The ongoing effort to amend the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria has sparked further debates on the immunity clause for the president and his vice, as well as the governors and their deputies.
Labour Party’s factional national chairman, Alhaji Lamidi Apapa, in a recent remark, had urged the National Assembly to scrap the controversial immunity clause that protects state governors while in office.
At various points, some other Nigerians have made similar suggestions.
Their argument has been that the state governors are hiding under the immunity clause to commit all kinds of atrocities, ranging from financial misappropriation to misuse of official powers, flagrant abuse of human rights, and even assassination of political opponents among others.
Sometime in 2008, the late President Umar Musa Yar’Adua made a public statement in support of the removal of the immunity clause from the constitution.
He argued that the immunity clause was encouraging corruption in the system and that those who enjoy the immunity clause were behaving like emperors.
Yar’Adua was reported to have made the statement in far away Dabur, Switzerland, at a dinner hosted by the Partnership against Corruption Initiative, as part of the activities at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2008.
He went further to say that his administration would introduce a corruption monitoring device to help fight the war against corruption.
Recently, at the commemoration of Yar’Adua’s death, the 2008 video announcing his support for the removal of immunity clause which shields the president, vice president, governors and their deputies from prosecution as stipulated in the 1999 constitution, trended on social media space.
However, there are others who have argued to the contrary. According to them, the immunity clause was put in the constitution to protect that class of public officer from undue distractions by those who may want them to fail through bringing up unnecessary litigations against them for one reason or another.
But, Apapa again stirred the hornet’s nest when he urged the National Assembly to repeal the law which gives immunity to governors and their deputies against prosecution while in office.
He insisted that the removal of the clause would reduce corruption and promote developments in all the states in Nigeria
A Lagos-based legal practitioner and social critic, Ikechukwu Onodi equally agreed that the intention of the draftsmen who inserted the immunity clauses in the constitution was to remove any obstacles in the way of the executive in performing their constitutional duties to the people, but lamented that politicians, have over the years, proved that they don’t deserve such a privilege.
He is, therefore, in tacit support of the removal because according to him, it has outlived its usefulness, as it no longer serves public interest but individual, selfish interest.
Fresh Calls To Remove Immunity Clause For Govs Spark Debate
