It has now entered the official category of “ridiculous,” and possibly, the potential of impeachable constitutional breach. Nearly two months after his inauguration, President Muhammadu Buhari is yet to constitute and announce an executive council. This is a serious breach of presidential power. To be clear, it is a constitutionally grey area, what time limits a president has, before he could present his cabinet to the National Assembly.
While the constitution is silent on this issue, it is nevertheless clear that Nigeria shall be governed by an executive branch of government comprising the president with an executive council of state. The executive council as prescribed by the constitution is not a rubber stamp council, nor is it a cosmetics cabinet, or merely part of the furniture of presidential power in a presidential system of government; the president and the Federal Executive Council is the full and constitutional executive authority of the federal government of Nigeria, with full executive function, at the head of which is the elected president.
The president, following his election is required to appoint the council, and in the appointment of the nation’s National Executive Council, to be broadly inclusive, and to reflect federal character. There is purpose to every constitutional requirement. Two important aspects of what may now possibly constitute the breach of the constitution by this president, and with impeachable possibilities is that the president of Nigeria has failed to establish an executive government since his inauguration close to sixty days and has been governing alone, like a tyrant, with no recourse to conciliar input. This is the meaning of absolutism. This president is governing as an absolute president.
The president is taking fundamentally weighty decisions on behalf of this republic, largely with a small inner circle of presidential staff, and these decisions, in the nearly sixty days of this presidency have implications for the federation. The president has entered a potentially dangerous area: he has absorbed and assumed every leverage of authority, and is acting as his own adviser and ministers in all the most important areas of executive action. It is a breach of the constitution that requires that every president shall act based on the authority and advise of his ministerial council, which the constitution mandates him to appoint, but whose function the president is never to absorb. The law requires the president to appoint a council of ministers to fully constitute the executive authority of the land otherwise the government does not exist.
President Muhammadu Buhari
Failure to do that, presumably is a willful breach of the constitution which the president swore to uphold. It is grounds also for assessment of his competence and preparedness to govern. It is within the mandate of the National Assembly to make that call; that is to determine that the president has shown incompetence and lack of preparedness to assume full authority of presidential power held in trust for the nation. On determining that the president is incompetent, the rule of law requires the National Assembly to proceed with the impeachment of the president.
There is surely enough ground at this very moment, to begin to question the president’s mental preparedness to govern. A president who, nearly two months after, has yet to write and notify the National Assembly and present a list of the ministers of his government, certainly presents a unique problem, and gives profound cause to worry, and grounds to question his competence and mental readiness. It raises issues of accountability. Perhaps it hacks back to Buhari’s background as a military head of government, and his greater comfort in the pyramidal structure of authority, with him perched at the top of the pyramid, rather than the roundtable of council government. In the executive council, even though he is the head of the executive branch, and even though all those who sit in that roundtable serve at his pleasure, the president is more a choirmaster than a Regimental Sergeant Major. His ministers are independent authorities.
Once appointed to the Executive Council, they are equal in a system that makes the president head of the executive, but still primus inter pares with his ministers. Like them, he has one vote. In other words, in a constitutional democracy, and in the presidential system, the president does not have absolute power; his power is distributed and diffuse, and is embedded in the power of the council. To act outside and above the executive council, is to brook overreach, and act in the manner of the character in the Igbo fable of power called, “Eze-Onye-Agwanam” – the tyrant who listens only to his own voice. And Buhari has been listening only to his own voice.
The nation is in shambles. There is no clear policy direction almost sixty days after the inauguration of the new government: no economic policy; no foreign policy; no clear national defence policy. Nigeria’s domestic policy under this president remains unclear because no one has articulated it, nor is there any clear political direction in the system. Ministerial authority is constitutionally necessary to classify, legitimize and give accent to every decision of government, and generally put a hand on the lever of public governance. In delaying the appointment of ministers, and presenting them to the National Assembly for confirmation, Buhari has postponed every act of government, or at the very least, slowed down the activity of government. The effect is confusion at the very center of the federal government.
The Naira continues to slide dangerously; the president certainly is not receiving any clear economic advise, nor is there any clear action plan to address Nigeria’s economic reality. This is driving prices up; drying out the circulation of money, creating uncertainty, and putting Nigerians mentally and physically at great risk. Various contractual obligations are on a hold because investors do not yet know the shape of Nigeria’s economic policies. Many jobs have been lost as a result. Fewer still have been created. Nigeria may soon face the Greece situation.
The president’s dawdling over the appointment of ministers has real time effect, and it is a capital mess. Let us say, for instance, that we have another Ebola scare, how does the Federal Ministry of Health, respond without its political leadership? Who would direct the coordination of disaster relief in the case of a national health emergency? Bureaucrats do not act outside of political directives. The president presumably has assumed the role of the Minister for Defence. But by all definitions, Boko Haram is now legally a war of external aggression, the fight against which requires strategic coordination between Defence, Internal Affairs, Finance, and Justice.
There is no cabinet-level response and coordination. The fierce, renewed Boko Haram activity after the decisive gains in the last days of the Jonathan presidency reflects the policy and strategic confusion and the summersaults of Buhari’s one-man administration. Now, Buhari is about to embark on his first official foreign trip to the United States. The question every sensible citizen must now be asking this president is, what briefs and advisories has the president received before proceeding to this most important foreign trip that may shape his foreign policy action? How can a president embark on such an important diplomatic mission without cabinet input? In short, what foreign policy action plan is available to the president? It is unprecedented. Without the political leadership of a foreign minister, the president will proceed blindly. These are the implications of a president governing alone – listening and talking only to himself – playing “Eze-Onye-Agawanam.”
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