Alamieyeseigha: The Unpardonable Pardon

By Msonter Anzaa

Another controversy dished out recently from the kitchen of Aso Rock was the “pardon” granted the former Bayelsa State Governor, Chief Dieprieye Alamiseigha and others by President Goodluck Jonathan. Chief Alamieseigha had been arrested for money laundering by the London Metropolitan Police in 2005. However, while on bail, the Chief simply disappeared from London and landed inBayelsa. The State Assembly was not impressed by that behavior, so it impeached Alams and the EFCC took over. He was convicted and sent to jail. 

It is important to recall that Chief Alams himself never really admitted that he deserved the punishment he got. Instead, in one of the interviews he granted Newswatch, the Chief blamed his “woes” on then President OlusegunObasanjo. The question of whether or not he had been found with that amount of money in his London home was never answered. Following the impeachment, DrGoodluck Jonathan became Governor.

Time has elapsed and Chief Alams has reportedly been “helping” the Federal Government in “silencing” the creeks since he left jail. This too was cited as one of the reasons he deserves the presidential “pardon”. As soon as the news broke, a number of Nigerians took to rebuking the presidency for granting such a pardon. Expectedly, presidential spokesmen were up in arms, pulling left and right on anything that would look substantial in defending the President’s decision. Then they settled on the Constitutional provision that grants the President the discretion to grant pardons to criminals. But the people were neither amused nor convinced. Neither am I.

First of all, Chief Alams has never – at least to my knowledge – admitted that he is a criminal deserving to be pardoned. In that regard, his brother-in-crime and former IG of Police, TafaBalogun ranks higher in deserving a pardon. The former police chief was reported by the media to have admitted his guilt and apologized to the people of Nigeria.How do you pardon someone who does not admit guilt and therefore does not even see the need for a pardon in the first place? But while Alams was traversing the length and breadth of the Niger Delta, whipping up sentiments that he was “disgraced” because he had opposed President Obasanjo’s third term bid, a controversial pardon was hastily cooked and sent to him by the presidency.

No one doubts the constitutionality of the president’s decision, but everyone, except maybe, the president and his kitchen and parlor cabinets knows that it was not in the nation’s best interest. Apart from the common argument that it will simply encourage corruption, it sends a wrong message across the country.We may not have the “constitutional” powers to question the criteria the president used to determine those who merited the pardon,but we have the moral right to do so. The convenient argument by the presidency that the decision was “constitutional” reminds me of a similar “constitutional” decision taken some weeks earlier by a Judge of an Abuja High Court, fining the former Director of the Police Pension Funds, Mr. John Yusufu, 750 thousand naira for stealing 37 billion naira. Again, Nigerians were enraged. No one disagrees that Justice Talba’s judgment was constitutional, but everyone knows it was not morally right. The difference between the president’s and the Justice’s decisions on one hand, and the position of the Nigerian public on the other hand is simple. The president knows the constitution; Justice Talba knows the law books, but the people of Nigeria have a sense of morality in addition.

To create the impression that a constitutional decision is always a moral decision regardless of the circumstances is to betray the degree of shallowness in the presidency. And if we are going to depend blindly on the constitution as though we have lost our sense of right and wrong, then only God knows how large a constitution we should start writing. We would need for instance, a code of dressing for the president. Otherwise, he might put low-waist at an African Union summit and his aides will simply laugh off the outrage at home and dare us to show them where it is “unconstitutional” for the president to dress that way.

For granting Alams a pardon he does not deserve, Dr Jonathan may not have committed any “constitutional” offence, but he has committed a moral offence for which he must now beg a pardon from the people. But whether he gets that pardon or not will be known in the months and years to come.