‘Most Powerful Presidents’

Dialogue With Nigeria BY AKIN OSUNTOKUN

“The Federal Military Government hereby decrees as follows: Subject to the provisions of this Decree, Nigeria shall on 24th May 1966 (in this decree referred to as ‘the appointed day’) cease to be a Federation and shall accordingly as from that day be a Republic, by the name of the Republic of Nigeria, consisting of the whole of the territory which immediately before that day was comprised in the Federation- The Unification Decree: No. 34 of 1966” —General JTU Aguiyi-Ironsi?

Of late, I have repeatedly read the citations of two political leaders as “most powerful president”. They are Presidents Donald Trump and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the United States and Nigeria respectively. The reference (most powerful President) has been characteristic of the incumbency of both men in their United States and Nigerian jurisdictions. For the former, the jurisdiction, de facto, actually transcends the US to encompass the whole world in a negative reenactment of Pax Americana.

Power

Max Weber defined power as the ‘’ ‘chance that an individual in a social relationship can achieve his or her own will even against the resistance of others’. Others have similarly defined it as ‘the capacity to change the probability of action’. In the theory of power, a modern state is defined by the attribute of sovereignty over a given territory and monopoly over the power of coercion therein. Mindful of Lord Acton’s refrain that ‘power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’, I argue that power, by itself, is neutral and it is not intrinsically a corrupting agency or instrument. It is subject to its application by incumbent wielders of power.

According to the theory of benevolent dictatorship, authoritarian leadership can be exercised for the positive transformation of society, as exemplified by China. The use or abuse of power follows from the logic and dialectic that every idea poses an alternative, to every thesis is an antithesis, every tendency potentially generates its own contradiction. The presumption of a functional society (and design polity) is to anticipate, mitigate and preclude the tendency for abuse of power through deliberate institutionalisation of an inbuilt system of checks and balances as, for instance, was the practice in the old Oyo empire.

Yoruba Antiquity

Argues Sklar, “In theory and in practice, the powers of the Yoruba kings were regulated by custom and limited institutionally by countervailing organs of the state. Unlike the Northern emirates, the Yoruba monarchies were constitutional rather than despotic. All decisions of the Alafin (King) of Oyo required the approval of his council of chiefs. In former times, a gift of parrot’s eggs from the leader of the council was a sign to the Alafin that his death was desired by the chiefs and the people. Invariably the Alafin complied by taking poison, so the threat of a dread gift was a safeguard against tyrannical rule. As remarked in an authoritative study, the proscription of this custom by the British “dislocated the checks and balances of the old constitution.”.

Another unique traditional check on power excess in Yoruba antiquity is the instrument of women naked protest. “Women naked protest is a powerful, traditional, and often last-resort tool of resistance, particularly in Nigeria and other parts of Africa, used to demand justice and express extreme outrage. By exposing their bodies, women—often mothers and grandmothers—transform themselves from passive subjects into active agents, using shame and cultural curses to confront authorities”.

A variant of this quaint tradition was the specific incident of the activism of the Abeokuta Women Union, AWU, (spearheaded by the nationalist leader, Mrs Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti in the mid to late 1940s). ‘In mid- October 1946, she led nearly a thousand women in a march to the palace of Alake in Abeokuta to demand the abolition of direct taxation’. the women used soft porn songs such as the one translated below to ridicule the Alake: “Idowu [Alake], for a long time you have used your penis as a mark of authority that you are our husband. Today we shall reverse the order and use our vagina to play the role of husband on you… O you men, vagina’s head will seek vengeance.” The potency of the protests is evident in the resultant abdication of Alake (paramount ruler) of Abeokuta.

Between Nigeria and the United States

It is not a coincidence that both Nigeria and the US share the commonality of the presidential system of government in which the executive power is concentrated and consolidated in the President unlike the Westminster (parliamentary) model in which the executive power is vested in the Prime Minister and members of the cabinet under the principle of collective responsibility. The model is further distinguished by the fact that they (cabinet) are members of the parliament where the Prime minister is the leader of the majority party and recognised as first among equals. The Presidential system and the Westminster model are synonymous with the US and the United Kingdom, UK.

It is plausible to argue that the designation of executive power in one individual theoretically renders the President more powerful than his (Prime Minister) counterpart in the cabinet system. Cognisant of this trademark, the American constitution stipulates the countervailing doctrine of the separation of powers among the three organs of government, namely, the legislature, the judiciary and the executive in which the legislature and Judiciary are mandated to serve as checks on the exercise of the executive power. It is the extent to which these two organs are independent and proactive (in the performance of this role) that the discretionary and expansive latitude of the powers of a President can be restrained.

