LEGAL CLINIC: Making the rule of law our “oga at the top”

Misbau ‘Mislaw’ Lateef

Welcome to Legal Clinic where you will be treated weekly to legal and quasi legal delicacies of analysing the trouble with Nigeria! The trouble with Nigeria, wrote the legendary Chinua Achebe, is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. Invariably, failure of leadership stems from and extends to the blatant disregard for rule of law by leaders who are supposed to lead by example in upholding its tenets. As the culture of disregard for rule of law by the leaders percolates the fabrics of the society – from the leaders to the led – the gradual, if not total, breakdown of law and order becomes inevitable.

In every society, particularly in a democratic society, entrenchment of the rule of law is very essential. But what is the rule of law? Basically the rule of law postulates the supremacy of the law. The conception of the phrase is dated back to the 17th century, and was only popularized in the 19th century by the iconic British jurist A. V. Dicey. Supremacy of the rule of law implies that every citizen is subject to the law. It stands in contrast to the idea that the ruler is above the law, for example by divine right. This was also what Lon Fuller, the erudite Harvard University legal philosopher of note, meant when he wrote in his book – The Morality of Law – the following immortal words: “Be you ever so high, the law is above you”.

The rule of law therefore is that aspect of law which envisages a political system where life is organized according to laws that guarantee a good degree of objectivity in dispensing justice, defending freedom, promoting peace and prosperity because law is a reasonable expression of integrity. If law is an obligatory rule of action prescribed by the supreme power of a state, then the rule of law means that every citizen shall not be exposed to the arbitrary desire of the ruler and that the exercise of the powers of government shall be conditioned by law. No one can be lawfully restrained or punished except for a definite breach of law established before the courts in ordinary legal manner.

In Nigeria today there is apparent breakdown of law and order in most part of the country arising from perennial failure of leadership across board. Yet, there is no doubt that the rule of law is unambiguously enshrined in the Nigerian Constitution. The sickening reality however is the blatant disrespect shown to this constitutional provision by Nigerian rulers who had openly sworn to uphold it. From the backdrop of several cases of unjustifiable arrests, unfair trials, executive lawlessness, suppression of free speech and undue domination of minorities, the list of persistence assault on the Constitution of Nigeria and hence the rule of law are endless. Indeed, Nigerian rulers have become sybaritic in their conscious reduction of the concept of the rule of law to a mere constitutional myth rather than reality that it was intended to be.

Everywhere you go you are stared in the face with reckless impunity and assault on the rule of law. This impunity is reflective in a typical okada rider in Lagos, just for an example, who sees the enforcement of the law banning okada operation from designated routes as a punishment from the leaders he rightly or wrongly thinks have no moral authority to do so. This is also why a typical danfo driver – and this is by no means limited to them but unfortunately inclusive of the so called educated persons – arbitrarily breaches the traffic laws by driving against the traffic amongst several similar infractions. After all, the government officials and the police vans also do so with reckless abandon, even in clearly non-emergency circumstances such as would be permissive for healthcare ambulances or security of lives and property of the citizenry.

To possess the moral authority to impose and enforce the law for the “common good of the society” as the leaders would often enthuse; leaders themselves must be seen by the led to lead the way by example. Where this fails, as is presently the case in our society, the perverse culture of impunity to and against the tenets of the rule of law endures and the breakdown of law and order festers. When the rule of law is allowed to reign supreme, it can then be said, in a manner of popular speech that the law, and not man, is now our “Oga at the top” at the feet of which everybody, the leaders and the led, bow.

It is on the above note that the ball is now set rolling for this column. Next week, God willing, we shall start off with a clinical legal surgery of the legality or otherwise of public officials organising private or public fund raisers for personal purposes whilst still in office. Does such an act constitute any breach of the Constitution and hence the rule of law? Our meeting next week shall tell.