Democracies often come with underlying clash of two antipodal human tendencies. The executive branch, in many instances, is inhabited by inherent authoritarian disposition, arising from a belief that it, actually, approximates the state.
At the other end, the rest of the society, constantly wave the libertarian flag, ever insisting that power truly belongs to them.
The propensity for the executive branch to see its word as the law, requires firm and deft containment, else they end up dragging the entire free society into dangerous realms of dictatorship. Indeed, the executive branch in a democratic state, presents the most serious threat to liberty.
Over time, the legislature has often been recognized as the direct representatives of the people and therefore, the bastion of democracy. In actuality, however, it is the judiciary that stands, at critical junctures, as bulwark, in defence of the society, when principles of liberty and human rights, are invaded, usually by a rampaging executive branch.
The world is currently watching this fact play itself out in United States of America, with the second advent of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Chief Trump returned to the White House on January 20 2025, after a huge victory in the November 2024 presidential election, propelled by his popular promise to Make America Great Again. As it has turned out, however,in trying to make America great again, Trump also makes Americans giddy.
To get to where Trump says he wants to take America, he does not brook any red light. He pays scant attention to the foundational laws and principles that define America. He seems to believe that he is the law.
This, is where his agenda, or brain wave, comes face to face with the judiciary, as a rampart, behind which the laws and rights of citizens are secured. A number of the executive orders that Trump has churned out since returning to office, have been checkmated by the courts, reminding him, to his chagrin, that he is, indeed, not the law. That, is what the judiciary is all about.
A judiciary that tags on to the tail of the coat of the executive branch, is anathema to the egalitarian society.
Irritating a president or head of state, or opposing his policies in government, is, for sure, not a crime, or a treason in a free society. The executive needs to be reminded this. Unfortunately, many presidents and their posse think differently.
The courts in USA, are stepping out and up, at the moment, to remind the executive that what it says is, necessarily, not the law.
Well, it is a different proposition in Nigeria. Over here, whatever the executive branch seriously desires, the judiciary often grants.
While the courts in USA may be resolutely telling the president that he is not the law, in Nigeria, the courts are inclined to see no distinction between the president and the state. Nothing can be more threatening to the values of a free society than this.
In 2017, barely two years after he became president, Muhammadu Buhari was sufficiently rankled by the very existence and activities of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), that he vowed to tackle the self-determination group, once and for all. It is pertinent to note, that IPOB, was in existence before Buhari arrived the presidency, having being established in 2012.
The primary essence of the group was to protest the vicious marginalization of the eastern region of the country, by consistent federal governments, over the years. The cheating has crystalized as a policy of the Nigerian state.
The federal government ensured and still ensures, that no federal project or investment of worth, is located in the South East. No refinery. No petrochemical plant. No gas investment, even as Abia state is a major gas reservoir, from which gas is tapped and pipped to other regions. No modern rail lines. No real federal presence, beyond policemen whose road blocks and toll gates are seen by the people, as an affront.
Under Buhari, external loans were collected by Nigeria and allocated to all zones of the country, except the South East. Of course, the story of the steel industry is well known. Nigeria preferred to cut its nose to spite its face. It decided that instead of a steel complex being cited in a natural location in the South East, with clear comparative advantage, billions of dollars can go down the drain in a futile bid to have the steel plant elsewhere, which is what has happened.
IPOB was not a violent association. As at 2017, no act of violence was ascribed to the group. They remained trenchant on their radio station, railing against the government. Buhari was, naturally, pilloried, without end, by the group and its leadership.
When marauding killers, pretending to be herdsmen and identified as imported Fulani tribesmen, began to flood the forests of the South East, for reasons that could not be wholesome, IPOB became more agitated and vowed to resist what appeared like a state-sponsored invasion.
Instructively, at the very time that IPOB was only releasing verbal bazooka against the government, while marching on the streets of few cities in the South East, protesting marginalization and agitating for self-determination, blood was flowing in the north east of the country. Boko Haram and sundry terrorist groups were wreaking havoc up north. Tens of thousands of innocent lives were lost to terrorist attacks, leading to massive overflow of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps.
While Buhari’s government could put up with the carnage by terrorists in the North East, stretching into the North West and North Central, he could not stomach the effrontery of IPOB generating heat and noise in the South East.
Thus, it was, that in 2017, the Federal Ministry of Justice,initiated an ex parte proceeding against IPOB at the Federal High Court in Abuja, in which the organization was charged of a cocktail of crimes. Of course, the organization was given no opportunity to defend itself. Boom! The court, presided over by Justice Adamu Abdu-Kafarati, indicted IPOB for engaging in acts of terrorism, as charged by the government. There was not a single IPOB member invited for any hearing. With that ruling in hand, the government, in a directive, purportedly signed by the then imperial Chief of Staff to Buhari, the late Abba Kyari, promptly proscribed IPOB, as a terrorist organization. That was what the presidency wanted. The court was available to do what was asked of it.
So much water has passed under the bridge in the government-IPOB conflict. Allegations have been rife, of security agencies and mercenaries being deployed to commit heinous crimes in the South East, for the sole purpose of presenting IPOB as a terrorist organization.
Without doubt, IPOB also lost its innocence, along the line. It definitely got entangled in acts of violence. Whether those were in self-defence or not, depends on whose narrative is being listened to. Various criminals also found a hiding place under the cloak of IPOB. In the final analysis, IPOB lost the very goal it set out initially to prevent. Insecurity exploded in the zone, as the Buhari presidency launched its scotched earth assault on the region.
But Buhari’s presidency ended twenty months ago. Or has it? The expectation was that the successor government, with Bola Tinubu as head, would take steps to douse tension and chart a far less belligerent course. It has not exactly turned out so. A different layer of belligerence simply replaced an old layer of animosity.
On January 30 2025, after another characteristically winding route for an IPOB case in the courts, the Appeal Court in Abuja, sat on the appeal by IPOB against its being branded a terrorist organization, without fair hearing. The case presented an opportunity for the Appeal Court, not only to look at the legal issues, but also to take a holistic view of the environment and times, with a possible aim to bring some healing to a troubled land.
The Court of Appeal obviously, did not see things that way. With Justice Hamma Barka presiding, the court ruled that the appeal lacked merit. And so, IPOB remains the only terrorist organization in Nigeria, as Buhari wanted it and as his successor keeps it. The court concurs. Those killing thousands are bandits, if they have indulgent uncles. The orphans get the name, terrorists.
The import of this aberrant stance is that there are many acts of terrorism all over Nigeria, resulting in thousands of deaths, but there are no terrorist organizations in the land. Except IPOB, that exists only in the South East. It is possible the courts are still studying the body language of the sheriff in town.
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IKE EZEANI, a veteran journalist, former newspaper editor and government agency spokesman, is a syndicated columnist.
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