PREMIUM TIMES
The State Security Service (SSS) on Wednesday said it uncovered a plot by “misguided” political actors to set aside the constitution and install an Interim National Government (ING) in Nigeria.
In a statement signed by its spokesperson, Peter Afunanya, the Nigerian secret police also said it has identified those behind the plot, but it did not name them. However, it vowed to use all its force to frustrate the plot.
“The illegality is totally unacceptable in a democracy and to the peace-loving Nigerians. This is even more so that the machination is taking place after the peaceful conduct of the elections in most parts of the country,” the statement partly read.
“The planners, in their many meetings, have weighed various options, which include, among others, to sponsor endless violent mass protests in major cities to warrant a declaration of State of Emergency. Another is to obtain frivolous court injunctions to forestall the inauguration of new executive administrations and legislative houses at the Federal and State levels.”
The SSS statement came a week after the vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), Datti Baba-Ahmed, said in a live interview on Channels Television that the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, must not be sworn in on 29 May. His main reason for opposing the inauguration is that the ruling party candidate in the 25 February presidential election did not score 25 per cent of the votes cast in the FCT.
Thus, Mr Baba-Ahmed likened swearing in Mr Tinubu as president to “ending democracy”, and asked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Olukayode Ariwoola, not to do it.
“By clear and unambiguous provisions of the Nigerian constitution, which must not be breached, Tinubu has not satisfied the requirement to be declared president-elect. Accordingly, there is no president-elect for Nigeria now. Because the declared one violates the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and I know what I’m saying.
“Swearing in a ticket that has not met the constitutional requirement is ending democracy. That is indeed the correct interpretation. You cannot swear in people who have not met the constitutional requirement. If you do it, you have done something unlawful and unconstitutional.
“Mr President, do not hold that inauguration. CJN, your lordship, do not participate in unconstitutionality. It is extreme and I’m saying it. It was more extreme for Yakubu to issue that certificate. It was reckless.”
Mr Baba-Ahmed’s Labour Party and the Peoples Democratic Party had raised other issues with the conduct of the elections and had demanded that INEC investigated the issues before declaring a winner. Speaking two days after the election and while the results were being collated, former president Olusegun Obasanjo had also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to prevail on the chairman of INEC, Mahmood Yakubu, to suspend the collation of the results and conduct fresh polls in areas where electoral officials were alleged to have compromised in malpractice.
“To know which stations or polling units were manipulated, let a Committee of INEC staff and representatives of the four major political parties with the Chairman of Nigerian Bar Association look into what must be done to have hitch-free elections next Saturday. Mr President, may your plan and hope for leaving a legacy of free, fair, transparent and credible election be realised,” Mr Obasanjo stated.
But the presidency dismissed Mr Obasanjo’s remarks as mischievous and vowed that Mr Buhari would not intervene in the process.
In the days before the SSS issued its statement, a group of protesters had marched to the National Assembly to demand the installation of an interim government instead, and then to the Defence Headquarters in Abuja to urge the military to take over the government.
However, the calls for an interim national government and allegations of plots to subvert the Nigerian constitution predated the 2023 general elections.
ING Proposal
A few days before the presidential election, the Director, New Media of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council, Femi Fani-Kayode, had alleged that a plan was afoot to subvert the 2023 general elections and impose an interim government on Nigeria. The SSS immediately condemned the statement as inimical to national security and invited him for interrogation. After appearing before the secret police, Mr Fani-Kayode retracted the statement and expressed regrets for making it.
Femi Fani-Kayode
However, last April, many months before Mr Fani-Kayode’s alarm, Afe Babalola, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and founder of Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, had proposed that plans for the 2023 general elections be shelved and an interim government constituted to run the country, draft a new constitution and organise the next round of elections. But the proposal, on which the eminent lawyer was believed to also be speaking the mind of his friend, Mr Obasanjo, was universally condemned But after the former president ignored calls on him to clarify his position on the issue, received no further traction.
