Governors Furum Is An Illegal Structure - Edozie

Suddenly, another illegality has become topical in Nigeria. The job of administering a state in Nigeria is no easy feat. In fact, any dutiful and conscientious state governor will tell you that the 24 hours that constitute a day is not enough for him to attend to his constitutional duties of governing his state. The framers of the Nigerian Constitution recognised that this job would be an arduous task, hence, they banned and precluded any state governor from engaging in any other business or vocation that would impede on his ability to meritoriously discharge his governance duties. This restriction is also tacitly included in the oath of office which a state governor subscribes to on his inauguration day. The jurisprudential explanation or significance of this restriction on a state governor is that the governor must, as of necessity, be free from all impediments which could constitute a distraction on the herculean task which his office as governor portends. Now, if this constitutional concern is applied ejusdem generis, it would operate to preclude a state governor from any other engagement outside his governorship duties during his incumbency, which has the capacity of interfering with his work as governor and ability to devote all his time and energies in that office towards serving the people of his state only.

The foregoing being the case, we therefore opine that the Nigeria Governors’ Forum is an illegal body, to the extent that it has no legal backing whatsoever. It’s no longer news that such a body which should have been a mere ad hoc body for various state governors to meet once in a while to compare good governance notes, peer review and render advice to one another, has been surreptitiously fanned to crystallize into a permanent association or pressure group, with its restricted membership as the sole beneficiary of its activities. The NGF now has a functional secretariat headed by a Director-General. No one has cared to explain to Nigerians how this secretariat is funded and what the source of the remuneration of its staffers are. Whatever it is, it must be illegal, since no law recognizes the NGF and the governors who fund its activities are doing so out of their various state funds illegally. No state House of Assembly is known to date, to have ever appropriated any funds to be spent on the NGF.

Some pundits have queried our position, saying it violates the freedom of association of the governors. Our response to that is that to be a governor is a voluntary vocation and a volunteer must not be heard to complain if the realization of his pursuits entails the suspension or waiver of some of his general rights. Afterall, they say to whom much is given, much is expected. A man who sought and obtained control of the commonwealth of his people should not be heard to complain when he is asked to mellow down and serve his people accordingly. By and large, the issue is to identify if a mischief actually exists and to seek proper legislative intervention to curb it, which is what this piece suggests.

If the NGF is not jostling for more money to spend from the federal coffers, it is positioning a member from within its ranks to occupy the Presidency or another position in subsequent elections, using arm-twisting tactics against the political parties. The ascendancy of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan are too recent for us to forget as the handiwork of the NGF. So also was the choice of Namadi Sambo as Vice-President to Jonathan. Its growing activities which deny the Nigerian people their right to freely choose their leaders, and which yield nothing in the form of good governance dividends to the people, have begun to occupy the national space as the norm. Recall that in the wake of the petrol subsidy removal protests in January 2012, the NGF sided with the Federal Government against the collective wishes and aspirations of the Nigerian people, promising that it would ensure enough palliative measures were implemented to cushion the harsh effects of the subsidy removal. However, it’s today an open secret that the people were deceived, as no palliatives whatsoever have been provided thus far, either by the various governors or by the Federal Government.

The dust raised by the recent NGF chairmanship election was a huge surprise to many right-thinking Nigerians. Our worry is that if an illegitimate body peopled by those we gave the mandate of governing the 36 states in Nigeria should make headline news nationwide, then it shouldn’t be merely because they conducted an election amongst themselves, rather, it should be about healthy rivalry on good governance index amongst its members. At the moment, the NGF is notorious only for its nuisance value: An embodiment of high-wire intrigues over an inconclusive election involving only 35 governors, that has dominated national discourse and public opinion, to the detriment of far-reaching efforts by these same governors which would create jobs for our teeming unemployed youths.

The NGF has gradually metamorphosed into a cult. This is the time to employ the sentinel to stand guard for the people and sound the gong for its proscription, before it grows into a leviathan. The National Assembly will do Nigerians a lot of good if it enacts a law proscribing the ability of state governors to embark on such fruitless efforts while in office.