Buhari Can’t Use State Institutions to Fight Personal Battle, Says Ex-NBA President

· Laments JUSUN’s strike hinders people to seek redress in courts

· Urges Buhari not to allow people see him as their greatest enemy

Gboyega Akinsanmi

Amid global outrage that trailed the suspension of Twitter in Nigeria, a former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, Chief Joseph Daudu (SAN) yesterday said President Muhammadu Buhari lacked the power to use state institutions to fight personal battles.

Daudu, also, clarified that the decision of Twitter, an American micro-blogging and social networking service, to suspend Buhari’s personal account “is not a matter between Nigeria and the social networking service.”

He made this clarification in his response to THISDAY’s inquiries on the constitutionality of the federal government’s decision to suspend Twitter operation in Nigeria.

In a statement by his Special Adviser on the Media & Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, Buhari had threatened the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) for promoting insurrection and burning down critical national assets in certain parts of the country.

Buhari had, specifically, threatened that a rude shock “awaits them, and very soon too. Those misbehaving in certain parts of the country were obviously too young to know the travails and loss of lives that attended the Nigerian Civil War.

“Those of us in the fields for 30 months, who went through the war, will treat them in the language they understand. We are going to be very hard sooner than later,” the president had threatened in a statement his media adviser released.

Citing outright violation of its rules and regulations, consequently, Twitter had deleted Buhari’s post threatening the secessionist agitators of the Southeast after some citizens requested the Twitter management to suspend his account.

Soon after Twitter’s decision, the federal government had responded with a stiffer measure, directing the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to suspend indefinitely the operations of the social networking service in Nigeria.

In an incisive retort to THISDAY’s inquiries Saturday, Daudu explained that every Nigerian, who operates a Twitter account, “does so in his own name, even if the underlying objective is to promote the objectives and aspirations of his constituency, business outfit or even office.”

He, therefore, said Buhari, though a very eminent personality “is an individual customer of Twitter with no greater rights than the other millions of persons who have also subscribed to Twitter and agreed to their rules and conditions of membership.

“Twitter perceived that Buhari broke its rules and applying one of the sanctions open to it removed the offending tweet. Whether the account was blocked or suspended is really not the issue at this point in time.

“What is important is that our president was accordingly sanctioned for breaking the rules of an outfit he freely subscribed to. Put in very basic terms, Twitter is an information disseminating club for like-minded people who have agreed to be bound by its rules. Once Twitter throws a person out of its clubhouse, that person is presumed to be in breach of its Rules.”

If Buhari was aggrieved with the decision of the Twitter management that suspended his personal account, however, Daudu observed that a number of remedies “are open to the president to seek redress including leaving the said platform.”

He, therefore, noted that Buhari lacked the power to use state apparatus and institutions “to hit or get back at Twitter, which is what he has done in retaliation by banning them from Nigeria using state institutions such as the NBC and the NCC to deprive all Nigerians from their access to Twitter.”

By Buhari’s personal riposte, NBA’s former president noted that millions of Nigerians had been denied their constitutional right to access information, impart knowledge, associate with persons of like minds on a local and even international level.

Consequently, Daudu observed that the action by the Twitter management “is not an action against Nigeria’s political, diplomatic or other state interest.”

Without doubt, according to the senior advocate, it is an assault on Buhari’s large ego and well-deserved pride. But Buhari’s ego or pride is nowhere close to that of US President Donald Trump who received worse treatment from Twitter.”

Rather than suspending Twitter operations in Nigeria, Daudu observed that Buhari should have sought redress in court or through arbitration and damages for any wrong that might have been done to him.

He explained that taxpayers “are paying for the running of these institutions and not the president. The institutions are not his personal property. It is clear that Buhari’s personal rights are not superior to those of other Nigerians who carry out polite, legitimate business on Twitter.”

Daudu said the president used the power of office to supplant their constitutional right to freedom of information and association as guaranteed by a plethora of legislations basically, Chapter 4 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), African Charter of Human and Peoples Rights and the United Nations Charter on Human Rights.

He, specifically, noted that all the legal instruments “are enforceable in our local courts. People have a cause of action against the president in his official capacity because he used the power of office to supplant their constitutional right.”

He, however, said people might not be able “to enforce their constitutional rights under these legal instruments because judicial workers nationwide under the aegis of Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) are on strike.

By implication, according to the senior lawyer, this means that millions of Nigerians are effectively left without a remedy against the most brazen assault against people’s rights in Nigeria since colonial times.

If the courts had been open, Daudu argued that the president could not have embarked on his decision to suspend the operation of Twitter in Nigeria because he would have been slapped almost immediately with an injunction restraining him and all the institutions of state that have enforced his unlawful orders from doing so and the event would have quietly passed away.

NBA’s former president, therefore, said Nigerians “are only left with the weapon of public opinion “to utterly condemn the president’s decision to suspend Twitter operation.”

While he admitted that Buhari “is a tested leader with numerous diplomatic win-win options to deal with such minor matters,” the NBA leader said the president’s failure “to be more pragmatic and less hawkish may be due to the militant and excitable lieutenants and assistants that surround him.”

He, therefore, appealed to the president “to treat Nigerians more as human beings with rights. We mean no harm. We just want to be governed properly and peacefully, with access to all the rights given freely to us by the 1999 Constitution.

“We just want access to the right to live in safety and in a secure environment, the right to live like normal human beings and the right to have access to justice, equity, freedom of association, movement and information. Nigerians mean no harm.

“We just do not want a situation where through the spectrum and lens of fear, we see our leaders as our greatest enemies. God Almighty save us. If all fails and they do not change, God will spare us to and beyond 2023 for us to decide our fate going forward.”