The Nigerian constitution gives   a group of un-elected Ministers, members of the Federal Executive Council, FEC, the power to commence, by a two-thirds majority vote, the primary process for the removal of a President deemed medically unfit by reason of infirmity of body or of mind. And although this process is made subject to a secondary one namely confirmation by a duly constituted Medical Panel and then followed by mere legislative formalities which terminate at official gaze ting by NASS, the fact still remains that the process for the removal of a president on the grounds of medical unfitness, ironically is commenced not strictly by professional medical opinion but by

In all therefore, neither the commencement of the former process (removal on medical ground) nor that of the latter (removal by impeachment), is necessarily an end in itself. Nor does the mere commencement of any, no matter how justified or how trivial, necessarily leads to the funeral dirge of a President. Many factors are known to come to play in determining whether a President swims through or sinks in at the end of either process.

It is therefore incorrect to assume that every impeachment process against, or medical enquiry into the fitness of, a President, necessarily ends with the removal from office of that President. And thus like a former US Representative, Barbara Jordan once said while making a case for the impeachment of President Nixon: “It is a misreading of the constitution for any (legislator).. to  assert that for any member to vote for an article of impeachment, means that that member must be convinced that the President must be removed from office” The powers especially of impeachment vested in a legislative body, she said, “are about the most essential in that body’s constitutional duty of checking a POTENTIALLY(my emphasis) excessive Executive Arm.” A nation does not wait for the disease of presidential arbitrariness to fester. An Executive President who manifests the potentials to grow the wings of arbitrariness may, unless vigilantly policed, endanger the polity!

It is against this background that a President’s moral or ethical conduct even in a purely secular society, strictu sensu, like the United States, can be called to constitutional question. Clinton’s Monicagate was not about Presidential maladministration, fiscal irresponsibility or financial impropriety. It was largely an offence mala in se (frowned at by morality) and not one strictly mala prohibita (prohibited by law). And thus the US Federal Convention of 1787, was said to have “limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanor and discounted and opposed the term ‘maladministration”. The reasoning being that if Presidents were to be impeached for purely mal-administrative reasons, governance will suffer the incubus of unnecessary circumspection by Presidents and their painstaking efforts to avoid those delicate mal-administrative land mines will slow the pace of the exercise of presidential discretion which is at the epicenter of administration.

Therefore in determining those impeachable conducts that constitute “high crimes and misdemeanor”  in the US Constitution  -as opposed, say, to maladministration- and thus in defining what should justify the impeachment of President Nixon after the Watergate scandal, Rep. Jordan, at the House Judiciary Committee, analyzed James Madison’s impeachment criteria from the Virginia Ratification Convention which were simply a juxtaposition of those “criteria” with Nixon’s Presidential “actions” -and which criteria also put side by side with Jonathan’s conducts or misconducts, actions or inactions, statements or misstatements especially on the Abuja blasts scandal, produces no less culpable result than Nixon’s.

Key on the list of Madison’s criteria was: “if the President (i.e. Nixon) be connected in any suspicious manner with any person (in the Watergate scandal) and (if) there are grounds to believe that he (the President) would shelter that person, he (Nixon) may be impeached.” The question arises here: ‘is President Jonathan connected in ANY SUSPICIOUS manner with any person (in the MENDGATE scandal) and are there grounds to believe that he would shelter, has sheltered or is sheltering that person?’ Jonathan’s claim of knowing those behind the Abuja blast and which he would not mention, his spirited defense of a murderous criminal terrorist group, MEND even against its own admittance of responsibility for the blast, made him not just ‘suspiciously’ connected, but in fact self confessedly so with the  accused persons! And even much graver -or is it grosser?-was Okah’s dangerous revelation that a certain Presidential Aide had called on the President’s behalf asking him to prevail on MEMD to withdraw its earlier statement claiming responsibility and to blame the bombings instead on Northerners.

In Nigeria “Gross misconduct” is the standard constitutional ‘impeachable’.  But going by the US Constitution’s ‘high crimes’ and or ‘misdemeanor’, nothing can be any higher crime nor any more misdemeanal than a sitting  President’s deliberate plotting of potentially anarchic  political mischief in the very nation he purports to administers! All right thinking Nigerians believe that the president, all through MENDGATE, severally and unrepentantly not only mis conducted himself but did so grossly!

Madison’s second criterion said impeachment “is intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power (the constitution or the legislature) acting for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from violation”  Nixon had given directives in the Watergate scandal pregnant with the potentials for the violation of the ‘rights’ of his citizens; as did Jonathan, allegedly, when he planned to frame more than half the population of his innocent Northern citizens!   

Citing the South Carolina Ratification Convention Impeachment Criteria, Jordan said American Presidents are impeachable “who behave amiss or betray their public trust” adding, in the case of Nixon, that “beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time, the President has engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government prosecutors”  No one can deny that even the current prosecution  charade of Orkah in South Africa and the most ridiculous client-attorney-barred secret trial in Abuja –which the Magistrate handling the case confirmed and which the SSS curiously denied- are all incumbent President Jonathan’s use of office to thwart “lawful investigation.” 

And then this, which Jordan said about Nixon: “Moreover the President has made public pronouncements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case which the evidence will show he knew to be false.” You ask: ‘can it be controverted that the ‘MEND or no MEND’ controversy was solely the creation of an incumbent President intently deploying ‘falsehood’ first to protect criminal terrorists known only to him, and secondly to conceal evidence of their criminality by admitting smokescreen-ly, he knew others who had done the ‘did’ but won’t tell; and lastly by falsely plotting to incriminate innocent others. All these conduced to make Jonathan no less guilty than Nixon who was accused of making “public pronouncements and assertions” which evidence showed “he knew to be false”   

No one can deny that Jonathan is the most inordinately protected, ‘grossly misconducting, manifestly untrustworthy democratic Nigerian President whose misdemeanors are ironically condoned by three essential groups: a politicized elite media intelligentsia, rights-protecting civil society organizations and so called radical activist lawyers and ‘defenders of the rule of law’ who had previously filed out on the streets even on the flimsiest of reasons.

A group, National United Youth Association Of Nigeria in its Advertorial (Sunday Trust 10/24/10) accused Jonathan’s administration of descent into “anarchy,” “ mindless dictatorship”,  “biased and very unfair application of the rules of democratic engagements”; “intimidation”, “arrests” and “detention” of  opponents and directing or condoning Police’s “use of  laws declared illegal” to deny opponents’ “constitutionally guaranteed right of peaceful political assembly” When you add these to the brazen, unceasing attempt to abuse and pervert, for selfish political motives, the electoral process; the dangerous desecration and politicization of hitherto cohesive and sacred institutions of the nation’s Armed Forces and other security organizations; the strident attempt to corrupt political party process; and  the deliberate corruption  and polarization of the civil  society along ethnic, regional, sectional and religious lines etc etc… you then ask the inevitable question: ‘when’s misconduct gross enough?’