Chidi,
Your each and every "today's Quote" is most often tendentious and intended to provoke or generate dissension/ disagreement, disputes, sometimes hatred. Kudos. The ensuing dialogues and discussions are a good and essential part social service you provide the Naija body politic. Without your antithetical thesis how would any antithesis be born? Ultimately, maybe, through the mother of all battles, and if we look back since the history of mankind began there have been many of those, each latest "mother of all battles" promising to be worse than the ones that preceded it...
You today's quote raises a few questions.
We know that you don't like President Buhari, that you probably detest him and that this is particularly true for you and many others after the Nigerian Military's latest waltz in Igbo-land as they romped and rampaged through Igboland ( like Fulani Cattle & their herdsmen) when they did their Operation Python Dance 11. However, don't forget, even as we lament the blood shed, we cannot speak of any "sovereign Igbo territory" because, constitutionally speaking, there is no such place on the map of Nigeria. So it's still more of "insecurity somewhere is a threat to security everywhere"...
I have also said previously and I should like to extend on that – in view of your "Today's Quote" - must qualify, modify and to some extent amend what I said earlier that
"In my opinion Brother Buhari in his second coming is as mild as either Kofi Annan or Madiba Nelson Mandela in the circumstances and all the current obstacles considered, beneath the surface this is very much a fact even if it sounds like a controversial statement."
As President, ex- Military man Muhammadu Buhari is after all " commander- in-chief" which suggests ( but I don't know) that the Nigerian military takes orders from him and that it's not the other way around : he - as Commander-in-Chief does not take orders from the military. (Or does he?)
President Buhari addressing lawyers opined "Rule of law must be subject to supremacy of Nigeria's security, national interest
" He opined , or was it a presidential decree? Who is best qualified to interpret that statement? The judiciary? The constitutional lawyers? The Senate? The Chief of Staff ( military)? The Police?
In the light of that sort of statement how does Muhammadu Buhari justify his 1983 New Year's Eve coup d'etat ?
If indeed he is ultimately responsible for what the Nigerian Military does or does not do what circumstances are to blame as responsible for
(a) The Nigerian Army's Massacre of Shia Muslims (in December 2015)
If past history is anything to go by your premonition is not without foundation, when you say, about ""Rule of law must be subject to supremacy of Nigeria's security, national interest" that from Chidi's point of view, "This is the mind of a natural dictator at work! "
In the light of Bolaji Aluko's statement about one of the citadels of democracy, that "The unlimited powers of the Presidency which were presumed would never be tested by a "reasonable" President have been found to be dangerous under ..." we have to be on our watch in Nigeria too. For the simple reason that even people who were considered considerably less than dictators, not to mention those with "the mind of a natural dictator" have often conflated self-interest with national interest and invoked " in the interests of national security" to silence opposition or to get rid of their enemies. Sierra Leone's President Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah invoked "national security" when prosecuting Paul Kamara for a newspaper article in which Kamara alleged that Kabbah had a house in Guinea-Conakry (where he ( Kabbah) had taken a ten-month refuge - ousted by Johnny Paul Koroma). President Kabbah invoked " National Security) his lawyer argued that Kamara's maliciously false allegation discredited his ( Kabbah's) integrity and that any ensuing loss of confidence in his Presidency would be a threat to Sierra Leone's national security.
Poor Paul spent the first 100 days of his prison sentence in Foday Sankoh's former solitary confinement cell.
Re- coup d'etat , civil war, revolution, in Iran just around when the Shah's SAVAK were getting tired of gunning down their fellow citizens, it was all over when Ayatollah Khomeini said, The people are the army and the army is the people....
On Monday, 27 August 2018 10:41:47 UTC+2, Chidi Anthony Opara, FIIM wrote:
News: Rule of law must be subject to supremacy of Nigeria's security, national interest(President Buhari to Lawyers).Me: This is the mind of a natural dictator at work!CAO.
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