For three consecutive days last week, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari issued ringing rebuke of state governors on multiple fronts, employing both the subtle and the frontal.
The floodgate was prised by a key appointee of the president, who rubbished the performance report card of the governors before the president came in bullish 24 hours after, accusing the subnational leaders of stealing local government funds.
President Buhari, as a public figure, has cut for himself the image of a leader who says little and possibly acts little on his own, but gets his aides and associates to fight his battles, whether administrative, political or constitutional. He also rarely strays out of prepared text as president.
But last Thursday, his off-the-script remark, accusing governors of grand larceny, was uncharacteristically lengthy, suggesting that it was preconceived for an appropriate platform to be delivered.
And this time, the president delivered.
A day after he fired the broadside at the governors, another key aide seized on the bickering over the release of the 13 per cent derivation deductions among benefiting states to release a comprehensive note of fund releases to the nine oil-producing states, among other financial issues.
While the supplied data appeared a harmless clarification, the discerning saw through the presidency’s de- liberate act of further piling pressure on the states’ helmsmen and using same as some means of fighting back, after three governors of oil-producing states of Edo, Delta and Rivers railed at the president.
With the governors on the back foot from the seemingly orchestrated attack from Abuja, a bi-partisan slam of the president was eventually authorised at the weekend, with a non-constitutional body which binds all the 36 governors firing on all cylinders and practically calling the Nigerian leader a failure in governance.
Analysts opine that the events of the last five days may have set for a mouth-watering blockbuster all-out war between the two layers of the executive branch, which is likely to go beyond the ongoing name-calling and possibly culminate in both sides deciding to wash each other’s dirty linen in public.
The tell-all unsolicited statement from presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, on the ‘massive’ revenue that had accrued to the state governors since the COVID-19 pandemic is being projected as the ‘ugly’ turn the war may take.
And the president himself appears to be in the mood, setting the stage with a veiled finger-pointing that could degenerate into outright name-and-shame. In recalling his alleged personal experience of how governors steal from local governments, straight into their private pockets and how chairmen of councils also allegedly mismanaging what is usually left of what should be public fund after governors have taken about half of it, the Nigerian leader only stopped at the point of mentioning names.
He hinted one of the thieving parties of his tale was a lawyer. And though he wasn’t too explicit with who was the lawyer between the governor and the chairman of his ‘little’ expose, he had said enough about the ‘learned’ fellow, for at least three governors, one being a lawyer, had tackled the Nigerian leader almost immediately his allegation hit the public domain.
The president also said enough for all the governors to be united against him, a rare occurrence in the life of his administration which is always defended, whether right or wrong, by governors of states in the northern hemisphere of the nation. Interestingly, the few times the 36 governors had set aside partisanship to battle Abuja with Buhari as president have been about him trying to free other institutions of government at state level from the alleged stranglehold of the state governors, particularly the local government, state judiciary and state legislature.
In May 2019, as Buhari was readying for his swearing-in to second and final term in office, the 36 state governors under the umbrella of Nigeria Governors’ Forum went all out against the administration, over an attempt by a federal agency, which in practical terms is directly answerable to the president, to free local government cash from the claws of the governors.
On May 1 of the said year, the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU), the nation’s financial watchdog, now domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) after being moved away from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), had issued a guideline to reduce vulnerabilities created by cash withdrawals from local government funds throughout the country.
The guideline, amongst others, sought to systematically restore councils’ financial autonomy. It also limited the cash amount that could be withdrawn from any local government to N500,000 a day. The governors would have none of it.
Then chairman of the NGF, who was governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari, argued that the NFIU’s order to governors not to touch revenues disbursed to local governments every month from the federation account was unconstitutional.
The governors, united in purpose, summoned an emergency meeting. Yari, making their protestation known then, said: “The Forum (NGF) is concerned with recent guidelines of the NFIU which seeks to impose restriction on the powers of states and local governments to operate within constitutionally approved parameters.
“The new guidelines have no legal basis under the NFIU Act and are contrary to constitutional provisions which put the State Joint Local Government Account under the legislation of the state houses of Assembly.
“The guidelines will also be detrimental to the interest of the states and local governments by crippling programmes such as the Universal Basic Education programme, Primary Health Care under one roof as well as the payment of the salaries of teachers, medical doctors and health workers, among others, which are primarily funded by state governments.”
