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Democracy and Disorder Impeachment of Governors and Political Development in Nigeria’S Fourth Republic

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Democracy and Disorder Impeachment of Governors and Political Development in Nigeria’S Fourth Republic Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 11, No. 2: 163-183 Democracy and Disorder Impeachment of Governors and Political Development in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic Oarhe Osumah Abstract This essay, based on data derived from existing literature and reports, examines the impeachment of state governors in Nigeria since the return to civil rule in May 1999. It shows that six state governors have been impeached. This number far exceeds the cases in Nigeria’s previous three democratic experiments combined, the First Republic (1963-1966), the Second Republic (1979-1983), and the botched Third Republic (1991-1993). Although, at face value, the impeachment cases since May 1999 tend to portray the fulfilment of the liberal democratic tradition, in fact, they demonstrate political disorder, or garrison democracy. Keywords: Impeachment, legislature, democracy, disorder, godfathers. The question of impeachment has been much overlooked since the Nixon and Clinton eras in the United States. In many instances, full and fair democratic elections are the best way to end an unpopular or corrupt government. In Nigeria, since the return to democratic rule in May 1999 after long years of military authoritarianism, impeachment has been a recurrent feature, one ostensibly designed to check abuse of political power. Threats of impeachment and a number of impeachment proceedings have been raised or initiated since the inauguration of the Fourth Republic. The number during the Fourth Republic far exceeds the impeachments, or threats of it, during Nigeria’s previous three democratic experiments combined; the First Republic (1963-1966), the Second Republic (1979-1983), and the botched Third Republic (1991-1993). Indeed, impeachment has been more regularly deployed during the current period of Nigeria’s constitutional history than in the historical experiences of the most advanced democracies, such as the United States and Britain. However, Oarhe Osumah lectures in the Department of Public Administration, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, Nigeria. <[email protected]> December 2015 | 163 a number of countries, such as Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, share a similar experience of functional impeachment gridlock with Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, a fact that deserves research attention. This essay examines varying implications of the impeachment of a number of state governors as well as the legislative assemblies’ impeachment proceedings, in the light of democratic requirements, traditions, values, and principles. In pursuit of these objectives, this essay holds that impeachments and impeachment proceedings should be consistent with liberal democratic tenets, such as the rule of law, separation of powers, and respect for human rights as expressed through fair hearings and judicial independence. In contrast, impeachments and impeachment proceedings that do not reflect liberal democratic requirements as constitutionally specified, engender disorder, or what has been characterized as “garrison democracy.”1 The essay also seeks to illuminate the factors underpinning the tendency toward disorder in the impeachment experiences in Nigeria since the return to civil rule in 1999. Methodologically, the essay relies on data derived from existing literature on legislative studies, Hansards, and newspaper reports. Analytically, it compares Nigeria’s impeachment experiences with those of some other countries. Having set the context for this discourse, it is imperative to consider the conceptual and theoretical issues. Conceptual and Theoretical Issues: Democracy, Disorder, and Impeachment The three major concepts central to an appreciation of this discourse are democracy, disorder, and impeachment. The attempt to define and theorize about democracy defies precision, with the result that there are a number of disagreements about its conceptualization.2 This is because democracy, by its nature, evolves and is dynamic.3 Regardless of contentions about the definition and theorization of democracy, there is seeming agreement that democracy is not personal rule and that it is markedly different from tyranny or dictatorship. The major ingredients of democracy, from the liberal perspective, include a constitution, which defines the scope and limits of the various organs of government; rule of law, which emphasizes due process and procedure; separation of powers, intended to cure arbitrariness and personal or tyrannical rule; independence of the judiciary, enabling the courts to control and declare 1 Chris Uchenna Agbedo, “Pragmatics of Garrison Democracy as a Metaphor in Nigerian Media Political Discourse,” Awka Journal of Linguistics and Languages 3, no. 1 (2007): 1-16. 