How Nyako missed opportunities to avoid removal

Adamawa State governor, Murtala Nyako, became the seventh casualty of the impeachment clause in the 1999 Constitution on Tuesday as the State House of Assembly voted for his removal from office. Group Political Editor, TAIWO ADISA writes on the governor’s road to the exit door.

Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State, on Tuesday, July 15, 2014, became the seventh casualty of the impeachment clause in the Nigerian Constitution, when the State House of Assembly ruled in favour of his removal from office. To starve off the same treatment, the state’s deputy governor, Honourable Bala Ngilari forwarded a letter of resignation from office to the State House of Assembly.

Though, impeachment, one of the main weapons in the hands of the legislature against the executive arm of government is sparingly used, the fact remains that it has always remained a sword of Damocles, hanging on the necks of executive office holders both at the state and national levels.

From the Second Republic, when the then governor of Kaduna State, Alhaji Balarabe Musa was removed from office through impeachment in 1981, the weapon has always loomed large in measuring relationships between the executive and the legislature. In the Fourth Republic so far, the weapon has sparingly been on display in the current half (2011 to 2015) but was well on display between 2005 and 2006, when former President Olusegun Obasanjo moved to assert his authority over the political space.

A former governor of Bayelsa State, Chief DSP Alamieyeseigha was removed on December 9, 2005, while a former Oyo State governor, Rashidi  Ladoja was to follow on January 12, 2006. He was to later reverse his impeachment through the ruling of the Court of Appeal, sitting in Ibadan. Ekiti State governor-elect, Mr. Peter Ayodele Fayose was to also face the impeachment debacle in 2006, though the then President Obasanjo ensured his effective removal from office through the declaration of a state of emergency and appointment of a sole administrator for the state.

 The same sword was arrowed against former Governor Joshua Dariye of Plateau State now a Senator, also in 2006. He was removed from office in controversial circumstances and was able to reverse the impeachment through the court. On Tuesday, Nyako became the latest victim of the powers of the House of Assembly, whose members are usually taken for granted by many governors.

 But for Nyako and his deputy, the road to the impeachment incident was predictable. Nyako was imposed on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Adamawa State in 2007 as a governorship candidate. The then president was said to have jettisoned the primaries conducted in the state to impose Nyako. But outside the complaints about imposition, many stakeholders have claimed that Nyako also failed to live up to his billing as the father of the state upon his emergence as governor. Many accused him of a winner-takes-all attitude and sometimes nepotism. Many also complained that he was not accessible to many in the state, while allegedly allowing his immediate family undue access to governance.

In 2008, a movement called Save Adamawa Movement spearheaded a removal bid against Nyako. Its officials and members of the PDP had compiled a number of allegations against the governor. Many of the leaders were also said to have refused to work with the governor. The case was brought to the notice of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, who nominated his then Vice President, incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan as head of the reconciliatory panel. The panel was however able to save the governor and all appeared rosy again between political leaders of the state and Nyako.

But tempers were to rise again ahead of the reelection bid of 2011. Some leaders of the state insisted that they would not work for Nyako’s re-election and the matter was brought to the attention of President Jonathan.

Investigations revealed that several meetings were held between the president and those opposed to Nyako, and that Jonathan insisted that the leaders must work with the governor and give him another chance in view of the agreement that the PDP had resolved to return all its governors for second term. But, it emerged that Nyako would join the aggrieved camp of the PDP governors under the aegis of G7 agitators. Nyako is one of the five of the G7 members, who defected to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in November 2013.

What the governor did not calculate, according to sources, was that the defection had robbed him of the last bastion of support that could help him starve off any impeachment bid. Already, there are issues on ground in the state, which could ignite impeachment bid against him at any moment.

 Thus, what the House of Assembly members played upon was the mood of the state. They reckoned that Nyako owed civil servants and teachers, who are some of the strongest enemies a governor could offend. They also reckoned that the governor had neutralised notable political figures in Adamawa such as former Vice President Atiku Abubakar  and former Lagos State military governor, Brigadier General Mohammed Buba Marwa.  With such situation on ground, the impeachment of Nyako was looming like a time bomb.

When members of State House of Assembly were ready with the challenge of impeaching him, it appeared the coast was not only clear, the governor’s steps too aided the volume of miles covered by the raging impeachment inferno.

The lawmakers had raised a 20-point allegation against the impeached governor, 16 of which were affirmed by the seven-man panel of inquiry set up by the Acting State Chief Judge. The allegations included:

1.Fraudulent diversion of N2.3 Billion Adamawa State worker’s salaries for September and October 2011;

2.Illegal deductions and diversion of the sum of N142 million employment of Adamawa state workers in May 2014;

3.Diversion of N120 million public funds to sponsor fictitious visits of General Muhammadu Buhari to Adamawa sate to commiserate with flood victims of insurgents attacks in Madagali and Michika local government areas;

4.Extra-budgetary expenditure of N1, 740, 785 on fictitious special assistants and another N166, 230, 536.88 on personal assistants in 2013;

5.Fraudulent award of contract of over N8 Billion through SNECOU Group of Companies Ltd allegedly to siphon public funds without delivering any service to the people of Adamawa State;

