Are the darks days of impunity gone, Mr President?

President Muhammadu Buhari was apparently up beat about this. Last week, he told the leadership of the Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors who went to congratulate him on his re-election that the dark days of impunity were gone for good. That would be nice, very nice. The prospects that we are about to have a new Nigeria in which we all live by the rule of law and no big man arbitrarily imposes his will on the rest of us, feels truly wonderful; slightly headachy even.

I have tried but found myself increasingly wishing to believe the president. I see no signs yet that the power of the powerful to do as they wish is about to be diminished in any way. Or that the rule of law in a constitutional government would become our collective article of faith.  So that the weak are protected from the strong and the poor from the rich. Men and women go to jail for looting the treasury but none has ever headed that way because he turned himself into a dictator in a democracy. Impunity is not a criminal offence. It is a moral offence for which no one is directly punished. The politicians are the cardinals of the culture of impunity because they are the men and women of immense political power.

Just a few days after the president spoke, the leadership of his party proclaimed Senator Ahmed Lawan the next senate president. The position was not just zoned to the North-East; it was zoned to Lawan by name. The national chairman of APC, Adams Oshiomhole, the only comrade left south of the Sahara, told the senators at a dinner hosted by the president last week that the party’s decision could not be questioned by anyone. The senators could take it or leave it. No shaking. It shows you how truly entrenched the culture of impunity is in our political parties.

I am sure everyone but Oshiomhole could easily see that this was pure dictatorship. Choosing the leadership of the national assembly is, arguably, the responsibility of the legislators. The party and the presidency could have a say but they must do so behind the scenes in order to create the right impression that the legislators are free to do as they wish in the legislative chambers as per the separation of powers. Now, they cannot enjoy that basic freedom to which they are entitled anymore because the party has assumed the unquestionable right to impose their leaders on them. This is bad, very bad.

Here is Senator Mohammed Ndume’s reaction to Oshiomhole’s dictatorial pronouncement the day after quoted by Daily Trust of March 27: “What took place at the presidential dinner in Aso Rock where Oshiomhole as party chairman announced Senator Ahmed Lawan as senate president was very shocking to me and many of my colleagues. Oshiomhole in making the pronouncement or endorsement did not allow me or senators Danjuma Goje and Abdullahi Adamu, widely known to be in the race for the position, to say anything.”

This clearly does not point to a better tomorrow sans impunity. It reminds us, rather cruelly, that nothing really is about to change in the entrenched culture of impunity at all levels in the land. This dark development in APC takes us back to the dark days of PDP, once the biggest party in Africa, set, according to Vincent Ogbulafor, to rule for 60 years in the first instance.

But PDP soon became a diminished and vanishing party in Africa and its sun set before it reached its zenith in the sky. And this for one and only one reason: impunity. The leadership of the party, feeling that nothing could change their political circumstances, allowed themselves, as men of power often do, the luxury of wallowing in their unquestionable power and political immortality.

It did not do the party much good. When it began to haemorrhage on account of the disenchantment of its members with the pronounced impunity of its leaders, no one could stanch it to save the party from losing the 2015 general elections. In case Oshiomhole needs some tutoring in this, let me tell him that imposition is the most visible evidence of the culture of impunity. When, as he did last week, he made his decision and simply rammed it down the throat of the senators, he served clear and unambiguous notice that he does not expect anyone to question his authority.

He will not stop at the senate presidency. We should expect him to soon tell us the successor to Yakubu Dogara as speaker of the House of Representatives. This is not the way of democracy; it is the detestable way of dictatorship. Sooner or later, it would give rise to murmurs of dissent and the bleeding would begin. Mark my words, it would not do the party much good eventually. If impunity ill-served PDP in the past, it would be naïve to expect it to serve APC any better. It would be rather complacent of the president to think that impunity is now just a forgotten word in the dictionary. I am afraid its dark days are not over; they are here with us.

I confess that I understand why Oshiomhole and the leadership of his party probably chose this option. They want to avoid what happened in 2015 when the party lost its voice in the struggle for leadership in the national assembly. But as Ndume said, he could have handled it much better and avoided hurting the feelings of the senators who threw their hats in the ring in the contest for senate president. The fear of Oshiomhole would not be the beginning of wisdom. It would be beginning of disenchantment with his style of leadership. The problem is that those who believe in impunity as their unquestionable right of party leadership have problems, serious problems, with being modest in the exercise of their enormous powers. This might mark the beginning of a progressive haemorrhaging in APC with predictable consequences unless the comrade pulls back from the path of crass dictatorship and impunity.

Watch it, comrade.