Immunity Does Not Protect President From Criticism For Bad Government Policy, Corruption Impunity And Injustice By Ibrahim Alhassan

Section 308 of the 1999 Constitution of the FRN (As Amended) provide immunity for President, Vice-President, Governor and Dep. Governor from all form of frivolous, vexatious or baseless litigation in respect of personal or criminal proceedings that would distract him from running business of governance.

Unfortunately, the Nigerian constitution which imported immunity clause from the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 has failed to place an equilibrium between the clause and public interest. According to section 2(1) of the Act(supra), “Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Crown shall be subject to all those liabilities in tort to which, if it were a private person of full age and capacity…” This shows that the Crown liability as recognised by the Act promote public interest through the enforcement of legal liability is limited.

Interestingly, the above section 308 did not in anyway shield the President and others from being criticized by patriotic Nigerians against bad government policy, corruption, impunity and injustice. The Supreme Court in the case of Bola Tinubu vs. IMB Securities Plc (2001) interpreted section 308 and further held that it has been manipulated to promote injustice and impunity.

Since, democracy is view as government of the people, by the people and for the people; it is the constitutional rights of the people to organized a lawful and peaceful protest to bring government attention against it bad policy that is detrimental to the people, and imported injustice against poor Nigerians. Any attempt to used state apparatus like the Police, DSS, Military etc as a repressive instrument against dissenting voices amount to naked abuse of power and absolute disregard of constitutional rights by the President, who is a one time beneficiary to this rights before he became intoxicated with power.

It is evident that the purpose of the above immunity clause has been manipulated by the present government to promote injustice, impunity and corruption. A very simple example, this government is notoriously known to be floating court orders and siphoning the country’s resources through her change agents. Shamelessly defending and justifying the floating courts orders through the Attorney General of the Federation in the name of so called public interest.

The concatenation and conflating of the forgoing is that Nigerians has the constitutional rights to protest against injustice, impunity and corruption carrying out by this government. The open rape against the rule of law, selective anti-corruption fights, abuse of official duty and discrimination against government jobs is enough sufficient reasons to call for a lawful and peaceful protest across the country. Whether the tag the lawful demonstration as #Revolutionnow is irrelevant as long as the purpose is to check mate the spate of anomalies being perpetrated by this government under the guise of change or next level.

History revealed the various effective protest been carried out by Nigerians against previous government regime comes with ash tag like #Bringbackourgirls

God Bless Nigeria.

Ibrahim Alhassan (Abu Ruqayyah)