By Rotimi Fasan

Critics view CAMA 2020 within the framework of recent pronouncements or actions of government officials and supporters of Muhammadu Buhari seen as generally anti-democratic or detrimental to free speech in particular.

Witness the highly controversial hate speech bill promoted by two senators from Niger State, the interrogation of Obadiah Mailafia, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and Ghali Umar Na’Abba, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the imposition of a N5 million fine on Info FM Abuja for the supposedly unsubstantiated utterances of Mailafia concerning sponsors of Boko Haram made on the radio station. These events, among others, have been catalytic in the manner many have chosen to understand the enactment of CAMA 2020.

Things got a bit more complicated after Ikra Bilbis, the chair of the Board of the National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, openly accused Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Information, for being solely responsible for the review of the section of the NBC code under which Info FM was sanctioned. If proven to be true, nothing could be more authoritarian.

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It is against the backdrop of these prior moves by Abuja that critics of CAMA 2020 readily reject and hold Buhari personally responsible for it, pointing to Decree 4 of 1984, among other antecedent infractions, to back their claim of Buhari’s anti-democratic tendencies. This is a knee-jerk response that ignores the facts on the ground.

First, CAMA is an Act of the National Assembly that passed through the different legislative stages demanded by law. It went through first, second and third readings before being presented for public hearing and then back to the committees of the National Assembly on to formal presentation to the president, who only appended his signature to it.

Could this then be Buhari’s crime or is there more to the matter? There is no evidence that the executive arm played a role or sponsored any individual or group at any time during the processing of the bill that resulted in the Act not to mention the president making any personal input.

It is from all indications a bipartisan legislation and nobody has so far shown it was a bill with the direct imprimatur of Buhari. Even if it did, politics is all about interest and the executive would be within its right to seek to influence the outcome of any bill in a way favourable to it. But the fact that the bill passed through all required legislative stages before it was enacted into law defeats any argument that it lacks democratic input or is a special interest creation of President Buhari.

As far as the processing of CAMA 2020 is concerned, Buhari’s hands are clean. He only did what the law permitted by signing the bill, making it a legislative act and thus giving it the effect of a law.

Any legitimate criticism of Buhari in the enactment of this Act must demonstrate how he parleyed his position as president in any form that could be considered detrimental to democratic practice. To hold the president personally responsible for the law does not begin to add up not to say make sense. It shows up Buhari’s critics as lazy thinkers blinded by hate, for whom any action of the president is grist for criticism.

This is simply calling a dog a bad name in order to hang it. To do so in this instance would be to operate in the territory of hate which needs no legislation to be considered reprehensible.

The effect of this is that it makes any reasonable or fair-minded individual wary of many critics of the president who, it would appear, cannot see anything good in his action. It hurts legitimate criticism of the president that could be read by partisans of his government as just another sour grape attack of a man whose guts some simply cannot stand for whatever reason.

What is so far clear from the debate on CAMA is that certain individuals failed to play their part in the process that led to the enactment of the Act. There is no part of Nigeria that does not have legislative representatives.

If some Christians would now see CAMA as tailor-made to hurt their interests, where were their representatives when the bill went through the various legislative stages? Were they asleep as some legislators are wont to during legislative sessions? Or were these legislative representatives the perpetual absentees that spend their time in Abuja doing everything but law making?

Is there any evidence that only Muslims or animists came together to process the bill that resulted in CAMA? The answer is definitely no! The truth is that Christian lobbies, if there is anything as such, failed to be interested in the so-called dirty politics that has given birth to CAMA. Is it any surprise that no legislator, many of whom must be members of the denominations most critical of CAMA, has said a word to support the notion that CAMA is anti-Christian? It’s been silent all through.

CAMA 2020 is what it is and has come to regulate the activities of NGOs and other registered institutions in the country. No doubt aspects of its provisions could be misapplied like many things Nigerian but the overall framing of the law is to ensure transparency and integrity in the management of organisations in the interest of all.

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It is basically an amended Act, not an entirely new law, and regulations similar to it like the CBN code limiting the tenure of bank executives have proven very beneficial in curbing unwholesome practices in the financial sector. While religious organisations in Nigeria are not necessarily subject to the same rules as profit-making organisations, to the extent that certain aspects of their activities are profit-oriented, they should be willing to fulfill the demands of the law.

Rejecting CAMA in its entirety or representing it as an attempt to regulate a particular religion makes its critics look like people with things to hide. This may well be the case given the unconscionable bureaucratisation and merchandisation of the church by some business people in clerical disguise.

It is such one-man business ventures misnamed religious organisations or others managed in a similar manner that has so much to worry about CAMA. Otherwise, several other religious organisations are in fact first-class exemplars of profit-making ventures and should be models for state-run institutions in terms of their sense of purpose, efficiency, and general business acumen.

These ones should welcome with warm embrace aspects of CAMA designed to ease the management of their business arms, designed as they are to help them rather than engage in unprofitable scaremongering or saber-rattling. And they could always approach the courts where their rights are trampled.

Vanguard