ON PRESIDENT JONATHAN AND 'PUBLIC' ASSETS DECLARATION

In modern society, there are acts not forbidden by law, but which are clearly governed by discretion and morality. Moral relativism, as illustrated by the saying about one man’s meat being another man’s poison, is as old as human society. And usually individual notions of what is right or wrong engage one another in an open field of moral relativism where the law does not specify actions that members of society should regard as right or wrong. This can lead to conflicts that are hard to resolve owing to the divergent interests of “players” in such fields. Usually, such conflicts remain unresolved until society, through the appropriate channel, makes laws clarifying which of such borderline actions should be considered right or wrong, which in the latter case becomes a punishable offence, with a specific sanction for contravention.

Let me link the above thesis to reality with a well-known event in behavioural evolution in our country. Smoking used to be something those who chose to indulge in it could do in public places, regardless of whether the next person disliked or could be injured by the fumes.

Smoking, in that context, was a classic case of one man’s meat being another man’s poison, with the result that those to whom it was “poison” simply had to endure if those whose body it seemed to nourish like “meat” chose to smoke in such places.

All that changed with our country embracing the global campaign against smoking as a deadly habit, to the point of a bill being passed to ban smoking in public places in Lagos, in addition to cigarette manufacturers being compelled to print on each packet of their products the warning: “…smokers are liable to die young.” However, in deciding on the rightness or otherwise of smoking in public places, such questions are irrelevant considering the position of the law on the matter.

Similarly, the position of the law should guide us in resolving the current controversy as to whether President Goodluck Jonathan, or any of our public servants for that matter, should, having publicly declared his assets as the law states, should proceed to publish the declaration in the press. The Fifth schedule, Part1, 11(1) of the 2010 Constitution (as amended) states that “… every public Officer shall … immediately after taking office and thereafter … submit to the Code of Conduct Bureau a written declaration of all his properties, assets, and liabilities and those of his unmarried children under the age of 18 years.” Even for someone inured to the penchant of some of our compatriots to politicise morality while pretending to moralise politics, I am surprised that anyone would try to raise a storm over the procedure for compliance in a matter so clearly spelt out in the Constitution.

No less surprising is the impression being created that the president is averse to accountability, even by those who may be aware that he has declared his assets no less than eight times as a public official:

As Deputy Governor of Bayelsa State; in 2003, before the end of his tenure; in the new tenure, during which he transformed into Governor; while leaving office as Governor; as Vice President; after he became Acting President; before contesting election as President; and after he was sworn in as President. In respect of showing regard for public accountability through conscientious assets declaration, it is his political opponents that should first remove the log in their eyes before reaching for the non-existent speck in the president’s eyes.

For instance, it is public knowledge that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s declaration of his assets as Governor of Lagos State is still subject to controversy on account of its questionable credibility, and whether former Head of State, General Muhammadu Buhari, has declared his assets since his days in power and his tenure as the Chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) is anybody’s guess.

I think it reveals lazy activism for a country whose president has assented to the Freedom of Information Bill, which makes access to information virtually unrestricted, to demand that the president “publicly” declares his assets, if by that it is meant that he should publish them like a newspaper advertorial, even after he has publicly stated that he has filed the declaration with the relevant government agency – in compliance with the law.

I also think the right of the members of any society to know, including know the assets of their leaders, should be moderated by the right of all members of such society, including the leaders, to guard against the violation of their right to privacy.

For those who say the president’s action violates the PDP Constitution – we cannot be right to condemn the PDP establishment for settling certain disputes between members of the party as “a family affair,” while alleging that the approach contravenes certain provisions of our Constitution, and also be right in insisting that the president’s action, in a matter regulated by law, conforms to the provisions of the PDP Constitution. That is hypocrisy! Truth is that no one has shown us the section of the PDP constitution that compels members to publish the assets declaration in the newspapers. In order for those asking for the president to “publish" his assets to be incontrovertibly right, they need to push for a constitutional amendment to make such “public” declaration of assets a constitutional necessity.

Surely, the president’s response that he does not “give a damn about that…” when asked why he has not publicly declared his assets in a recent media chat could not have been meant to suggest that he is not interested in declaring his assets, or in public accountability, as his critics have misinterpreted it. It must rather be his forthright way of asserting, as he hinted at in his subsequent remarks, that he has done no wrong, morally or legally, by having declared his assets but not through the medium that his critics would prefer him to – even though the Constitution he swore to defend does not oblige him to accede to their preference on the matter.

The End
Written By Isa Mahmud