Echoes of state police at House retreat
By Uchenna Awom
National
Assembly Correspondent, Abuja
Though
the House of Representatives’ three-day retreat has come and gone, the
pertinent issues raised by eminent and not-so-eminent resource persons will
continue to linger.
This
is so because at the end of the day, it will form the very bases and the
yardstick to measure the success or otherwise of the retreat, which took the
lawmakers to three different centres across the country.
However, the contentious issue of state
police, which has variously elicited debates in Nigeria’s political
environment, was raised at the Bauchi zone in a paper presented by former
National Universities Commission (NUC) Secretary, Prof. Munzali Jubril,
entitled National Security and the Legislature. Munzali, who is currently a
lecturer at the Bayero University, Kano, raised a pertinent question. He
contended that one of the ambiguities in the 1999 Constitution which the
National Assembly should seek to clarify through a constitutional amendment has
to do with the President’s power to appoint the Inspector-General of
Police (IGP) and the IGP’s consequent subservience to the President.
He said this should be rectified by
amending the constitution so that the functions of the Police Council and the
Police Service Commission are merged, adding that Section 27 (a) to (d) of the
Third Schedule of the constitution should therefore be deleted so that the
Council consists of chairman and members appointed by the Senate and
accountable to it, and having the power to appoint all officers of the force,
including the IGP.
“In this way, the
Inspector-General of Police would cease to be the President’s personal
appointee and would therefore be more likely to exercise better judgment in the
discharge of his duties to the nation,” he said.
As
if giving a subtle background of the actual destination of his lecture, Munzali
stated that the contradiction referred to earlier relates to the powers of
state governors to give their state police commissioners lawful directions for
the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order. According to
him, while the President’s powers to give similar directives to the
Inspector-General of Police is not negotiable, that of state governors are
subject to clearance by the President or the Minister of Police Affairs, and by
implication the IGP.
Pitiably, the university don stated that
in Nigeria’s peculiar political culture, what this means is that if the
governor of a state belongs to the ruling party at the national level, or if he
is somehow in the President’s political camp, his command to the police
commissioner will be obeyed, if not, it may not be.
This, he added, requires appropriate
legislative action to recognise that Nigeria is a federation consisting of
states as federating units where the governors are also the chief security
officers of their states, who may be held accountable for security failures in
such states. Such accountability, he stressed, would be unfair if they do not
have operational control of the police in their states.
However, to assuage the fears of
opponents of the call for state police, which has been the sing-song of Lagos
State Governor, Bola Tinubu, since the early life of this republic, Munzali
admitted that appropriate safeguards are required to ensure that governors
cannot misuse the police for political oppression or victimisation as happened
in the First Republic.
Citing
constitutional provisions to back up his call, the lecturer stated that the
power of the National Assembly to make laws for the establishment, equipping
and maintenance of the armed forces of the federation and to regulate and
moderate the powers of the President to control the armed forces are set out in
Section 217 to 220 of the constitution. In particular, he said that the National
Assembly is tasked by Section 219 to establish a body to ensure compliance with
Federal Character provisions in the composition of the armed forces. This body,
Munzali regrets, is yet to be set up five years after the coming into force of
the 1999 Constitution.
In this way, through the appropriation
bill, he said the National Assembly also has the power to influence both policy
and performance in the area of national security management by directing
funding to areas of priority need.
Taking few steps back, Munzali reminded
the awe struck lawmakers, particularly the new ones, that the power of the
National Assembly to make laws for the peace, order and good governance of
Nigeria is clearly stated in Section 4 of the 1999 Constitution, and as these
powers concern the nation’s security, a cursory look at the Exclusive
Legislative list yields such areas as arms, ammunition and explosives, customs
and excise duties, defence, deportation, criminal records, immigration,
military, police and other government security services, prisons and so on.
Continuing, he said the powers of the
President to deploy Nigerian troops for combat duty are restricted by Section 5
sub-section 4 and 5 of the constitution, which provides that the President
cannot declare war with another country except with the approval of the
National Assembly and that if in response to emergency he has to deploy troops
for limited combat duty outside Nigeria (in defence of Nigeria’s
territorial integrity), then he has to seek the consent of the Senate within
seven days, which has to give or refuse that consent within 14 days.
But
Sections 214 to 217 of the constitution which deals with the Police Force, he
stated, clearly gives the National Assembly the power to make laws to regulate
the conduct, organisation and administration of the Nigeria Police Force.
Funny
enough, a member of the House, Ike Chinwo from Rivers State, apparently to show
his loyalty to the President, mistook the constitutional interpretations in the
lecture to mean a deliberate attempt to strip the President of his powers. He,
therefore, questioned the veracity of the paper and asked if the postulations
do not mean stripping the President bare of executive powers and its
accompaniments that will enable him function effectively. He said removing the
powers from the President would considerably lower his influence, especially in
the estimation of Nigeria’s neighbours. But the young man, at this point,
seemed to be alone as he was promptly reminded that this is a democracy and not
someone’s private estate.
What is involved, he was told, is the
power of the people as encapsulated in the National Assembly, being the
custodian of the people’s mandate and as such the constitution must be
strictly adhered to if democracy must thrive.
Concluding,
Munzali said the challenges of the National Assembly in ensuring and promoting
national security are enormous because almost every aspect of life has a
bearing on security and must therefore be adequately catered for in a proactive
manner, if national security is not breached or compromised. Again, he said the
most important policy and legislative action to take in ensuring national
security is for the National Assembly to partner with the executive arm to
re-engineer Nigeria so that we have a new economic, social and political
direction, which will guarantee economic prosperity, industrial take-off, full
employment, equity, fairness, justice, transparency and even development.
