A visible feature in every developed society is a high degree of accountability in governance in which every public operative is held accountable for any task he is mandated to implement. The corollary is the case in underdeveloped societies where accountability is weak. Nigeria is a good example of where accounting for leadership actions or decisions is virtually non-existent despite ample evidence that the nation’s constitution places premium on the concept of accountability.
It is in fact the recognition that it would be difficult for courts to enforce the lofty ideals of Chapter 2 of the Nigerian Constitution 1999, technically called ‘Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy that the media was mandated by Section 22 to hold government accountable to the people. But then, the media has never been allowed to perform the task without hindrance. Instead, several strategies had been designed by top political appointees to ‘repress the press.’
The most effective of the strategies in recent times has been the use of the provisions of the Cybercrimes Act to arrest and detain journalists who adopt adversarial journalism to compel political leaders to account for their policies and activities. Consequently, many journalists have been scared away from the terrain especially as security agencies always ensured that media critics were never prosecuted but physically assaulted in detention camps.
Last year, the governors of two states, Ebonyi and Cross River led their peers in intimidating the media, making it impossible for political leaders to be held accountable. At the federal level, accountability has been a non-issue; even the welfare and security of citizens which the constitution recognised as the primary purpose of government was reinterpreted by leaders to be an assignment for every individual. Indeed, the immediate past minister of defence publicly asked unarmed Nigerians to embark on self-defence against terrorists and kidnappers.
As if to firmly establish that Nigerians had transited out of the rule of law, government did not only renege on agreements it reached with major unions such as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the National Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), it sought to penalize members of the unions for asking for their rights. At a point, government accused NARD of confusing her into paying allowances to unqualified persons.
This led many analysts into wondering if management bodies and governing councils of medical institutions such as teaching hospitals set up to run such institutions did not exist. Alas, structures for the recruitment and payment of salaries to doctors in government hospitals are in place but public officials who perform poorly are never held accountable. In addition to the failure of leaders to hold their subordinates to account for tasks assigned to them, leaders are themselves never held vicariously liable for the lapses of their subordinates.
Vicarious liability is a concept whereby leaders accept responsibility for lapses in their areas of responsibility when they may not have been personally responsible for such lapses, it is enough that it was due to the failings of subordinates who are answerable to them. The concept is in vogue in civilized societies where leaders resign from office because of lapses occurring in their functional jurisdictions. For example, as far back as 1954, in the United Kingdom, a certain Sir, Thomas Dugdale who was at the time minister for agriculture resigned his appointment because an enquiry adversely criticised civil servants in his ministry over a compulsory purchase of some farmlands even though there was no evidence of Dugdale’s personal involvement. Many other countries follow the same principle. In Romania, a former minister of interior Valse Blaga reportedly resigned a week after5000 police officers went on a one-day strike in protest over a 25% pay cut. In Nigeria, no matter how long ASUU’s incessant strikes may last, no office-holder is questioned let alone to resign from office.
Successive governments in Nigeria may have for long contrived a disingenuous agreement that makes ministers of education unable to differentiate between an agreement and a negotiation thereby playing the game of ‘negotiations without end’ with ASUU. Our immediate past labour minister was perhaps craftier with his own template consisting of: a) renegotiating the contentious subject with the relevant stakeholders before signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on how government plans to redress the situation; b) converting the unimplemented MOU into a memorandum of action (MOA) a few months later when the MOU fails and c) blaming ASUU for the continued closure of universities across the country. The same template was put into use during strikes by resident doctors or other aggrieved groups. No minister of health, education or labour resorted to the principle of ministerial responsibility by resigning from office as a mark of honour. Instead each minister simply adopted any strategy at the expense of service delivery. None of them was also sacked from office by the president on account of such failure to deliver service.
Even in March 2014, when a huge indiscretion led to the death of some Nigerians, no one was held accountable. The event was supposed to be a recruitment exercise which ended in a stampede because over 520, 000 job-seekers were invited to apply for 4,500 jobs in the immigration service. Although government realized about N520 million at N1,000 per applicant as registration fees it could not organize an efficient crowd control mechanism.
The exercise thus ended with no less than 16 deaths while the then minister declined responsibility claiming that the applicants were impatient. If the supervising minister had not taken over the assignment, the Immigration service would have conducted its recruitment exercise as it always smoothly did over the years. Yet, nothing was done to the minister. On its part the Buhari administration did not also believe in holding ministers accountable. Till it left office, no one knew why the only 2 ministers in charge of Agriculture and Power it removed, were dropped.
Lack of accountability by officers mandated to implement specified tasks and the failure to vicariously hold their supervisors liable constituted only one side of the story. There is a second aspect visibly observable since 1999 in which no former head of government has been requested to account for anything since leaving office. It is as if there is a secret agreement to make the immunity granted to them while in office by section 308 of the constitution a life-time benefit. When President Goodluck Jonathan left office, some of his ministers were prosecuted for corrupt practices but no one has asked Jonathan any question.
Huge sums of misappropriated funds were reportedly traced to the then national security adviser, for which he was detained for years, yet Jonathan who ought to be privy to such huge disbursements was never questioned. During the era of President Muhammadu Buhari similar allegations of governance lapses and large scale corruption were similarly made. Of particular note was the naira redesign policy for which everyone has continued to blame the former governor of the Central Bank. Although Buhari said only a few things throughout his tenure, Nigerians saw and heard him saying the naira redesign policy was directed and approved by him. Now, why is the former CBN governor alone in distress?
The implications of not holding leaders liable for the deeds of their subordinates are grave. If the posture is not changed, many public officials would henceforth only act half-heartedly in office, knowing that at the end, only them would be held accountable. It is true that public officers ought to ensure that in carrying out presidential orders, due processes and procedures are diligently followed, but it does not appear fair to attribute all policy failures to only the zeal of loyal officers.
Indeed, the principal cannot be completely exonerated from blame concerning a subject for which he would have received accolades if the same policy had succeeded. In other words, anyone who gains from a successful policy ought to be part of those to blame where the policy fails. It is wrong to make our presidents believe that they can enjoy eternal immunity. In addition, one way of stopping cabals who remotely control the presidency is to hold those responsible for lapses along with any president who cared little about what people did in his name.
