IN this exposition it should be clear that no demand on Man made by God is to be idealised or moralised. Every demand of God is for a purpose.

AHAMBA advises the ANPP thusly: “They should move first to stop the impeachment process, then ensure that the party regains the mandate because if they allow (Gadi) to be impeached, he may lose the locus to ask that he be sworn in”.

THE President has no constitutional power to prevent the application of sections 188 and 189 by State House of Assembly, however reprehensible its motive might be.

THE constitutional role of the Deputy Governor is to be there to continue where the Governor is stopped by reason of death, impeachment or any other disability.

THE governor elected as the ANPP governor and the 17 ANPP co-defectors have not conducted themselves as representatives of the ANPP faction of the Bauchi electorate, neither have the 9 PDP legislators conducted themselves as the elected representatives of the PDP factions of the Bauchi electorate.

By the 1999 Constitution it is the people of Nigeria who in order to exercise their sovereign power in the conduct of their public and private affairs constitute themselves into the electorate

EVENTS in Bauchi State are showing the difference between party selection of officeholders and election of the same. What was played out at the Federal level in the 2007 presidential election is now logically on display in Bauchi. What are the facts?

Does this celebration of tenure of civilian rule not represent in fact the substitution of wishfulness for constitutional rule for deliberate and pro-active mobilization of the people for democracy? The question of the prospects of democratic constitutionalist government and governance in Nigeria are immediately determined by the contestation between military-rule political parties and civilian rule electoral parties within the context of the postcolonial transition.

CHAPTER 2 of the 1999 Constitution captioned “Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy” puts in bold relief the arguments that are being made. Section 13 clearly states: “It shall be the duty and responsibility of all organs of government and of all authorities and persons, exercising legislative, executive, or judicial powers to conform […]

To fully develop the framework from which the fusion of the internal and foreign dimensions of governance is to be appreciated I have teamed up with Eze Nwagbaraji also a Vanguard columnist to deepen our appreciation of the problems involved in the current spate of elected officials defection from the electorate that voted them into office to opponent electorates overwhelmingly defeated in the elections in which the defectors were elected into office.

Chidi Amuta has already appraised the Opposition and founded it wanting. He has concluded that “Among the contending parties that are not in power, a consensus on strategy is far as outer space. Blinded by narrow endangered herd mentality, the personal interests and myopic ambitions of their principals, each party that has control of one state or two clutches to its little miserable corner of the political crumb like a life vest.

Here then is a seminal doctrine of democratic change that needs to be explored further if only to understand the constipation that may be going on in PDP. The author is none other than the irrespessible Ojo Maduekwe, former Secretary of the PDP and current Foreign Affairs Minister”.

If the above is the thesis of Amuta’s essay, can that essay be read as the warning of a watchman? Can Amuta be read as a message to one member of the political class who by past conduct can understand the message and transmit it to the PDP leadership? Such interpretation of the essay is supported by Amuta’s description of the Nigerian political situation and of the aptitude of Ojo Maduekwe whom Amuta presents in these words.

What Chinua Achebe was describing as the fate of Nigeria was not pre-colonial or colonial or post-colonial politics but the transitional politics where all want to be the next post-colonial sovereigns.

This is the historical conjectural approach. The result of adopting this method of analysis would be an explanation of development failures blamed on the military. There are, however, problems with this approach. The first is that military rule depended on the civil service, the judiciary, the private sector and civilian ministers who enabled the military to govern.