Supreme enablers; constitutional outrage

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

“The judiciary person a wide scope for making governmental decisions.” J.A.G. Griffiths,

“Constitutional and Administrative Law’ successful Peter Archer & Andrew Martin (Eds), More Law Reform Now, 55 (1983)

The judgement of the Supreme Court of Nigeria connected 19 January 2006 concerning the authorities of exigency successful Plateau State came down 20 months aft the proclamation and 14 months aft the exigency had expired.

When it yet was yet issued, the judgement was worse than an anti-climax. The astir important happening astir the determination was not the jurisprudence of the tribunal but the timing of erstwhile the tribunal chose to perceive the case. Nearly 2 decades later, the aforesaid Court is apt to reprise a acquainted script, serving arsenic an apex enabler of powerfulness amok. The radical of Rivers State are paying the terms successful the currency of law outrage. As always, the facts matter.

By Statutory instrumentality No. 4 of 2004, issued connected 18 May 2004, Olusegun Obasanjo, president of Nigeria and a retired four-star General, proclaimed a State of Emergency  implicit Plateau State successful north-central Nigeria. Known arsenic the State of Emergency (Plateau State) Proclamation, S.I. No. 4 of 2004 provided that “the State shall for the duration of the exigency beryllium administered by an Administrator who shall beryllium appointed by maine and run connected the ground of specified Regulations that may, from clip to time, beryllium issued by me.” The duration of the exigency proclamation was six months.

At the time, President Obasanjo was elected connected the level of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). Beyond the national level, the aforesaid enactment ruled oregon controlled 28 retired of the 36 states successful Nigeria. Joshua Dariye, the politician suspended successful Plateau State by the emergency, was besides elected connected the level of the party.

Having suspended the elected governor, his lawman and the Plateau State House of Assembly successful workout of powers purportedly exercised nether the emergency, President Obasanjo appointed Chris Alli, a erstwhile Chief of Army Staff of the Nigerian Army, arsenic his chosen Emergency Administrator for Plateau State. The National Assembly rapidly voted to spend the president the parliamentary reinforcement required nether the constitution.

In the sanction of Plateau State and its people, the suspended governor, Joshua Dariye, instructed ineligible proceedings invoking the archetypal jurisdiction of the Supreme Court successful respect of disputes betwixt a authorities and the national government. Among different things, the lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to find whether the applicable provisions of the Constitution and of the Emergency Powers Act of 1961, empowered the president to suspend elected officials of the state.

The Supreme Court took its merry clip earlier scheduling the lawsuit for argument. By the clip it took arguments successful the past 4th of the pursuing year, the ineligible issues were inactive important but the existent exigency had agelong go spent. In its judgment, the Court ruled that the proceedings lacked the requisite ineligible lasting due to the fact that the suspended politician did not person powers to instruct proceedings connected behalf of Plateau State and the Emergency Military Administrator had not authorized nor supported the case. It besides added that arsenic the exigency was spent, determination was nary longer immoderate unrecorded quality involved.

This was diabolical judicial capitulation. If, arsenic seemed evident, the tribunal was intelligibly reluctant to get itself embroiled successful the controversy, it would person struggled to find a much illogical portion of reasoning connected the ground of which to warrant casualizing the contented arsenic a substance of the organization comfortableness for the judiciary.

The astir charitable anyone could beryllium astir the thought that the destiny of the lawsuit should bent connected the consent of the Military Administrator the legality of whose assignment was successful question was that it was cynical jurisprudence. At the clip of the judgment, successful immoderate case, the question of whether oregon not the president had the powerfulness to suspend elected authorities officials was not astatine each academic. Yet, done an enactment of committee that was deliberately made to look similar regular omission, the Supreme Court enabled the Plateau State exigency proclamation, mounting a precedent that ransacked the constitution but which suited the fundamentally subject temperament of a worker and war-time General whose tolerance for being second-guessed by anyone was notoriously thin.

Nearly 2 decades later, On 17 September 2025, Bola...