The governors also took their grudge pilgrimage to Aso Rock, warning of litigation, after coming out of their protest meeting with the president. With many sensing that the president might have settled for a political solution to resolve what should have been jurisprudentially settled, the governors’ visit to Aso Rock, this time, led by Yari’s replacement, Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, obviously got them their desire as nothing was ever heard again about the implementation and enforcement of the controversial guidelines.
Worried opinionists and advocacy groups slammed the president for allegedly placing politics ahead of public good, by tacitly conceding to the governors’ demand that NFIU should be stopped from implementing the restrictive guidelines, despite the widely-held assumption that credible intelligence must have informed the move by the federal agency to try and keep governors away from council funds.
Earlier in 2022, the governors, again, collectively gave the president himself a beating, this time, judicially. In May 2020, the Nigerian leader had caught the bug of Executive Order and signed a rash of them, a majority of which were widely seen by legal experts as susceptible to defeat, if judicially-challenged.
The tenth, known as Executive Order 10, granted financial autonomy to the legislature and judiciary at the state level. The state governors would have none of it, but they had an interesting proposal. They wanted the Federal Government to take up the funding of state courts if the president must make such order. They claimed that the central government had failed to fund the courts in the country with capital and recurrent expenditure since May 5, 2009, paying only judicial workers’ salaries.
The Buhari administration would not budge this time, maybe because there were no political expediencies to come in as bargaining chips unlike 2019 when the governors had just helped to re-elect the president. So both parties ended up at the Supreme Court, constitutionally empowered to resolve constitutional logjam between federal and state.
The 36 governors, who were the plaintiffs, told the apex court that the Executive Order 10 contained provisions which were inconsistent with some provisions of the 1999 Constitution and demanded that the Aso Rock creation be declared null and void.
They further accused the Federal Government of refusing to fund the high courts, Sharia courts of appeal, customary courts of appeal in states, contrary to section 81(3) of the 1999 Constitution, which deals with the issue of funding.
They contended that Buhari contravened Section 6 of the Constitution of Nigeria, which establishes the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, Federal High Court, National Industrial Court, High Court of the Federal Capital Territory, High Court of a state, the Sharia Courts of Appeal of a state, the Customary Court of Appeal of Federal Capital Territory and the Customary Court of Appeal of a state. On February 11, 2022, the apex court handed the governors a major victory, albeit partial. In a majority judgment of six to one, a seven-man panel of the court shot down the president’s effort, but refused to compel a federal takeover of the funding of capital projects for state high courts, sharia court of appeal and customary court of appeal.
The N66 billion reimbursement being demanded by governors, as money already spent on capital projects for the three courts by states, was not also approved by the six justices on the panel, who agreed with the litigating governors. The court, however, agreed with the governors that the order seeking financial “freedom” for state judiciary and legislature was inconsistent with the operational 1999 Constitution and, therefore, null and void and of no effect.
In the quest of President Buhari to ensure financial responsibility at the state and local government levels, he has failed twice, both in political negotiation and court of law. The frustration of his inability to ‘tame’ the state governors whose alleged excesses in their official interactions with other institutions of government in their respective domains, which must have regularly come to him through intelligence and security briefings, possibly occasioned his decision to drag the governors to the public opinion court this time, to set them against the masses.
If that was the intendment of the Nigerian leader in making the seemingly off-the-cuff generalised allegation, he may have partially succeeded, considering the public heat now on the state governors. But the president may have also unwittingly opened himself to flaks, for perceivably allowing the governors to have had somewhat of a field day for seven years and a half before appearing to be going after them, when his presidency is almost at the lame duck phase.
His refusal to go beyond a generalised allegation is not also counting in positives for him, even when he spoke as if he knew the culprit-governor(s). Social media commentator and former senator representing Kaduna Central, Shehu Sani, among others, last Friday, threw the president a name-and-shame challenge.
In a tweet via his verified Twitter account, he wrote, “The president should have the courage to specifically mention those governors pocketing LG allocations rather than timid generalisation.”
Governors have also thrown the challenge. Concerned Nigerians too. But it is unlikely President Buhari will pursue whatever agenda he has against the governors through that channel again. He has no record of staying in public arena for too long in his fights, even when he drags opponents there. But he promised his guests at the Aso Rock event, where he made his sweeping allegation that his administration would diligently consider and implement the recommendations contained in the presentation of SEC 44, a report he said would largely assist in the provision of good governance to the people at the grassroots.
“It is obvious that government cannot afford to pay lip-service to the recommendations contained in this report. I assure you that the report will be treated with the seriousness and urgency it deserves. Government will study the report, with a view to implementing the carefully detailed recommendations,” he said.
The report could be the next level in the ongoing war.
