snap anytime. This is the time for Nigerians to speak out, loudly and forcefully! President Tinubu and members of his household don’t see what we see; they don’t suffer what afflicts us.
