RIDING AGAINST THE STORMY TIDE

Lagos State government’s white power on Justice Okuwobi’s panel report rides against the tide, writes Bolaji Adebiyi

Coming into office on the tide of a widely criticised and disputed election, Umaru Yar’Adua, may Allah forgive his sins, attempted to assuage the anger of the public. He admitted that his election was fraught with irregularities. He then set up a commission to suggest ways of reforming the nation’s electoral process in such a way that it would be transparent and credible. For the man who popularised the phrase, the rule of law, in Nigeria’s political landscape, the transparency and credibility being talked about must start with the composition of the commission.

So, Yar’Adua sourced respected jurist, Muhammed Uwais, who had retired as the chief justice of Nigeria, to head the commission, which he populated with leading social critics and human rights activists of the time, including Olisa Agbakoba, SAN. At the end of its assignment, the commission submitted its report to the president and made 100 or so far-reaching recommendations on how to clean up the electoral process.

A few months after, Yar’Adua made good his promise to look into the report and issue his government’s White Paper on time. The government accepted all but one of the recommendations. If the late president expected applause, he soon found out that his expectation was wholly misconceived. The 99 recommendations he accepted counted for nothing in the face of the sole advice that was rejected, the critics, including the social-critic members of the commission said. The crooked stick that scattered the fire was the recommendation that the composition of the electoral body should be removed from the president’s control and vested in the National Judicial Council. They made the point that the independence of the electoral body would be enhanced if the appointment of its principal officers is made by a neutral body rather than the president who invariable would be an interested party during the election.

So deafening was the rejection of the White Paper by the dominant public opinion as reflected by the media that one would have thought that it was the entire recommendations of the commission that was rejected by the government. As far as they were concerned, the rejected proposal was the meat of the matter. The others were addendums. Yet Yar’Adua, in his rabid desire for the transparency of the electoral process, was minded to accept the troublesome recommendation but for a strong objection by a small group, mostly lawyers, in his cabinet. The group, three of them learned silk, had argued that it would amount to ceding an executive power and function to the judiciary.

Thirteen years after the Uwais Commission Report bedlam, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, governor of Lagos State, was fittingly inside Yar’Adua’s shoes. Last Tuesday, he laboured vigorously to explain to the people why they should unbelieve what they believed happened at Lekki Toll Gate on October 20, 2020. One mischief-maker said the governor was covered with massive sweat despite the chilly ambience of his Lagos House abode where he delivered his state-wide broadcast on the White Paper on the Justice Doris Okuwobi Judicial Panel on Police Brutality report. His travail began in the middle of last month when the report was submitted to him by the chairperson who said she considered 186 of the 235 petitions the panel received, adding that N410million awards were made to 70 victims of police brutality. Promising a timely treatment of the matter to achieve an early closure of the sad events, the governor promised a White Paper within two weeks. Minutes after the reception, a part of the report which dealt with the alleged Lekki massacre was leaked and was all over social media. That portion of the report confirmed what dominant public opinion perceived had happened at LTG on October 20, 2020. It said there were nine deaths and four persons missing but presumed dead. It practically put the Lagos State government and Lai Mohammed, the loquacious minister of information and culture, who had always said the incident was a massacre without blood and body, on the defensive.

What followed was a deluge of emotive discourse in the media space with great efforts put in to discredit the report before the White Paper would be issued. Without a doubt, this discourse put the Lagos State government in a difficult position given that whatever it would say at the end of the day stood the danger of being dismissed as an afterthought. This was the background to Sanwo-Olu’s broadcast on his impending White Paper. It must have been a difficult job speaking to a public you know may not believe whatever you say.

Like Yar’Adua’s White Paper, Sanwo-Olu’s rejected only one, accepted 11, modified six and deflected 14 recommendations to the federal government on the ground that he has no power to act on them. Okuwobi’s total recommendations were 32. Expectedly, public reaction, divided as it is, has not been nice for Sanwo-Olu because the sole decision rides against the tide of dominant public perception of the October 20, 2020 incident at LTG.

In his lengthy speech on Tuesday, the governor laboured to remind the people that the panel’s substantive brief was the complaints against police brutality and that the alleged massacre at LTG was an addendum, adding that he made no attempt to influence its outcome. True. Of the 235 petitions, only 14 were on LTG. There were 99 bodies, only nine were traced to LTG by the panel. The government accepted only one body traced to LTG. So why all the fuss about LTG, he seems to have asked? Moyosore Onigbanjo, SAN, his attorney-general, made the same point severally on ARISE TV on Wednesday morning.

Responding to their apparent bewilderment, someone who had been at the presidency said Sanwo-Olu’s handling of the panel showed a shocking political naivety that were he a student in a corporal punishment environment, he would have been awarded 12 lashes of the cane on his bare buttocks by his teacher. Why? “You empanelled professional agitators to handle such a sensitive matter and you stood aloof? In which political environment is that done?” he replied.

Adebiyi, managing editor of THISDAY Newspapers, writes from bolaji.adebiyi@thisdaylive.com