Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi State seems more at ease provoking critics than governing the state on which he was foisted more than three years ago.
The context of his rise to the governorship in 2016 is not flattering, but he had the opportunity to transcend that murky political background by deploying his youth and energy to enthrone probably the most vigorous and enterprising state administration in Nigeria. Instead, by a combination of lackadaisical approach to governance and poor judgement, he has courted criticisms with unparalleled ardour while also bristling at the opposition.
Two weeks ago, this column wondered why Mr Bello wanted a second term, especially when he has alienated virtually every sector of Kogi life. Why, the puzzle is not so remote: the governor is a political trapeze artist.
One of those alienated sectors is the state judiciary which has been on strike for about five months over 10 months salary arrears as well as other provocative constitutional issues.
The governor, citing the refusal of the judiciary to subject their staff to the state’s data capturing and futile pay-parade policies, unconstitutionally withheld the salaries of judicial staff for 10 months.
The state government has stuck dogmatically to the biometric exercise as if that is the elixir needed to make the payment of salary backlogs possible. As good as data capturing is, it has proved costly, time-wasting and useless to the Kogi government which today owes civil servants months and months of salary arrears, some totalling more than 20 months.
Probably worried that judicial workers all over Nigeria had last April threatened to go on strike if the Kogi judicial workers’ salary crisis was not resolved, and perhaps prodded by the presidency which had shown some interest in what was happening in Kogi, the National Judicial Council (NJC) sent a fact-finding mission to the state.
On Wednesday, the five-man panel met the state government in company with the chief judge and then later interacted with the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN).
JUSUN sources disclosed that the fact-finding mission seemed more placatory of the state government than censorious of their meddlesomeness. This consequently inspired the governor’s media chief, Kingsley Fanwo, to declare that a compromise had been reached that asked the state judiciary to embrace the government’s biometric and pay-parade policies.
But the NJC is yet to determine its course of action in the Kogi crisis.
Weeks ago, when the state legislature was being instigated to remove Chief Judge Nasir Ajanah on the grounds that the state’s auditor-general had indicted him over financial wrongdoing, the state government had in addition sent a petition to the NJC accusing him of engaging in financial impropriety.
But JUSUN sources indicated that the state government in fact redacted the 2016 auditor-general’s report and gave the erroneous impression that it was a recent report. It is not clear whether the NJC fact-finding mission was actually meant to establish the veracity or otherwise of the issues raised in the petition, or, as a newspaper reported last week, try and engineer a peaceful or amicable resolution of the face-off between the state government and judiciary.
Mr Fanwo suggests in his hasty press statement on the NJC visit that the state judiciary had been asked to submit to the state’s data capturing exercise preparatory to embracing the obnoxious and degrading pay-parade/table-payment style.
JUSUN, in a statement late last week, debunked Mr Fanwo’s assertions, insisting that the substance of the discussions and conclusions between the NJC, the state’s Chief Judge and the government were inconsistent with media reports of the visit.
The biometric exercise, if it came to that, said JUSUN, would be undertaken by the State Judicial Service Commission, not the state government.
In any case, the union further stated, the constitution never envisaged that the judiciary would be held in thrall by the state government or humiliated by unconstitutionally withholding their salaries.
The NJC may wish to guide themselves in writing their report by first of all discounting Mr Fanwo’s mendacities.
Secondly, the judicial body must be conscious of the fact that flowing from its abysmal tameness in the matter involving the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, and especially because the presidency engineered his removal by foul and unconstitutional means, its independence, influence and power have been considerably whittled, if not entirely abrogated.
In the Kogi matter, the NJC is expected to courageously determine whether Justice Ajanah is guilty of the allegations levelled against him by the state government or whether the state government is infernally and meddlesomely wrong in the pay-parade affair.
The NJC’s job is not to make peace or reconcile the state and the judiciary. Its job is primarily to let justice be done, and secondarily to protect the independence of the judiciary. Governor Bello does not understand these nuances. He should be educated. If he proves uneducable, then he should be put in his place.
Surely, the NJC cannot pretend not to see the similarities between the deposition of Justice Onnoghen and the impetuous and impudent attempt to unseat the Kogi State Chief Judge. The similarities are striking and disturbing.
This column had noted in the heat of the Onnoghen affair that the country was entering a dark tunnel of impunity whose end no one could foresee.
Sadly, this generation of Nigerians is witness to the damage which politics and indiscipline in both the executive and the judiciary can inflict. It is not clear whether the NJC will blink first before Mr Bello, as they blinked repeatedly before President Muhammadu Buhari. But whatever the case, history is chronicling the roles being played by everyone and every group — some as they betray causes, and others as they ennoble causes.
Credits: Idowu Akinlotan | The Nation
