Citizens without Sovereignty: An Evaluation of the Philosophy behind the #EndSARS Campaign in Response to Anthony Ayotunde Olayoku

by

Frederick Ifeanyi Obananya, OP

Dominican Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria.

fredifeanyi21@gmail.com; +234 703 232 1081

The recent article by Anthony Ayotude Olayoku titled: “The #EndSars Campaign and Reimaging the Nigerian Police Force” is an important contribution that mostly resonates with my ideas on the current advocacy. I agree with him that it is the responsibility of the executive arm of government, as empowered by the constitution, to deploy state agents, most notably the military and the police, across the country towards ensuring the security of the country and her citizens. This is the foremost duty of the Nigerian government as enshrined in 14(2) (b) of the Nigerian Constitution and it must not be wished away. I also associate myself with his critique of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a subdivision of Crime and Investigations Department of the Nigerian Police Force, created in the year 1991 with the primary intention of eradicating the activities of armed robbery, which has deteriorated from its purpose to preying on innocent Nigerian youths with unsubstantiated allegations of criminality. The reason for this deterioration, which is the underlying factor for the consequent protests by many Nigerian youths, which is often neglected and not spoken about, is what this response will attempt to address.

But while I admit that I quite agree with some of the points made by Olayoku, it must not be mistaken for essential concordance. Our essential divergence comes from what I consider the crux of the matter. It is my contention that the crux of the matter, as far as SARS is concerned, is its failure to understand that they are accountable to the citizens to whom the power of sovereignty belongs. It is this failure that leads to their preying on the citizens that they are meant to protect. SARS preys on the citizens because the Nigerian State, which is supposed to be accountable to the citizens has allocated to itself, in the words of Anthony Akinwale “ubiquity, omniscience and omnipotence”. Hence, the activities of the state, its institutions and its functionaries can often not be checked by the citizens. “And even when citizens freely submit themselves to such a state, their effort amounts to self-inflicted tyranny….” (Akinwale, 2017).

The monstrous misconception of the state, its institutions and its functionaries as “ubiquitous, omniscience and omnipotence,” which was nurtured and inculcated in the Nigerian system through the Macpherson Constitution of 1951, came alive during the military rule. It has since become entrenched as the norm during the seeming democratic period. The subtle political stage-managing by the British to leave power in the hands of some few was nurtured and inculcated into the system by the division of the 136 representatives to the central legislative council. The division has 68 seats allocated to the North and another 68 to the South. Superficially, this appears as an act of justice, but apparently puts the North in a position of advantage with it having 68 members while the East and the West which made up the South had 34 representatives each. With this mathematical political stage-managing, politics in Nigeria became an alliance of the North with either of the two regions (East and West) to attain majority votes, which led to a division among Southerners. Hence, power, which came to be in the hands of a few, was used in a way that estranged the other. The state thus became more powerful than the citizens – leading to citizens without sovereignty.

The ill-advised military, seeing that the problem of tribalism and nepotism was eating deep into the Nigerian political sphere, promised to make things better but their involvement in Nigerian politics, through the many coup d’états, worsened the state-citizen relationship. And upon its return of power to democratic rule in 1999, the military wrote a supposedly democratic constitution through an undemocratic means thereby denying the people of Nigeria their role as those to whom the power of sovereignty belongs and who should write their own constitution. And as such, the 1999 Constitution never enkindled in the citizens the expected patriotism because, according to Nwabueze (2018: 356), the democratization process as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution rests on a false and weak foundation.

The reasoning for this is because the process of writing the 1999 Constitution was not borne by the people through the “means of a referendum or by means of a constituent assembly specially elected and specially mandated by the people…” Based on this faulty precedence, the people were not allowed to express their will to adopt or accept the Constitution through votes so as to “bestow upon it the stamp of public acceptance and the recognition of its suitability for the government of the country, and therefore as worthy of respect and obedience”, after the 1999 constitutional formulation. Instead, the Constitution was promulgated by the “Federal Military Government by way of a schedule to a Decree, Decree 24 of 1999” (Nwabueze, 2018: 357 – 58). Hence, the sheer imposition of the 1999 Constitution on the people became the height of the state’s formalization of having citizens without sovereignty.

The ongoing protest by the Nigerian youths across the nation, with the hashtag #ENDSARS, is a clamour for the disbandment of SARS and the reformation of the Nigerian Police Force. But this clamour has another often neglected but fundamental angle to it, the return of power to the citizens. It is a demand which addresses the need to redress the state’s arrogant allocation of “ubiquity, omniscience and omnipotence” to itself, its institutions and its functionaries. This entails demanding accountability of leaders to Nigerian citizens to whom the power of sovereignty ultimately belongs. The nationwide protests by the Nigerian youths thus demonstrates a weariness about being citizens without sovereignty.

The youths’ protests across the Nigerian states have, in a way, laid open a major problem of Nigeria often masqueraded under the smokescreen of religious affiliations and tribal sentiments. I dare to say that misguided religious and tribal sentiments are not our fundamental problem, but a monstrous misconception of the state, its institutions and its functionaries. The #ENDSARS protests has thus far projected this as the youths, without differentiating between their different  religious and tribal affiliations, demanded for a return of power to the citizens saying: “enough of SARS brutality” using a common front.

It is also worthy of mention that the attainment of the demand for a return of power to the citizens cannot fully be realized except by a re-writing of the Nigerian Constitution and not an amendment. A democratic constitution formulated and adopted through democratic processes, including the use of referenda will help reduce the many agitations for secession in the country. It could also enkindle the spirit of patriotism and unity among citizens.  For one, the state cannot exist outside the ambience of the law; since the rule of law is like an anchor upon which different components of the state revolves. Hence, the Nigerian youths need to incorporate the demand for the promotion of citizenship through the re-writing of the Nigerian Constitution as part of the demands of the protests as this will go a long way to ensuring that the state agents respect Nigerian citizens, whose lives matter.

References

Akinwale, Anthony (2017) “On the Inextricable Relationship between Politics and the Common Good” in Politics and the Common Good, Aquinas’ Day Series, vol. 5. Ed. Joseph Ekong. Ibadan: The Michael Dempsey Center for Social and Religious Research, pp. 1 – 8.

Nwabueze, Ben (2018). Crisis of Governance in Nigeria Ibadan: John Archers  Publishers.

Olayoku, Anthony Ayotude (2020).  The #EndSars Campaign and Reimaging the Nigerian Police Force” in The West African Transitional Justice Centre from https://watjcentre.org/the-endsars-campaign-and-reimaging-the-nigerian-police-force/php  on October 14, 2020.