That was until early February when Mr Tinubu took his campaign train to Ekiti, where he alleged that a plan was indeed being made to scuttle the election and introduce an interim government. “They want to provoke you to violence so that the election will be disrupted and postponed, and they can cunningly introduce an interim government, that’s their plot. But this will backfire because we are wiser,” the former Lagos governor said.
Although Mr Tinubu did not mention names or elaborate on the alleged scheme, many observers found it disturbing that such concern was coming from the candidate of the ruling party so close to the general elections.
Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna later echoed Mr Tinubu’s alarm, saying the monetary policy introduced by CBN as well as a protracted scarcity of fuel were part of the plot to sabotage the elections. Mr El-Rufai went further to indicate where the danger lurked. He said some elements in the presidential villa in Abuja wanted to sabotage the elections, having failed in their bid to impose a presidential candidate on the ruling party.
However, when the alarm continued after the elections, presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu firmly denied any suggestion of a plot for an unconstitutional interim government. “The President looks forward to handing over the reins of power to his elected successor. This will happen on May 29, 2023, as the Constitution requires it,” Mr Shehu said. “The days of unelected Nigerian leaders, and those who outstay their welcome by unconstitutionally extending it, have gone.”
Inglorious history
There is a brief and inglorious history of an interim national government in Nigeria. The contraption was invented and foisted on the country by Ibrahim Babangida in August 1993 when his eight-year military rule and elaborate transition schedule ended in a political impasse. The Nigerian Army general had contrived the impasse by annulling the peaceful presidential election of 12 June 1993 that was to highlight the transition to civil rule. After annulling the election on 23 June, Mr Babangida realised that he could no longer extend his rule beyond the 27 August date that he had set after many previous shifts. In a television broadcast in the last week of June, he said a new presidential election would be conducted in July. But this was firmly rejected by Nigerians who had locked down many cities in unprecedented defiance of a military government. Thus on 26 August 1993, Mr Babangida “stepped aside” and set up the ING to assume control. He chose a respected private sector leader, Ernest Shonekan, as the head. He said the interim government would organise a new presidential election and hand over within six months. Alas!. the interim government lasted even shorter and remains the shortest-lived government in Nigerian history.Late Chief Ernest Shonekan
Indeed, the ING was a Greek gift. Mr Babangida had curiously left behind in the army his ally in many military coups, Sani Abacha, and appointed him as defence secretary and deputy to Mr Shonekan, ostensibly to protect the ING from being removed by the military. However, after a court declared the ING illegal, Mr Abacha quickly restored full-blown military rule when he overthrew Mr Shonekan on 17 November, just 83 days after Mr Babangida’s forced departure. Mr Abacha ruled with an iron fist for the next four and a half years and was concluding his own scheme to transmute into a civilian president when he suddenly died on the night of 8 June 1998.Ibrahim Babangida, Former Nigerian head of state
Under the ING, the National Assembly and state governors elected in 1992 remained in office but the legislative scope of the parliament was severely narrowed by military decree. However, when Mr Abacha took over in the November putsch, he dissolved the National Assembly altogether and replaced elected governors with military officers.
Although the 1993 presidential election later confirmed to have been won by Moshood Abiola is still considered one of the “freest and fairest” in Nigerian history, Mr Babangida was able to quickly persuade politicians, including members of Mr Abiola’s Social Democratic Party (SDP), to accept the annulment by dangling before them the carrot of a new election in which Mr Abiola would not be allowed to stand. When the proposed new election became untenable within the remaining days of Mr Babangida in office, the politicians also scrambled for appointment into the ING. They abandoned the fight against the annulment of the 12 June election, and later against Mr Ahacha’s military dictatorship. They left the fight to the media, labour and students’ unions, civil society organisations, and a few pro-democracy organisations such as the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO).Former Head of State, Sani Abacha
Ten years earlier in December 1983, the military had also exploited post-election emotions to truncate the Second Republic, which had arrived just four years earlier after 13 years of the first military interregnum. The election that brought Shehu Shagari to power in October 1979 was closely fought and the outcome was bitterly challenged by the four candidates that he defeated and their parties. The situation was the same in the next election of 1983, such that when the soldiers struck in 1983, citing the allegation of fraudulent polls among its reasons, supporters of Mr Shagari’s opponents welcomed the adventurous soldiers as messiahs.
