Sowore, SSS And National Security By Olusegun Adeniyi – TheNigerialawyer

In my phone conversation with SaharaReporters publisher, Mr
Omoyele Sowore, shortly after he was released on bail by the
Directorate of State Security (DSS) last Thursday evening, he
informed me of the court appearance scheduled for the next day.
What he could not have envisaged was the unfortunate courtroom
drama that has become an international embarrassment for Nigeria.
No matter how much spin officials have tried to put on the ugly
incident, Sowore’s continued incarceration is not in any way
helpful to the administration.

On Tuesday, Dr Reuben Abati dealt with the salient issues in his
piece titled, ‘Omoyele Sowore: Portrait of a Life in Protest’,
which I strongly recommend. Where I slightly differ is the
impression created that what is happening is new. It is not. In
Nigeria, tension has always existed between those who believe
individual liberties can be infringed upon under the guise of
national security and those who contend that the courts should be
the final arbiter in such matters. The problem is that in a society
that has elevated sycophancy to the level of ideology, and where
some have arrogated to themselves a monopoly on patriotism, the
former almost always wins the argument.

By calling for a meaningless ‘Revolution’ on television, Sowore
posed no threat to this government. But you cannot convince those
who have been conditioned to believe that regime protection is
equivalent to national security otherwise. History has shown that
when operatives of a government casually abridge the rights of
citizens under excuses hinged on ‘the reason of state’, as is the
norm under the current administration, it is the very foundation of
democracy that they put in danger. Under no circumstance should the
private whim of any individual, however highly placed, be disguised
as national security. Nor should we allow autocratic flirtations to
undermine our fragile democracy, even with all its
imperfections.

What makes the current situation most unfortunate is the manner
in which the judiciary has been desecrated by a government that has
consistently shown scant regard for the rule of law. With the
legislature already tamed, it is noteworthy that condemnations for
last Friday’s brigandage are coming from unexpected quarters. On
Tuesday, Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of Ondo State, a member of the
ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) added his own voice: “Will
people go and desecrate our courtrooms and we keep quiet? The bar
must condemn it. There is no explanation anybody can give you.
Somebody calls it drama. How? What we saw was not drama, you must
stand up to condemn the SSS for what they did in Abuja.”

Meanwhile, there are also those within government who feel
uncomfortable with what is going on; not necessarily because they
like Sowore but rather because of the collateral damage his
continued incarceration has inflicted on our country. They may not
speak out because it is not expedient to do so, but it is important
to understand that not all public officials are carried away when
security agencies misbehave under the dubious pretext of ‘national
security’.

I recounted my own experience in my book on the Yar’Adua years.
The summary of it is that on 5th May 2009, there was a rerun
election (ordered by the Court of Appeal) in just two local
governments to complete a closely fought gubernatorial election in
Ekiti State between the then incumbent Governor Segun Oni of the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Dr Kayode Fayemi of the defunct
Action Congress (AC). An innocuous but suggestive campaign song by
the then House of Representatives Speaker, Hon Dimeji Bankole at a
rally attended by my late principal, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua,
drew the ire of the opposition which led to my statement that
military troops would not be deployed. Not only did I have the
authority of my boss to offer that assurance, I was in fact privy
to a meeting he held with the then Inspector General of Police, Mr
Mike Okiro on how police would be mobilized from neighbouring
states to provide security for the election. There was no role for
the military in the plan.

However, on the eve of the election, some powerful forces went
ahead to order deployment of military troops into the streets of
Ekiti without presidential authorization. Knowing that the
integrity of my boss was at stake, not to mention my own
credibility, I moved quickly—with the assistance of the ADC,
Mustapha Dennis Onoyiveta, who remains till today a close personal
friend and then Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Abdulrahman
Dambazau who was abroad at the time—to checkmate them in a manner
they probably never expected. The troops were recalled within
hours. But without deference to my position as presidential
spokesman, and probably because the election did not go as planned,
I received a letter from the DSS headquarters, asking me to report
for interrogation. Despite my initial inclination to ignore them,
because I was ready for a fight, I eventually honoured the
invitation from which I learnt quite a bit.

