Executive Orders, Presidential Orders and a Dysfunctional System
Macaddy Gad
On Saturday, October 13, the presidency released a directive tagged Executive Order 6 (EO6) aimed at preventing some 50 prominent Nigerians under investigation from travelling out of the country. There followed a rumour of a list circulating which included rather ironically the name of a judge who just passed on in September – and many wondered if dead men too should be banned from travelling abroad.
Reactions followed the spurious announcement, which had no particular names attached to it, by lawyers who examined the legality of the Executive Order. Mr. Femi Falana, a seasoned constitutional lawyer, was quoted to have said that the purported travel ban was needless, unconstitutional and only reminds one of the military junta of yesteryears. Needless to say, Executive Order 6 bring back memories of when decrees were indiscriminately targeted at individuals under the guise of upholding the law by former presidents.
It was however a dramatic turn of events as one of the spokespersons at the presidency, Garba Shehu, while speaking on Channels TV later disclosed that there was no list yet of the 50 individuals banned from travelling. So would such announcement which came from governmental media channels have been trifling with such an unsettling announcement when a list was not ready? Should the presidency at all appear to usurp the role of other branches of government such as the judiciary by such overzealous orders?
This brings closer to the fore an even more disturbing trend which has since been taken for the norm whereby the president issues special orders for basic things to be done. It is no longer strange to hear pronouncements such as:
“President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the immediate implementation of the United Nations Environmental Programme Report on the environmental restoration of Ogoniland.”;
“President Buhari orders IGP not to invite Senator Adeleke before election.”
When such a trend where the president commands every process that has to be executed in the nation becomes the order of the day, it is dangerously tilting the functionality of a nation to be dependent on one individual – the President.
When the activity of a ministry, department or agency has to depend on what the president thinks before it goes into play, then why do we have institutions and technocrats heading them? Occurrences such as that should not be normalized in a country where individuals or personalities should not be more powerful than the governmental institutions which is supposed to outlast them. One wonders what happens whenever the number one citizen is indisposed or out of the country. What would the nation do; wait and cease to exist?
Such a trend is alarmingly toeing the line of governmental dysfunction or intentional de-structuring. It intentionally makes the president or such leader larger than life. We are at a time when restructuring should be the order of the day, not when the president should yearn to micromanage all aspects of governance. Even the fact that the president multitasks and also tries to monitor the petroleum sector as the substantive Minster of Petroleum resources should be reviewed immediately as a strategy to pave way for our institutions to work unaided.
It is not too late for necessary amends to be made in this regard and the president alongside his cabinet face the business of leading the country and its people squarely, while leaving institutions alone to run more efficiently on their own.
