The rule of law matters

“A nation cannot find peace in the world community, it cannot be respected and trusted, it cannot lead other nations  if it does not respect the rule of law.” – Vice-Admiral Murtala Nyako

The bad news is that the egregious assault on the rule of law in the name of governance is alive and well. Take one recent case. Nyesom Wike, the mercurial governor of Rivers State, ordered the demolition of two hotels, Prudent Hotel and Elemeteh Hotel, in the state on May 10 because they ran afoul of his Executive Order 6. The order, according to him, expressly forbids hotels in the state from operating during the lockdown as part of government efforts to contain the spread of the global killer virus, COVID-19.

In a statement through his media aide, Simeon Nwakaudu, Wike said: “We said no hotel should operate within this period. We said if any hotel operates, government will bring it down that hotel. We are doing what we told the people that we are going to do.”

You can hear the hollow sound of chest beating. The macho man has kept his promise. But instead of being hailed, he has been roundly condemned for his action, as indeed, he should be. What he did was brutal, high-handed and the height of lawlessness. His power to punish the hotel owners in that manner is an assumed executive right. It is strange to the laws of the land. I am sure the hotel owners would have the guts to challenge him in court. Our rulers get away with murder, in a manner of speaking, because we are too timid to challenge their reckless use of power.

His defenders argue that the hotel owners were aware of Executive Order 6 and should have themselves to blame for breaching it and being punished for it. That view is both facile and dishonest. The hotel owners might have been reckless but what law did they really break?

No one would disagree with the right of the governor to take such steps as he deems necessary, including legislation, to contain the spread of COVID-19 and pull his people through these tough, rough and trying times in one piece. But the governor has clearly assumed extra-legal powers and turned himself into the law-maker and the law executor. It is plainly wrong and inimical to respect for and the defence of human and personal rights guaranteed by the supreme law of the land, the much amended 1999 constitution. What we are dealing with here is plain autocracy, a one-man rule characterised by cynical disrespect for the rule of law.

An executive order is strange to our laws. Our constitution has no known room for it. It is only an executive fiat at best used for administrative purposes. When President Buhari resorted to it in his first term to arguably strengthen his hands in the anti-graft war he even suggested that human rights be suspended. No one supported him. No democratic nation can afford to operate two sets of laws – one derived from the legislature and the other instituted and enforced by the executive arm of government.

I saw the danger then that given the inclination of some state governors to accept that the president is always right, they too would walk the same path and in the end, ignore the laws and trample on our fundamental rights as citizens. It is a path a man like Wike would not hesitate to take – and he did not hesitate to take it. It is not impossible that he is not alone among the state governors. Autocracy is attractive to most rulers.

Under our laws, the legislature makes the laws and the courts interpret them. If anyone is suspected of breaking the law, the constitution says he must be taken before a judge who will decide his fate. If he finds him innocent, he sets him free; if he finds he has transgressed the law, he metes out appropriate punishment to him. That is what Wike should have done in this case and test his executive order 6 as a law. If every state governor assumes the right to enact and enforce extra-legal legislation as an executive order, then we are heading for a dark period of anarchy. To add anarchy to our blooming cocktail of security problems is to tie Olumo Rock to the feet of our nation. Executive Order 6 is not a law within the meaning of the laws of the land. The hotel owners did not break the law because the law Wike claimed they broke does not exist.

Wike and governors of like minds should pull back from the path of a rule based on extra-legal instruments such as executive orders. Unjust administrative actions must not be allowed to masquerade as laws made by one man and enforced by the same man. In any case, it is considered right and proper that citizens have a moral duty to disobey unjust laws. Bill Clinton, former US president, once said that you do not do something because you can; you do it because it is right. Wike did what he did because he could; not because it was right.

It is disturbing that the observance of the rule of law remains a major problem in our country. It is sabotaging our national efforts to grow democracy in accordance with best practices in the beloved system of government. The rule of law is about respect for and the protection of human and individuals under fair and just laws. It is simple enough and yet complicated.

It is complicated by the human tendency to lord it over others either because they have the power and believe they can use it as they will or they have the money and the influence to bend the law itself and sit back and watch the camel saunter through the eye of the needle. You do not need prescription glasses to see the huge question mark on our democratic credentials as we struggle to unchain our democracy from the residues of military autocracy.

I began this with a quotation from Admiral Nyako. I took it from his short address on the rule of law at the APC summit in Abuja on March 6, 2014. I end with the second paragraph to the first quotation. He said: “The rule of law exists so that all men and women are equal, regardless of where you live, regardless of what you do, regardless of what party you support. All are equal.”

Mankind has always had problems with the rule of law but every nation, even if grudgingly, recognises that the rule of law is at the heart of the social contract. Destroy it and you destroy the social contract and the basis for the community of man and the institution of government. Individuals rulers may be abuse it or bend it to their whims and caprices but the rule of law is an open wound. It cannot be ignored because it opens itself to the conscience of political leaders at all levels. The rule of law matters.