PROMINENT lawyers and the Police yesterday warned against scrapping the immunity granted to the President, his vice, state governors and their deputies under section 308 of the 1999 constitution, noting that doing so will lead to chaos in the polity.
They rather advocated the resort to impeachment as a way of dealing with effected public office holders who have breached the constitution or have abused their office.
Counsel to the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), candidate in the last presidential election, Alhaji Mohammed Buhari, Chief Mike Ahamba, SAN, on his part called on the various Houses of Assembly to impeach such public officers, who have breached the provisions of the constitution or have abused their offices.
While Chief Awa Kalu, SAN, Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Abia State, who delivered a paper entitled “Immunity from Prosecution”, at the on-going NBA conference in Abuja, noted that the immunity provided by the constitution for our top political office holders is not the problem, as nothing has been done to the so many of ex-governors and presidents who were alleged to have committed offences while in office.
A similar position was taken by the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Sunday Ehindero; Former President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), Chief O.C.J. Okocha, SAN; Mr Joseph Daudu, SAN and presidential candidate of the NBA, who were unanimous that scraping the provision will not only expose the holders of these offices to undue embarrassment and ridicule, but is capable of undermining the democratic process.
Chief Ahamba, while reacting to the lecture, said “the issue of immunity has become so pronounced today because of the abuse. Most of these public officers have reasoned that because they have immunity, they can go ahead and behave the way they like and expect that by the time they leave office in four years, people may have forgotten. So the abuse has remained the concern. For sure, what we have is an absolute immunity, but I don’t think we need to amend or scrap it. We only have the members of the National Assembly to understand the provision and if they don’t, then they should give way for people that will”.
“I do not agree we should allow the executive to continue to wallow in lawlessness. Whether the holders of these offices abuse the immunity and get away with it depends on the legislature’s understanding of their functions under the impeachment section and will perform such function. Removing section 308 will create more problems. Assuming there were no immunity section, where would Governor Chris Ngige be today. The provision is not the problem. The problem is in the inability of those who have the function of impeachment to perform their function”, he said.
Meanwhile, Chief Kalu had earlier said, “those calling for the removal of immunity must be guided by the reality of our peculiar circumstance, as the political cost is incalculable. There is undeniably a lack of political will to enforce some of our laws and my recommendation would be a straightening of political will to enable us withstand the reverberation that may follow the removal of constitutional immunity for our chief executives”.