The 1983 coup that installed Major-General Muhammadu Buhari was the fourth that succeeded in Nigeria after the country gained independence from British colonialism in 1960. When Mr Buhari himself was overthrown in a palace coup 20 months later by his Army Chief of Staff, Mr Babangida, it continued a game of musical chairs by politically exposed soldiers. That game did not end until Mr Abacha died in 1998. Abdulsalami Abubakar put an end to the game by quickly transitioning Nigeria to the Fourth Republic, which has witnessed the longest cycle of regular general elections highlighted by the country’s only case of the defeat of a sitting president.
What would Interim Government mean in 2023?
The current allegation of anti-democratic schemes is raising concerns for many reasons, aside from the indication that some Nigerian politicians and their supporters have not learnt from history to appreciate the democratic progress that has been made under the Fourth Republic.
The only case in which the Constitution envisages a government not directly elected by the people for a stated period is captured in Section 135 (3) of the Nigerian Constitution. The section states: “If the Federation is at war in which the territory of Nigeria is physically involved and the President considers that it is not practicable to hold elections, the National Assembly may by resolution extend the period of four years mentioned in subsection (2) of this section from time to time, but no such extension shall exceed a period of six months at any one time.”
But this section of the Constitution does not apply to the present circumstances as Nigeria is not at war and the elections have been duly conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission) INEC.
The Constitution, thus, has clear provisions for the change of government. But an interim government is not one of its provisions and thus can only be imposed by an unconstitutional force. President Buhari, whose tenure expires at the last minute on 28 May, cannot put such a government in place.
The Constitution is very clear about the tenure of the presidents and state governors: they are elected to a term of four years, and can only be elected to a second and final term of an additional four years. Any extension of the term is a violation of the Constitution, the law which every elected person swears at takeoff point to respect and defend.
In that regard, the tenure of Buhari’s administration effectively ends on May 29, 2023. And the outgoing president has assured Nigerians that he is eager to hand over power and return to Daura, his hometown.
Since he is poised to hand over to the candidate of his own party, it is unreasonable to expect the president to set aside the Constitution and hand over power to an unelected successor. This is despite the documented infighting in the ruling party and its government. The government has since set up a transition committee consisting of his officials and nominees of the president-elect. There is no fact on the ground to warn that Mr Buhari is engaged in a high-level subterfuge in that direction.President-Elect, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
2023 Elections
Aside from the strange calls for an interim government or military takeover, the 2023 presidential election has not produced any strange element, that is not positive. As PREMIUM TIMES argued in its editorial of 13 March, flaws were recorded in the conduct of the election. But the poll more significantly evinces steady progress in the nation’s democratic and electoral processes in the Fourth Republic. Since 2011, Nigerian elections have largely delivered the will of the voters.
And to be fair to candidates and parties challenging the outcome of this poll in court, and their supporters protesting peacefully on the streets, there is nothing anti-democratic or nefarious in such steps. Indeed, only once before has a Nigerian presidential election escaped challenge in the courts. Ironically, that was the 2015 election that delivered Nigeria’s only opposition victory and change of power between political parties at the federal level. By challenging the result of the 25 February poll in court, politicians are thus only behaving to type. The Constitution envisages disputes over election results and those who have taken their grievances to court are following the path set by the Constitution.
However, those seeking to disrupt the constitutional order and transition schedule are not. The authorities have a duty to act beyond the warnings that have been issued by the SSS if they have credible evidence of a plot to subvert the Constitution.
Africa is facing intense conflicts in many countries due to economic and social grievances on the one hand and violent religious extremism on the other. There is a breakdown of the democratic and even the political order in some countries in the region and military interventions have made a return in countries like Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso and Guinea. The current crisis in the Sahel is linked to the geopolitics of the return of the military and unconstitutional government. Nigeria must continue to be a beacon of hope for the continent by sustaining its democratic journey
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