2 David Collier and Steven Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovations in Comparative Research,” World Politics 49, no. 1 (1997): 1320-1346. 3 Olu Okotoni, “The Bureaucracy in Democracy,” in Beyond the Transition to Civil Rule: Consolidating Democracy in Post-Military Nigeria, ed. W. Fawole Alade (Lagos, Nigeria: Amkra Books, 2001), 77-94. 164 | Taiwan Journal of Democracy, Volume 11, No. 2 the actions of any administrative organ that are inconsistent with the constitution illegal, invalid, unconstitutional, and of no effect; and protection of the civil liberties of individuals against arbitrariness in the exercise of power.4 The attributes of democracy are intended to serve political order.5 To Billy John Dudley, political order is synonymous with political stability. He argues that a political system is stable or orderly “if structural changes within can be seen to proceed from the rules governing organizational processes in the society; and such structural changes are endogenously generated.”6 A system of order has the following attributes: (a) rules for guiding and conducting a stable structure of exchange in the political market; (b) operative institutions that truly commit the state to reform political rule and enforce the reforms in order to protect actors; and (c) conformity as a result of norm internalization and external enforcement.7 There are various formulations regarding the factors that are conducive to order in a political system. John Michael Lee maintained that the recognition of rules of political interaction as prescribed by the state is vital to ensuring civil order. Lee also held that the condition of civil order presupposes an adequate number of persons who recognize the authority of a government, and have established communication channels within their society to uphold respect for the limit to violence as an instrument of politics.8 According to Samuel Huntington, political order is functionally related to the structure of social action in a particular society. That is, the social precondition for the construction of order is the return of politics to the dominance of social forces in a country.9 Dudley also advanced conditions for the establishment of political order in society. He held that political order can prevail if the constitutive rules mirror the social structure of society and the patterns of behavior, shaped by the constitutive rules, find expression in the regulative rules of the system.10 In contrast to order, disorder in this discourse means noncommitment of operative institutions to a set of political rules, or nonconformity of actors due to poor norm internalization and external enforcement. Disorder involves 4 Ibid. 5 Thomas M. Magstadst, Understanding Politics: Ideas, Institutions and Issues (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009), 87-88. 6 Billy John Dudley, Instability and Political Order: Politics and Crisis in Nigeria (Ibadan, Nigeria: Ibadan University Press, 1973), 243. 7 Carole Rakodi, “Order and Disorder in African Cities: The Roots and Contemporary Outcomes to Governance and Land Management,” paper presented to the UN-WIDER Project Workshop, Beyond the Tipping Point: Development in the Urban World, Cape Town, June 26-28, 2008. 8 John Michael Lee, African Armies and Civil Order (London: Chatto and Windus, 1969), 2. 9 Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 79. 10 Dudley, Instability and Political Order, 245. December 2015 | 165 disruptive and destructive conflict that is rooted in the struggles and disputes over the exercise of authority.11 Disorder and democracy can be viewed as interwoven rather than mutually exclusive or dichotomous. In a democracy, disorder manifests itself in the erosion of traditional values, the crisis of legitimacy, instability, personal rule, unguarded or irresponsible utterances, the lack of cordiality, heightened suspicion and anxiety, quarrelsomeness, tension, and the inclination toward violent confrontation.12 In this essay, an attempt is made to demonstrate how these elements of disorder as well as traits of democracy are embodied and interwoven in the impeachment of state governors in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. The concept of impeachment, which is widely used in democracies, has been variously defined. Seymour Martin Lipset described impeachment as a legislative and political mechanism to remove a public official from office who has been found guilty of involvement in gross misconduct in the discharge of his assignment. He identified the stages involved in impeachment to include accusation of gross misconduct, trial, and sometimes conviction by legislators.13 In Nigeria, as in most democracies, the descriptions of impeachable officials and impeachable offenses are embodied in the Constitution. Section 188 of the 1999 Constitution states
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