ENCORE
It was Ronald Reagan who once famously stated that when we speak of peace, we should not mean just the absence of war. True peace rests on the pillars of individual freedom, human rights, national self-determination and respect for the rule of law. We had, last week, discussed the characteristics of a terrorist group and agreed with the U.S position that from all indications, IPOB is not a terrorist group. I, therefore, argued that the government was wrong to have proscribed it, as a terrorist organisation. On this note, we continue and conclude our discourse on the above pressing national issue. Thereafter, we shall x-ray PMB’s Independence Day broadcast.
Does agitation for self determination amount to terrorism?
Continued
Aside from the ratification and domestication of the ACHPR by Nigeria, the Supreme Court of Nigeria has also made the ACHPR municipally operable and enforceable. This was in the landmark decision in Gen Sani Abacha & Ors v. Chief Gani Fawehinmi (2000) 4 FWLR 533, where it ruled that, “the ACHPR is only subject to the 1999 Constitution, but above any other legislation in Nigeria”. This surely means that where the Nigerian Constitution fails in preserving, protecting, promoting and advancing these Biafran citizens’ constitutional liberties and human rights, then the African Charter on Human & Peoples Rights operates, especially with respect to right to self-determination.
Article 2 of the Arab Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism 1998: All cases of struggle by whatever means, including armed struggle, against foreign occupation and aggression for liberation and self-determination, in accordance with the principles of international law, shall not be regarded as an offence.
Chapter 1, Article 1, part 2 of the UN Charter provides: “To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
The Helsinki Final Act adopted by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE).
The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of 1993, and the Declaration of Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States adopted in 1970 by the UN General Assembly.
Decisions by the International Court of Justice in Namibia Case 7, the Western Sahara Case 8 and the East Timor Case 9.
UN Human Rights Committee 10.
The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 11.
UN Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1976.
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1st January, 1976.
Historical perspective
Consequent upon the above premises and in relation to section 19(d) of the TPAA, 2013, IPOB cannot honestly be regarded as a terrorist group.
From time immemorial, people have always sought for self-determination and actualisation, to pursue their economic, social and political goals, as one people, without external domination. The Catalonian indigenes, who are seeking for independence from Spain, march in millions, protesting; the Irish people with their well trained Republican Army, have asserted their right to self-determination for decades; the Brexit crusaders of Great Britain did a referendum to exit EU; the Quebec people from Canada; the Scottish people, who had a referendum to exit UK; all seek for independence and self-determination for their peoples.
At the start of the 20th Century, only about a few dozen independent states existed on the planet earth. Today, there are approximately 196 nations in existence.
Former Czechoslovakia broke up in 1992 into two, Czech Republic to the West, and Slovakia to the East. Yugoslavia is nothing but a product of the break-up of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire in the aftermath of the First World War. After Marshall Josip Tito’s iron grip, internal tensions and rival nationalism in 1992, led to a civil war, which split the country vertically and horizontally into six smaller nations – Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.
The once powerful Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated into Austria, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Some parts went to Romania; others to Italy; yet some other parts went to Poland. The Ottoman Empire that once stretched from Morocco to the Sudan, from Hungary to the Persian Gulf for over 600 years broke up in November 1922. The once powerful USSR (the bulwark of Marxist startinism), had an anti-climatic collapse in 1991, to 15 politically distinct entities-Uzbekistan, Latvia, Moldovia, Estonia, Armenia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Azerbajan, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyztan, Turkmenistan and Kuzakhstan. East Timor in 1999, broke away from Indonesia and became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century on 2nd May, 2002.
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were once one country, just like Ethiopia and Eritrea; and more recently, like South Sudan from Sudan.
Is the National Assembly involved in the proscription process?
Assuming, but not conceding, that IPOB is a terrorist organisation, from the provisions of section 19(d) TPAA, it is clear that the National Assembly (NASS), must be involved in the proscription process. Section 19(d) TPAA defines a proscribed organisation as a group involved in terrorism and is “prohibited by a law from operating in Nigeria”.
Section 19(d) of the (TPAA), 2013, provides as follows:
(a) Substituting for the definition of the words “proscribed organisation” after the definition of the words “proceeds of terrorism”, the following new definition –
“Proscribed organisation” is a group involved in terrorism and is prohibited by law from operating in Nigeria and –
(i) Declared to be a proscribed organisation under section 2 of this Act; and
(ii) Includes a group, which has been declared to be an international terrorist group under section 9 of this Act;
Having complied with the provisions of section 2 of the TPA, the National Assembly has a role to play by enacting a law to prohibit the group in its name, from further operating in Nigeria. This means that the president, HAGF, acting in concert with the Judge in Chambers, have only partially complied with the provisions of section 19(d)(i) of TPAA, 2013, which amended section 2 of the TPA, 2011, to involve the NASS. The law is trite that an uncompleted legal act is not legal unless it is completed. See the case of Bakare v. Lagos State Civil Commission Suit No. S.C. 141/1988; (1992) 23 N.S.C.C (Pt. 111) 218 at 254-255.
