Date Published: 09/28/09
IS ATTORNEY GENERAL MICHAEL ANDOOAKAA INCOMPETENT? By EMMANUEL ONWUBIKO
By virtue of section 150 [1] of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria which states that ‘’there shall be an Attorney General of the Federation who shall be the chief law officer of the Federation and minister of justice of the Government of the Federation’’ and subsection [2] ‘’ a person shall not be qualified to hold or perform the functions of the office of the Attorney General of the Federation unless he is qualified to practice as a legal practitioner in Nigeria and has been so qualified for not less than ten years’’, President Umaru Musa Yar’adua on assumption of office in 2007 appointed Michael Aondooakaa, who is largely unknown in legal circles in Nigeria and who is not associated with any significant landmark judgment in all levels of the court system in Nigeria and who incidentally became a Senior Advocate of Nigeria in 2006. At that time most people including this writer who has covered the nation’s court for nearly a decade rightly described the appointment of this unknown lawyer as the Federal Attorney General and minister of justice of the Federation as the ‘eighth wonder of the World’ and another sign of ‘Government Magic’ where anything goes and where appointments are made not on the basis of merit and competence but on partisanship and on the recommendation of some notorious political ‘godfathers’ who have over the years held this country spellbound and underdeveloped. True to the description and the pessimism that greeted the appointment of the current federal Attorney General, he has showed that he does not possess any salient qualities that will mark him out as a great statesman and a distinguished lawyer. The current holder of the office of the Federal Attorney General of the Federation has through his unpopular decisions to defend the interest of some past Governors in Nigeria who are facing series of anti-graft cases and investigations both locally and abroad, carved a niche for himself as Nigeria’s most incompetent and notoriously unserious Federal Attorney General in the recorded history of Nigeria. In my book ‘’politics and litigation’’ I had drawn the attention of the readers of that 516 page general interest book to the compelling thought of the great Greek Philosopher Plato on what constitute competent leadership. In Plato’s thought, politic theory is closely related to moral philosophy. Indeed Plato considered the nation-State as ‘Man writ large’. As justice is the general virtue of the moral man so also it is justice that characterizes the good society. Plato postulated that there is a structural and natural as well as logical relation between man and the nation-state. In his classic the Republic, Plato argued that the best way to understand the just man is to analyze the nature of the nation-state, we should begin, he says, by inquiring what justice means in a nation-state. Then we can go on to look for its counterpart on smaller scale in the individual. On the debate of what constitute competence in the selection of political office holders, Plato surely stated that the most important attribute of a good leader is competence. The ruler, he says, should be the one who has the peculiar abilities to fulfil the arduous functions of a political leader. Plato stated that disorder in the nation-state is caused by the same circumstances that produce disorder in the individual, mainly the attempt on the part of lower elements to usurp the role of the higher faculties. Plato asked rhetorically, who should be the captain of a ship? Should it be the most popular man or the one who knows the art of navigation? He concluded by postulating that the ruler must come as close as possible to a knowledge of the Good, for the wellbeing of the nation-state depends upon knowledge and character. The appointment of Michael Aondooakaa by the current administration as the federal Attorney General did not pass the test of competence, integrity and credibility as clearly pointed out several hundreds of years back by one of the finest fathers of philosophy and scholarship- Plato. This is the reason why Nigeria is facing serious international image problem as a nation that is not committed to fighting political and economic corruption.
The first ignominious role the current Federal Attorney General played was to devise a scheme to scuttle the work of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission [EFCC] headed then by a tough and no-nonsense police officer Nuhu Ribadu who refused to budge in his determination to bring to trial all indicted former state Governors some of who incidentally were clients of the current minister of justice when he was in practice in one corner of Gboko in Benue State. The current Attorney succeeded in removing the then Chairman of the Anti-graft commission and ensured the appointment of a retired Assistant Inspector General of police from his ethnic group Farida Waziri to take over the position of the chairman of the economic and financial crimes commission and since then the then vibrant anti-graft agency has gone to sleep so much so that even the Secretary of State of the United States of America Hilary Clinton who came visiting Nigeria recently described the anti-graft war in Nigeria currently under the leadership of Farida Waziri as ‘’functionally dead’’. Next, the current Federal Attorney General further showed his nepotism when he summarily sacked the Executive secretary of the National Anti-Human Trafficking Agency [NAPTIP] Mrs. Carol Ndaguba who built the agency from the scratch to a phenomenal height and the minister of Justice brought in his former Personal Assistant who comes from his home state of Benue- Simion Egede as the new executive secretary of NAPTIP and things have never remained the same because the new man has failed to settle down to work but has consistently become a foreign traveller from one international conference to the other and neglecting the essence for which the agency was set up which is to wage unrelenting battle against all forms of human trafficking and not for merry making of foreign travels for foreign currency as travelling allowances. The federal Attorney General lobbied for the appointment of his kinsman Dr. Paul Orhii to take over the vacant position of the Director General of the National Agency for Foods, Drugs administration and control [NAFDAC] vacated by the then respected Professor Dora Akunyili who was made the minister of information and communication where she has performed so very badly that Nigeria now has worst international image than even in during the dreaded General Sani Abacha military dictatorship. The current Attorney General then destabilized the Governing Council of the National Human Rights Commission [NHRC] by announcing its dissolution even when the enabling law does not give him or the President the power to dissolve the Governing Council that still has a running tenure protected by law. He again sacked the Executive Secretary of the commission, for the second time in less than three years as against the law setting up the commission. The current Federal Attorney General will surely be recorded in history as the worst and most notorious Nigeria’s chief law officer so much so that even his professional constituency the Nigeria Bar Association have severally called for his removal for being manifestly incompetent. He has refused to provide vital information and evidence that will help the British judicial system nail some of Nigeria’s best known corrupt erstwhile State Governors because they are allegedly his paymasters.
+Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, National coordinator, HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF Nigeria, HURIWA, a Democracy inclined and development focused Non-Governmental Organization registered by the Federal Republic of Nigeria as a not-for-profit civil society organization. From 2005 to June 2009, Onwubiko held the position of a federal Commissioner of the Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and Governing Council member.