6.Corrupt siphoning of the sum of N300 million public funds through a company, Hydrosources Resources Ltd in the name of Mubi By-pass without mobilising to site or any construction carried out long after collecting the N300 million from Adamawa state funds;

7.Gross violation of the oath of office by outrageous patronage and dominance of family and friends in the discharge of government such as MGDs office, the SPPU and ministry of Health;

8.Gross violation of section 120 of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended and gross misappropriation and diversion of internally Generated Revenue for personal use to the detriment of the people;

9.Squandering the sum of N4, 805, 216, 538 and N7, 114, 590.85 in 2012 and 2013 respectively through the office of the SSG against budgetary approvals;

10.Expenditures of exorbitant sum of N2.5 billion as other miscellaneous expenses through the internal affairs and special services units;

11.Extra budgetary procurement of fertiliser and diversion of proceeds from the sales of same from 2007 to date;

12.The MDGs office is managed by the governor’s close relations and has squandered N220 million and N786, 644.94 unbudgeted funds in 2013 for the implementation of MDGs programme;

13.Diversion of over N400 million out of the N500 million federal government intervention funds for flood victims in 2011;

14.Diversion of government funds through illegal importation of hospital equipment to the tune of N156 million while the state still owes the contractor and illegal acquisition of containerized mobile workshop for vocational training centers;

15.Corruption and extra budgetary award of contracts for the construction of Army Barracks road, Mayo Belwa Road; Pella to Maiha Road; Gombi to Ga’anda to Fotta Road; Rumde to Yolde Pate Road; construction of mubi bypass, contrary to section 120 (2), (3) and (4) of the construction of the Federal Republic of Nigerian 1999;

16.Squandering of N1 billion Adamawa German Hospital, managed by close a relation to the Governor;

17.Shoddy conception and operation of Adamawa German Hospital, managed by close relation to the Governor;

18.Abuse of office and violation of Adamawa state law by the appointment of his wife, Dr. Halima Nyako as chairman, Adamawa state action committee on Aids, (SACA) contrary to SACA law;

19.Over bearing strangulation of the local government areas and extortion of local government funds in the name of joint account projects and security challenges in mubi and other parts of the state;

20.Alleged of corrupt practices.

But, Nyako and his handlers apparently failed to read the books as to how impeachment bid usually go in Nigeria.  On record, the only man, who has survived impeachment threats in a state, remains a former deputy governor of Abia State, now Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe. Abaribe, who was the deputy to former Governor Orji Kalu between 1999 and 2003, faced three impeachment moves but was able to subvert each of the moves and only resigned from office the third time.

A source said that when the House of Assembly announced the receipt of an impeachment notice against Nyako, he should have approached Abaribe to learn the tricks of surviving the danger. It was gathered that Abaribe, on each occasion, had a man embedded in the camp of the opposition, who played along with them till the final voting stage. Thus when his antagonists were cork sure of the two thirds majority to remove him, one of the members would pull out at the voting stage, to deny the House the required two thirds majority needed to remove Abaribe.

If that is not the case, it was gathered that Nyako could have held on to the Abuja powers to help him starve off the threat. But, it was learnt that having saved the governor on two previous occasions, and with his apparent failure to recognise such goodwill, President Jonathan was not really disposed to helping Nyako out of his travails this time. Again, the impeached governor literally put his political career at stake, when he wrote the now infamous memo which indicated that the Federal Government was instigating genocide against the North through the ravaging Boko Haram insurgency. Coming from a former Chief of Naval Staff, the allegations were regarded as grave with far-reaching implications.

One other mistake the governor made was his refusal to receive the impeachment notice announced by the House of Assembly. Though the Constitution expects that details of the allegations of gross misconduct would be served on the governor and his deputy by the Speaker of the parliament within seven days of his receipt of the notice signed by at least one third of the Assembly, the impeached governor made a mistake of involving the courts in the process that early.

While the constitution has already barred the courts from interfering with the impeachment process, lawyers have however agreed that nothing could take away the power of judicial review at the end of the exercise. This has been proved in the case of Ladoja, in Oyo in 2006 and Dariye in Plateau also in 2006.

By involving the courts, and relying on an interpretation that the service should be made personally on the governor and his deputy, the two office holders exposed themselves to being removed from office without them raising a defence against the allegations.

Incidentally, sources had told The Friday Edition that some leaders of the PDP had proposed a way out for Ngilari, who was asked to resign early in the beginning of the process. He however teamed up with his governor and claimed that he was not served the impeachment notice. The duo had hoped to hang on that excuse to starve off the impeachment bid. But, the same court that initially ruled that the notice should be served personally later ruled that there could be substituted service through the newspapers. Immediately this was done, the wind appeared out of the sail for the impeached governor.

The governor and his deputy were seeking solutions in Abuja, while the lawmakers in the state continued with the procedures enumerated in Section 188 of the Constitution. The Acting Chief Judge of the State had gone ahead to announce the seven-man panel of inquiry, just as the governor’s camp continued to talk about service or knowledge of the impeachment notice. The fact that the Constitution gives so much latitude to the lawmakers on their interpretation of “Gross Misconduct” means that governors and their deputies cannot toy with the process. Within a twinkle of an eye, a governor could be out of the office. He or she would then be left with battling the endless legal rounds in the courts.

Copyright @Tribune

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How Nyako missed opportunities to avoid removal