Miscue. Misspeak. Goof. Faux pas. Slip of the tongue. Whichever you wish to call it, two of our most important institutions were guilty of this. They are the traditional institution, custodian of our customs and values, and our representatives in the lower chamber of the National Assembly, whose primary duty is to make laws for the good governance. Last week the honourables passed a motion directing/summoning President Muhammadu Buhari to address the House of Representatives and Nigerians on the rising insecurity at a public hearing to be conducted by an adhoc committee. They gave Mr. President a 48-hour ultimatum within which to comply. Titled “Resurgence of the incessant and annual massacre of innocent Nigerians across the country by alleged bandits and killer herdsmen, the gradual occupation of affected communities by these attackers and the lack of adequate rehabilitation and relief materials”, the resolution/demand was passed on a Thursday. Therein lays the snag, the faux pas.
Thursday is the last working day of the National Assembly. Our national legislators sit for three days, Tuesdays to Thursdays, spending their weekends ostensibly with their constituents in the various states and needing Monday to travel back to Abuja and prepare for a new working week. So, were our lawmakers expecting Mr. President to come and address their ad-hoc committee and by extension the nation on the day requested by them, on a Saturday? Let us assume that all agree that Saturdays and Sundays are work-free days in Nigeria, were they expecting him to appear before the committee on Monday, a day that is more or less a holiday for them? But they had not even constituted the ad-hoc committee through which, according to them, he is to address them and the nation at large. Again, let us assume that our honourables intended to sacrifice their Monday holiday, to use it to set up the committee and prepare the grounds for a grand reception of Mr. President to the parliament on Tuesday. Still, there is a snag here because on that Thursday when they issued the “48-hour” summons to Mr. President, the National Assembly had long resolved to proceed on Easter break after that Thursday’s session. So, is it that our honourables did not foresee all these before issuing that 48-hour deadline to the commander-in-chief on that fateful Thursday? Short of saying that our lawmakers were somewhat negligent, one will say that they misspoke in passing that resolution. As I write, the presidential aides on National Assembly matters say the Thursday resolution has not been transmitted to President Buhari.
Yes, apart from Mr. President being answerable to the people, members of the National Assembly may also consider themselves as having a right as representatives of the people to query/summon the executive in consonance with the democratic principle of checks and balances. Nonetheless, did the honourables genuinely wanted Buhari to appear before a committee of the House? You could say that they probably expect him to send a representative, say the defence minister. Still, the issue from which that resolution arose, that is, spate of insecurity in Nigeria, is quite weighty. It is a matter that has been troubling Nigerians in recent times and years such that they would wish to hear directly from the horse’s mouth, from the commander-in-chief himself. To restrict any such address by the president to a committee of the House of Representatives is belittling to the office of the number one citizen, just as it is unpardonable to overlook the gravity of the matter. What our legislators should do is to mandate the commander-in-chief to address a joint session of the National Assembly on the state of the nation that would be broadcast live. Since Mr. President is not duty bound as such to adhere to any resolution/motion of the National Assembly, it should pass a law that will make it compulsory for the president to statutorily give a ‘state of the nation’ address to the National Assembly at least once every year.
Now, our revered royal fathers, whose words are usually considered as the gospel truth, not only goofed in Zamfara state but also recanted. Under the aegis of the Zamfara Council of Chiefs, the traditional rulers had accused the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) of killing ‘innocent civilians’ during its operation Diran Mikiya meant to flush out bandits that had been terrorising the state. The air force high command denied this, whereupon the royal fathers, through the Emir of Bungudu, released names of 11 ‘innocent citizens’ bombed to death by NAF fighter jet and helicopter gunship.
However, speaking to a team that was sent by the Chief of Air Staff to investigate the claim, Emir of Anka, who is Chairman of Zamfara State Council of Chiefs, Alhaji Attahiru Muhammad Ahmad, reportedly said, “I apologise over whatever embarrassment the statement may have caused and from now on, we have drawn a line, there won’t be anything like that again… out of the 17 emirate councils that we have in the state, mistakes occurred in only four and the submissions we made were gathered in the last two years. I also want to state that nothing happened on innocent citizens in the last six months in the state. The Emir of Bungudu is not the spokesman of the council even though he read our press briefing that day. The list of victims that he released to the press on a later day did not emanate from me nor was I aware of it as the chairman; I will only take responsibility because I am the chairman”. What are we to make of this recant, that the emirs’ earlier statements were a slip of the tongue? They misspoke?
Oh, I have just learnt as I was about to submit this piece that His Royal Highness, Emir Ahmad, has denied recanting. He reportedly said that he only used “words of respect” as demanded by custom and tradition in addressing the Chief of Air Staff’s team that paid him a courtesy call in his capacity as the state’s council of chiefs’ chairman. In his latest remarks, he was quoted as saying, “As the Council of Chiefs, we did not intend to smear the hard-earned reputation of the Nigeria Air Force; we only cited the killings of innocent people as an example in a reaction to the claim by the Minister of Defence, Brigadier-General Dan Ali, who on baseless reasons, accused traditional rulers of aiding banditry activities in the state”. What is clear is that there is disagreement between the royal fathers and the defence minister, who happens to be an indigene of Zamfara state. The rift should be settled in a dignified way, not through the current back and forth spats between both parties. The council should call their son, their subject, Dan Ali, to the palace for a heart-to-heart talk behind closed doors. These accusations and counter-accusations distract from the kernel of the matter, which is curbing the high incidence of banditry in Zamfara state for which all hands should be on deck; from the traditional rulers and other influential citizens to the masses.
Ikeano writes from Lafia, Nasarawa state.
