Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, EFCC, got a court order to freeze Osun State government’s bank account, but President Bola Tinubu asked the EFCC to reverse the process. In the same week, United States President Donald Trump called on Washington U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro to revisit a decision. Pirro had previously dropped charges against a former Olympian accused of vandalising the Reflecting Pool in the US capital. Supporters and critics have been debating the actions of the two leaders. Top of the criticisms is that they step into the jurisdiction of other institutions, and that Tinubu’s intervention in particular amounts to weakening the EFCC as an independent body. Such contentions are inevitable in governance. And if it’s not contentious, it’s neither politics nor governance. They’ve characterised Trump’s first and second tenures, which he doesn’t seem to mind.
Meanwhile, actions and inactions of political officeholders must be perceived differently. Different perspectives on them must be offered while day-to-day governance continues, each event adding to the body of knowledge and sometimes improving the political process. As such, my focus here isn’t on what the two political leaders did right or wrong. It can’t be as a journalist with political science background. Political scientists don’t discuss right or wrong; they objectively do analysis of data available and project going forward. Here, I point generally to what drives the actions of political actors. This too adds to the body of knowledge, helping to understand politics or governance. Considering previous occurrences in both polities, I think there’s a pattern to the latest actions of both presidents. There’s the personal disposition of either leader as well as domestic politics that guides their actions. The ones for Trump I’ve discussed several times from 2016 on this page.
For me, both the EFCC and Pirro matters call attention once again to the well-known submission that politics is different from governance, or as it’s often stated in Nigeria, “Politics has ended, it’s time to govern”. I ask: Is this assertion practical? Having reported and seen governments and governance across different eras, I’ve learnt to question the assumption that politics can be separated neatly from governance. When we think it through, we realise that either politics or governance answers to who gets what, when, and how, which is one classic definition of politics. Except where men in khaki are in power, it’s politics all the way from the political campaign ground to the government house. One way to explain this more clearly is by asking: When election campaigns are over, where, when, and how are campaign promises fulfilled? It’s through the governance process, meaning officeholders factor political campaign promises into policy decisions.
Through such decisions, politicians position themselves for the next election, or shore up support for their party candidates. It’s a continuous process, with policy decisions in one political tenure leading to the next. I return to the action taken by the Nigerian leader regarding the EFCC. I read Tinubu’s action in this matter from the perspective of what he experienced when he was the Lagos State governor. At that time, another president ordered the funds meant for Lagos to be withheld. Certainly, the president doesn’t want to be seen as repeating what was done to him. Tinubu criticised the action at the time, and he regularly mentions the incident in the course of his subsequent political journey, particularly whenever he comments on what the relationship between the FG and subnational units should be.
As a politician who describes himself as a democrat, he likes to point to the excellent relationship he maintains with the lower tiers of government. One of these is the huge funds he pushes to them, encouraging them to utilise the funds to further develop their respective states. Also, he often insists that all arms of government must find a way to work together, as his comments and interventions in the Rivers State political crisis indicate. This is his antecedent and, naturally, he would want to see his actions buttress his image as a democrat. Should we believe he doesn’t know he could have stayed behind the scenes while pressuring the EFCC to rescind its decision on Osun? I think it’s a deliberate choice to release those words, publicly distancing himself from the decision to freeze the bank account of Osun State that’s controlled by an opposition party. And he mentions his reason – it is because of politics (election) that is in the air.
His decision here aligns with his disposition to work with all politicians irrespective of the party they belong to. A prominent opposition party member is his Minister of the FCT. Many state governors in the opposition have defected to his party because he makes them feel they have a place at the table, and many of them have seamlessly taken over the leadership at the state and LGA levels. Tinubu won a huge slice of the opposition to his side to win in 2023, and he’s looking forward to getting the opposition to work for his reelection in 2027. He says he doesn’t want the freezing of funds so close to the election to be seen as an effort to muzzle the opposition. He should be applauded for this because most politicians won’t take a similar step. I think the decision to halt the process for now is one the EFCC could have taken by itself. The Commission can always investigate any allegation of mismanagement of public funds anytime in the future, can’t it? It happens in advanced democracies for political reasons.
It’s a political decision that Tinubu instructs the EFCC to back off for now. He doesn’t say the matter shouldn’t be investigated. He simply says the timing isn’t healthy for the polity. The move made by the Nigerian leader is not peculiar to this clime. Political leaders in every nation do this. They hold down some decisions until certain sensitive matters are out of the way. It’s part of governance. You get the timing wrong in taking certain steps and you bring down the whole house.
Political reasons have been cited for the actions taken by certain US institutions, for instance, over some issues in the recent past. There have been decisions taken either to prosecute now or to delay because it’s close to an election. Government agencies in the US tend to avoid being seen as partisan. As it’s their right to decide when to make a move, they let discretion guide them, especially when elections are around the corner. We’ve seen some cases where investigations began before elections, but they’re taken to court after elections are over. Insinuations about political motives are avoided. That is politics being factored into the activity of a government agency.
If such is read as political interference, then it’s a good example of political interference because, as I like to posit, law is made for people and not people for law. What is the point in enforcing law such that it undermines people’s confidence in the electoral process? An electoral process seen to be fair is one major foundation for law enforcement itself. If the president’s action gives Osun people the confidence that there has been no preemptive political move by the FG to favour one political party against the other in this Saturday’s election, I think democracy is the winner. Politics has, this way, continued in governance in a way that is beneficial to the polity.
On his part, President Trump has made many comments and signed many Executive Orders that are criticised as interference in judicial decisions, but he doesn’t see it that way. Officials in his administration are also accused of failing to fully comply with court orders regarding immigration, deportations, and funding freezes. In turn, the officials criticise judicial intervention in such matters, insisting that they’re lawfully executing policies mandated by voters and that they operate within legal bounds. Policies mandated by voters -that’s governance taking into consideration what voters were promised during political campaigns.
Moreover, it helps to recall that Trump consistently demonstrates that when it comes to fulfilling his campaign promises he doesn’t mind breaking norms and stretching laws, something his predecessors didn’t do. When it’s remembered too that the issues he constantly doubles down on are those he promised during the campaigns, it’s clear that separating politics from governance isn’t the easy work the rhetoric implies.
Like Trump, there have been criticisms of leaders in other parts of the world as well over directives that run contrary to binding domestic and international court orders. The immediate past leader of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, signalled political defiance toward court rulings concerning asylum rules, judicial independence, and fundamental rights. Other political leaders in Europe use legislative changes, political rhetoric, or administrative non-compliance to contest adverse rulings by domestic or European courts. Most of such actions are a follow-up to their election campaign promises. My point isn’t to justify these actions; it’s to emphasise that the line between decisions in governance and domestic politics is blurred. Actually, attending to contentious domestic politics is 80 per cent of governance. Add domestic politics to how Trump once said during the election campaign that he is the “president of law and order”, and his call to Pirro to revisit the Reflection Pool case will be better understood.
By Tunji Ajibade