Sad Day Presidency And Police Backed Motor-Park Touts To Belittle A Whole Governor
By
Felix Oboagwina
So a state government and motor-park touts have a disagreement; and the Federal Government unleashes the “Federal might” in support of the hoodlums against the constitutionally-constituted authority of the elected Governor? In a Federation! In a Federal Republic!
As how naw? Where is it done?
An elected Governor, who signs C of Os on lands, and in whose power the Nigerian Constitution has placed the entire landmass in his jurisdiction, is told by an elevated motor-park tout to steer clear of garages in the state, and the thug prevails?
This happens and the 36-member Nigerian Governors Forum keeps quiet instead of raising its voice to condemn this injury to one that represents an injury to all of them?
The National Assembly maintains nonchalant silence!
Lawyers say nothing?
Ni ilu to l’ofin! In a country governed by extant laws and the Constitution!
Hear the back story. Last week, Osun State boiled. Two factions of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) fought to control bus stops and garages in the state. Governor Ademola Adeleke read the Riot Act to both gladiators and barred their operation. Guess what? Musiliu Akinsanya, alias MC Oluomo, the self-styled National President of the NURTW, roared. All the way from Abuja, MC Oluomo declared that the Governor had no authority over the union and the order would not be obeyed. True to his words, MC Oluomo spurred his loyalists in Osun State, and these ones invaded the garages. They came with armed in broad daylight. They came with guns. They stormed the place, prepared to kill and maim.
And do you know the real tragedy and shame? These renegades carried out this invasion with police as escorts! Policemen, apparently propped up by Inspector-General Tunji Disu, guarded the NURTW ruffians as they went on the rampage and overran the foremost garage in the state capital, Osogbo. Navy officers on ground took the initiative to maintain order and arrested some of the rampaging armed thugs and seized their guns. Then a greater shame happened. The police attacked the Navy personnel and freed these thugs.
By the time the smoke cleared, two arms of the country’s security forces, the Police versus the Navy, faced each other in conflict. And BOTH forces operate under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. What a shame!
MC Oluomo is no stranger to defying constituted authorities. He is Tinubu’s protégé from Lagos and occupies the position of NURTW President. This transporter usurped the NURTW presidency in clear defiance of the rulings of the National Industrial Court (November 2024) and the Court of Appeal (March 2024) and another by the National Industrial Court (March 2026). All rulings declare Tajudeen Ibikunle Baruwa as NURTW President duly re-elected into the office in May 2023.
When MC Oluomo claims that no state Governor had the right to prevent the operation of the NURTW, he trades in flagrant falsehood. Lagos disbanded the NURTW in 2022 when a similar conflict arose there. In the union’s place, the state established the 25-member Park Managers Committee. This body reported to the Commissioner for Transportation. Although MC Oluomo was made its head, the agency subsisted from March 2022 to September 2023, after which the state restored the NURTW. If Lagos successfully clipped the wings of NURTW, why can Osun not?
He says no state can dictate NURTW operations. But in Lagos and other states observing sanitation Saturdays, why do commercial buses, bicycles and tricycles keep away from local roads at stipulated hours, if NURTW cannot bow to any state authority? Why do state-run traffic managers like LASTMA arrest transporters for violations? Why doesn’t NURTW have a uniform paint for commercial vehicles nationwide instead of submitting to the different colours dictated by each of the 36 states and Abuja?
Indisputably, governors reign as chief security officers of their states. So when the Governor sees a dangerous situation threatening the peace between two feuding entities and takes steps to curtail the descent into chaos and anarchy; then one of the feuding parties openly announces that the Governor lacks the right; and this feuding party defiantly goes ahead and takes belligerent steps to publicly disobey the Governor’s express order that bars the gladiator factions from operating; will the country just look the other way and pretend that things are okay?
No, things are not okay! There is fire on the mountain!
Politics certainly sparked this fire in Osun. Governor seeks a second term under the Accord Party. Although he claims Lagos, Tinubu reputedly has ancestral roots in Iragbiji, Osun State. He and his cousins feel slighted that the opposition party rules the President’s country home not his All Progressives Congress. For both AP and APC, the NURTW provides a strong support base as well as foot-soldiers for the August election.
Be that as it ma, what happened in Osun represents a veritable assault on the Nigerian Constitution. It must not stand. It must be condemned. Vilified. Protested.
By their action and inaction, the President and the IGP virtually handed MC Oluomo a licence to kill. If MC will pin his disobedience of constituted authority on the right to freedom of association, then let someone read the Constitution to this guy. In Section 40, the Constitution guarantees the “Right to peaceful assembly and association.” Underline the word “peaceful.” The divided NURTW’s turf war had become acrimonious and anything but peaceful. By stepping in, Adeleke rightfully discharged a constitutional duty.
“The security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government.” Section 14(b)
Also, in the Constitution, there exists a provision that where conflict arises between a higher law and a lower law, the lower law must yield ground. The NURTW law must bow to the higher law of the Nigerian Constitution that authorises the Governor to maintain the peace. That is incontestable. Else, why shouldn’t Miyetti Allah say tomorrow that no state Governor has authority to regulate its activities? Why shouldn’t teachers? Why shouldn’t traders? Or beggars? Or chemists? Fruit sellers?
The NURTW is just one of about 42 registered trade organisations; it cannot constitute a law onto itself.
MC’s invasion of Osun amounts to an outrage. And he only had the guts to commit this travesty because and only because The Presidency and the President enabled it and gave him “the liver.” Else, who is MC Oluomo or the NURTW (or a faction) to rubbish the legal and legitimate pronouncements of the Executive Governor of a state?
And then the police played their perfidious, supportive role in the illegality. IGP Disu and the Commissioner of Police in Osun State CP Ibrahim Gotam should sit down and read the Constitution. Section 215(4) says:
…the Governor of a State or such Commissioner of the Government of the State as he may authorise in that behalf, may give to the Commissioner of Police of that State such lawful directions with respect to the maintenance and securing of public safety and public order within the State as he may consider necessary, and the Commissioner of Police shall comply with those directions or cause them to be complied with.
Both IGP Disu and the CP trampled upon this segment of the grundnorm in facilitating MC’s disobedience of Governor Adeleke.
What MC Oluomo’s faction of the NURTW displayed in Osun does not only constitute an insult to the hallowed office of the Executive Governor of Osun State, it amounts to a daylight rape of the Nigerian Constitution. More than that, enabling touts and thugs represents a dangerous precedent that cannot be encouraged. It is Adeleke today, who knows who will be next?
To the enablers of MC, know this danger. Giving thugs and touts the liver to ride roughshod on constituted authorities and the citizenry amounts to hitching a ride on a tiger’s back; it will never end well.
Whether MC Oluomo’s audacity carried the imprimatur or signature of President Tinubu or not, Nigerians must rise up as one and say: Never again!
OBOAGWINA IS A JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR AND WRITES FROM LAGOS
