Hon Philip Shaibu finally joined the growing list of deputy governors who got impeached by the State House of Assembly. As at the last count, Shaibu makes the list 17. And of course, in all cases, the legislature always acted out the script drafted by the executive branch, the governor in particular.
Shaibu was no different. His major sin was his ambition to succeed his boss, Governor Godwin Obaseki, who saw his deputy’s constitutional right to do so as an affront.
Shaibu, a relatively experienced politician, knew what he was up against. He was definitely not naive. It was not so much as the governor having a preferred successor than his angst about his deputy‘s “disloyalty” to him. And so, as far back as last year, Shaibu sounded the alarm bells of the impeachment plot.
Although the move stalled in what seemed like a political checkmate, many discerning Nigerians knew it was only a matter of time before he was removed from office.
First, he was ejected from his office space and then after the conduct of a parallel primary election in which Shaibu emerged as the candidate, the impeachment process resumed.
The sins of the sacked deputy governors were always the same: falling out of political favor with the governor for whatever reason.
It’s no longer a secret that governors have operated as emperors for the better part of the nation’s return to democratic rule in 1999.
As some would argue, since they assumed or took custody of local governments’ purse, governors, with the turn of each dispensation, have morphed into mini Caesars of sorts.
Series of attempts to cut their expanding excesses to size have failed. Sadly, the state Assemblies have not helped much in this regard, having failed to live up to their constitutionally empowered responsibility of checking the excesses of the head of the executive. Not even the judiciary in the states has been spared from the governors’ tight grasp.
They have since spread their muscled tentacles onto political parties where they call the shots either in the face of a weak centre or where their parties do not have control in the centre. In some cases, governors with huge finances, extend their influence into other states.
This, of course, is not to solely blame the governors who have gotten away with unbridled acts like removing their deputies on a whim, for so long because of how weak and malleable institutions meant to check their excesses choose to become.
Perhaps the perception of deputy governors as “spare tires” has not helped much. But we think it’s more than that. The political system which encourages unbridled display of power does not help in the short and long run.
In the short term, we have seen such moves to remove deputies from office distract from governance. The political back and forth can be divisive. Although some would chalk it up to politics, however, it is obvious that such politics isn’t progressive, regardless of how pragmatic its proponents would want the rest of us to believe.
For a country that has made more decline than progress in provision of quality education, sound healthcare, robust security, inclusive economic growth, job creation and youth employment, we, as a newspaper, cannot be engrossed in any form of politics that does not push the nation in the direction of these basics.
And from the analysis of removal of deputies, so far, it has been purely about the politics of self preservation in its crudest form and an abuse of the power and other state institutions.
We posit that it is time to let politics not overly interface with governance. Of course, as we have seen with the poor state of affairs in the country, bad politics has not helped in any way.
People, it must be stressed, should be able to express their inalienable rights especially if they are in consonance with the provisions of the constitution. They ought to be allowed to dream and aspire as far as the law permits.
As a country, we must reject the deployment of state institutions for partisan personal political benefits.
We reiterate the call for state legislatures to resist the pressure to be willing tools in the hands of the executive. Our democratic experience is supposed to be defined and enriched by the legislative arm of government. They should not allow the polity drift totally into a pseudo-military arrangement where only the executive and judiciary functioned like we had in the days of military rule in Nigeria. It is our considered opinion that such emerging trend must be rigorously discouraged.
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