In contemporary America, we have seen this notion tested now and again. The numerical dominance of the Republican party (Trump’s party) nominees in the Supreme Court and elected members of the Congress is reflected in the relative indisposition of the two countervailing organs to rein in the authoritarian impulse and the licentious misuse of power by President Donald Trump. Regardless of the extenuating tradition of partisan nominations to the American Supreme Court, the practice has often resulted in the Court becoming an enabler of the excesses of incontinent leaders like Trump.

On a far more subversive scale and much less restrained is the Republican dominated Congress where overt and outright partisanship is the name of the game. This inclination is prompted by the individual vulnerability of Republican Congressmen to the demagoguery of the American president whose relationship with the base of the party is akin to that of a mobster (and his mafia foot soldiers). With this status he can literally make and unmake the career of any Congressman whose political survival is dependent on the support of the base of the Republican party.

In Nigeria, the road to dictatorship began in January 1966 when a military coup terminated the First republic and proclaimed Decree 34 (which abrogated federalism) as the groundnorm. The inherent logic of a military intervention and any dictatorship for that matter is that might is right and it is as dictated by whoever wields the upper hand in the context of balance of terror.

This attendant logic was more brutally enacted in the counter coup of 1966 and thereafter became institutionalised by the outcome of the Nigerian civil war in 1970. The military dictatorship inaugurated in 1966 lasted till 1979 and its unitarist ethic ( the systematic derogation of federalism) was henceforth projected into Nigeria’s subsequent constitutions and political practice.

The military intervention significantly resulted in the displacement and replacement of the First republic Westminster parliamentary model with the Presidential system in which executive power is vested in one person (the commander in chief) as in top down command structure of the military institution. This federalism abnegating evolution gathered momentum with the endless creation of states and consequent flagellation and disempowerment of the supposed second tier of the constitutional/political structure.

The ensuing over-concentration and centralisation of powers in Abuja predisposes the constitutionally enabled wielder of power at the centre to arbitrary, discriminatory and unaccountable exercise of power. The precursor to what we now contend with as the all powerful president is the appropriation of the entire three organs of government, the judiciary, legislature and the executive into the singular orbit of the president. This lapse into civilian dictatorship is an inherited legacy and historically inevitable.

Pertinent references

An “intensively dysfunctional system of centralized ‘ethno-distributive’ federalism” has emerged: federalism in Nigeria is subverted by de facto hypercentralization, as resource distribution devolves top-down from the center (Rotimi Suberu) .

According to Michael Oriade ‘the slew of defections into the APC are rarely driven by ideology or policy disagreements. Instead, they reflect a calculated survival strategy in a political system where many believe that control of the presidency determines access to party nominations and ultimately the outcome of elections. For others, decampment serves an even more troubling purpose. Politicians facing allegations of corruption or abuse of office often find refuge within the ruling party, where political protection appears more readily available’.

‘The knock-on effect of Tinubu becoming president autonomous of Buhari or any godfather has resolved into a commensurate boost to his authority and power as president. Power is after all the capacity to realise one’s objective regardless of anyone’s contrary wishes’ (Akin Osuntokun).

‘The absence of the President and the Yoruba (the seemingly indispensable guarantor of a meaningful and sustainable opposition in Nigeria) from the ranks of the opposition has created a most consequential vacuum in contemporary power politics and precipitated the emergence of Tinubu as a powerful President’ (Akin Osuntokun).

‘Increasing immiseration has resulted in the weaponization of poverty as an instrument of power. Given the quantum of patronage and largesse accruable to the President, he is far ahead of any other contending power politics player in the deployment of this instrument’ (Akin Osuntokun).

Concluding remarks

Presidents seeking reelection are at their most vulnerable hence the paranoia of wanting to overdetermine the outcome of the election even before the elections are held. The more vulnerable they are, the higher the degree of the desire to dominate their environment and emasculate the opposition. Some have contended that

President Tinubu brings to the table the lessons he had learnt in his erstwhile career as opposition leader which lessons he may potentially deploy to disorganise the ranks of his opponents. In effect, he has become the master of the game who knows where all the skeletons are buried. The more prolific he gets in the exercise of his vast powers, the more he would attract the charges of dictatorship before whom all other contenders lay prostrate.