I never told President Yar’Adua of my experience and I also kept
it away from the media because it would not in any way help the
government I was serving. Interested readers can pick up the full
account (on pages 127 to 134) in my book, ‘Power, Politics and
Death’, but the point I am trying to make is the misuse to which
security can be deployed in our country to serve personal cum
partisan ends. And the man in whose name and authority the
shenanigans are committed may himself be a mere hostage. I am well
aware of how dubious security reports, which are never in the
public domain, can be used to persuade a president about a course
of action that is neither in his interest nor that of the country.
Therefore, Sowore’s unfortunate episode has provided an opportunity
to interrogate the way the rights of citizens are easily trampled
upon in Nigeria by those who are paid to protect us.

Last weekend, PUNCH newspaper published a story of how Nigerians
who have been declared missing for years are actually in the
detention centre of DSS. Not unexpectedly, because they are not
prominent citizens like Sowore, I have not seen any outrage over
the report. In genuine democracies, intelligence agencies are
subject to the constitution and the judicial process. In the United
States, from where we copied and pasted the presidential system of
government that we practice today, those who head these agencies
and their officers can be subpoenaed in both civil and criminal
cases, and they are answerable to the courts. But in Nigeria,
people who head some of these agencies act above the law. To
compound the problem, we now have an attorney general who gives
latitude to pick and choose what court order to obey and which one
to disregard.

The fundamental obligation of the state to its citizens is the
protection of life and property. What distinguishes civilized
democracies from barbaric banana enclaves is respect for the rule
of law. Sadly, a discernible gangster ethos now defines the
character of the Nigerian state. This manifests in the impunity
with which public institutions are degraded to further private ends
as we have seen in the Sowore travails and the contempt with which
a Federal High Court in Abuja was treated. This utter disregard for
all rules explains why citizens presumed to be missing are now
found to be in the detention centres of the DSS.

With his government becoming increasingly notorious for
trampling on the rights of citizens and rendering the judiciary
ineffectual, President Buhari has a responsibility to come clean
and rein in those who abuse their powers. This will enable us to
look beyond his person and properly focus our attention on those
persons and institutions who subvert our individual and collective
rights. We must identify, name and shame those who, by their
actions, threaten our national cohesion and undermine individual
liberty. It is also imperative that the DSS be reformed in line
with its mandate “to protect and defend the Federal Republic of
Nigeria against domestic threats, to uphold and enforce the
criminal laws of Nigeria, and to provide leadership and criminal
justice services to both federal and state law-enforcement
organs.”

Now that the fight has reached the home-front, no one can
pretend all is well in the country. Whatever may be the merit of
her case against Mallam Shehu Garba—and the allegations are quite
weighty—there is a line in the statement released yesterday by the
First Lady, Mrs Aisha Buhari that is very telling: “I had to
intervene to save the innocent staff from losing their means of
livelihood by involving the DSS in order to ascertain roles played
by key actors in the saga.” When you have a vicious power struggle
not only within the government but also within the First Family,
with everyone trying to outdo the other, it is easy for security
agencies to go rogue because they are serving different, often
conflicting, interests. As an aside, I do not understand the game
Mrs Buhari is playing to continue to publicly call out her husband
when conventional wisdom teaches that to whom you can whisper you
do not need to shout. The talk on the streets is that the
dysfunction within the First Family (to which Nigerians are
entertained on a regular basis) is symptomatic of the state of
affairs in Nigeria today. The president should call his house to
order.

However, the overriding issue now is the infringement of the
constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and the rule of
law by the DSS. Ordinarily, on that ground alone, its leadership
ought to be subpoenaed by the National Assembly to explain why the
agency should ride rough shod over the constitution. Regrettably,
under the present circumstance, nobody expects that to happen. But
what is ignored in all this is that once the larger national issues
of the sanctity of individual rights and the supremacy of the rule
of law are subordinated under regime survival, we risk enthroning
an autocracy. The reality is nearer because under the current
dispensation in Nigeria today, the executive branch has practically
consumed both the legislature and the judiciary.

All said, President Buhari must understand that everything being
done under the pretext of security in Nigeria today is done in his
name. For that reason, he must call the DSS to order not only on
Sowore but also on those Nigerians who are being needlessly
detained without trial.

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