Immunity Does Not Protect President From Criticism For Bad Government Policy, Corruption Impunity And Injustice By Ibrahim Alhassan

Section 308 of the 1999 Constitution of the FRN (As Amended)
provide immunity for President, Vice-President, Governor and Dep.
Governor from all form of frivolous, vexatious or baseless
litigation in respect of personal or criminal proceedings that
would distract him from running business of governance.

Unfortunately, the Nigerian constitution which imported immunity
clause from the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 has failed to place an
equilibrium between the clause and public interest. According to
section 2(1) of the Act(supra), “Subject to the provisions of this
Act, the Crown shall be subject to all those liabilities in tort to
which, if it were a private person of full age and capacity…” This
shows that the Crown liability as recognised by the Act promote
public interest through the enforcement of legal liability is
limited.

Interestingly, the above section 308 did not in anyway shield
the President and others from being criticized by patriotic
Nigerians against bad government policy, corruption, impunity and
injustice. The Supreme Court in the case of Bola Tinubu vs. IMB
Securities Plc (2001) interpreted section 308 and further held that
it has been manipulated to promote injustice and impunity.

Since, democracy is view as government of the people, by the
people and for the people; it is the constitutional rights of the
people to organized a lawful and peaceful protest to bring
government attention against it bad policy that is detrimental to
the people, and imported injustice against poor Nigerians. Any
attempt to used state apparatus like the Police, DSS, Military etc
as a repressive instrument against dissenting voices amount to
naked abuse of power and absolute disregard of constitutional
rights by the President, who is a one time beneficiary to this
rights before he became intoxicated with power.

It is evident that the purpose of the above immunity clause has
been manipulated by the present government to promote injustice,
impunity and corruption. A very simple example, this government is
notoriously known to be floating court orders and siphoning the
country’s resources through her change agents. Shamelessly
defending and justifying the floating courts orders through the
Attorney General of the Federation in the name of so called public
interest.

The concatenation and conflating of the forgoing is that
Nigerians has the constitutional rights to protest against
injustice, impunity and corruption carrying out by this government.
The open rape against the rule of law, selective anti-corruption
fights, abuse of official duty and discrimination against
government jobs is enough sufficient reasons to call for a lawful
and peaceful protest across the country. Whether the tag the lawful
demonstration as #Revolutionnow is irrelevant as long as the
purpose is to check mate the spate of anomalies being perpetrated
by this government under the guise of change or next level.

History revealed the various effective protest been carried out
by Nigerians against previous government regime comes with ash tag
like #Bringbackourgirls

God Bless Nigeria.

Ibrahim Alhassan (Abu Ruqayyah)