Unconstitutionality of Section 2 of the TPA, 2011.
Authorities abound to the effect that any law, which deprives a party of fair hearing is null and void. The Supreme Court in the case of Nwongo v. Aku & Ors (1983) 11 SC 129 at 153, held:
“Any law which deprives a party of fair hearing in contrary to the provisions of the Constitution and to that extent is void.”
Similarly, the Supreme Court imprimatured this decision in the case of Samba Petroleum Ltd. & Anor V. United Bank of Africa (UBA) & 2 Ors.(2010) 43 NSCQR 119 at 137.
Section 36(1) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, as altered, is explicit that in the determination of his civil rights and obligations, a person is entitled to fair hearing within a reasonable time.
Can it legally be justifiable for an organisation whose members are peacefully agitating for self-determination within the space of internationally recognised legal regime, to be proscribed without the group or its members being afforded an opportunity to be heard at all? Is it right, legally and morally, to accuse them of heinous crimes and proscribe their group on the basis of such unsubstantiated criminal allegations, without giving them a fair hearing?
I think not. I am convinced that from the analysis, it is evident that the provisions of section 2 TPA, 2011, are unconstitutional. (See section 1(3) Constitution, FRN, 1999, as altered).
I earnestly advise the Federal Government to do the needful by urgently restructuring this federation with her fault-lines, social injustice and inequity and ethno-religious disequilibrium.
Panic measures, brute force, military repression, profiling, intimidation and subjugation, through state apparatchik, cannot heal Nigeria. No. They can never.
God bless Nigeria.
Concluded
President Muhammadu
Buhari’s National Day
broadcast: Yet another golden opportunity lost
The entire National Day broadcast by PMB on the occasion of Nigeria’s 57th independence is quite disappointing in all ramifications. It was very unpresidential and unreconciliatory. PMB left the real issues and pursued trifles. The speech was bereft of nobility of statesmanship, and devoid of a calm grasp and appraisals of the dire straits Nigeria is currently in. The broadcast was rabidly narcistic, parochial, nepotic and clanish, as it failed to see anything wrong with the blatant and well reported threats by the Arewa youths to quit fellow Nigerians from their domains. The speech followed his now well worn out fixation of perceived hatred for the Igbo race, whose leadership he needlessly and needlessly scurilised and lampooned, for allegedly being behind IPOB and other agitations. I doubt hearing him mention anything about gun wielding herdsmen that literally vanquish citizens in their own homesteads across Nigeria. The president celebrated mediocrity and edified his government’s non performance two and half years down the line. I genuinely wondered if he was discussing the same country, Nigeria, that I am in, or another utopian planet Mars. The beautiful picture of a peaceful country he painted so glowingly and artistically with the paintbrush of breathless satisfaction is quite different from the stark reality on the ground, which every beleaguered Nigerian labours under. His speech writers either wallowed in utopian mystic of redemptive messianism, or in crass fraud and grand deception. But, Nigerians are no fools. Did I hear PMB say this is the first time a government at the centre is losing the governorship, senatorial and Houses of Assembly elections to the opposition at the state level? No sir, wrong. Whoever gave Mr. President this false electoral history has done him incalculable disservice and great damage and ridicule. Few examples: Remember Ondo State (Labour Party), Osun and Edo states (AC), Anambra (APGA), etc? Not only did the ruling PDP party lose the elections to those opposition parties, the then president, Goodluck Jonathan actually rolled out the drums and congratulated the new governors, Senators and House members. Peter Obi won the Anambra State governorship election on February 6, 2010 for the second time, on the platform of APGA. The Umar Yar’Adua, though ill, was president at the centre under the PDP, just as Bola Tinubu won the Lagos State governorship seat twice under AD and ACN, with Olusegun Obasanjo as president under PDP at the centre. Governor Willie Obiano of APGA won the 2014 Anambra governorship election. Goodluck Jonathan of PDP was president.
Buhari lost yet another golden opportunity to balm bruised nationalities’ ego and cement Nigeria’s yawning cleavages, hate and divisiveness. Must everything be predicated on falsehood, force, threats and gun boat diplomacy, vi et armis? It did not ever work.