DEEPENING DEMOCRACY: All eyes on the President

In responding to my column last week in which I called on President Yar'Adua to spy on his corrupt friends, Abiodun Giwa wrote that you don't need to beg the president to monitor anyone. The press should assert its investigative power in revealing corruption.

Tata also commented to ask me what I thought the EFCC and ICPC were set up for thereby querying my suggestions for establishing an espionage system to spy on the corrupt political class surrounding the president.

Olumide accused me of absolving the president of complicity implying that I was suggesting that the only people who are corrupt are the president's friends.

S wrote to say that my article wrote was a joke and that "Deepening democracy does not mean entrenching an inefficient president. Spending additional funds on espionage was a waste of resources, "If he can't control his ship, let me jump off it and lets us try another captain." Finally, Nana wrote in to ask, "what of his wife, his daughters, his sisters and "Mallam"? Are they all to be spied on too?

What a load of rubbish - as usual we continue to absolve leaders of their responsibilities - it is never their fault, ‘they' are always clean, innocent but they manage to be stupid, weak, useless, enough to stay in power while those around them loot the country. Why does NEXT allow such drivel to be published?" In rejoining the debate with readers of my column, I would first defend the right of Next in offering me the space to promote deepening of democracy in my dear country. I define myself as a pro-democracy activist and I try to project my convictions in a manner that pushes Nigeria away from corrupt authoritarianism and towards more intense democratic governance.

My proposal that the President should establish an espionage directorate to enable him monitor and evaluate how his appointees in regulatory authorities are looting and ruining our institutions and resources did not mean he himself was being presented as clean.

I make my arguments in layers. My core argument is that in a presidential system of government, the three arms of government - executive,

legislative and judicial, are separate and equal. Presidentialism works only in situations in which each arm remains strong and can check on the other. This is the reason political science defines presidentialism as a system of checks and balances.

Our Constitution gives the National Assembly the powers of oversight over the executive, which it has sometimes used to good effect and at other times its members have abused for their selfish interests. That was why I argued two weeks ago that the elements of the Nigerian ruling class with oversight functions in parliament or with regulatory functions in executive bodies are the key culprits in looting the national treasury.

The second layer of my argument is that the level of corruption in our system is so high that checks and balances by different branches are not enough. Oversight mechanisms are necessary within each branch to ensure people at the summit do not abuse their office.

The core concern of some of my readers is whether I am assuming that those at the pinnacle of power - that would mean the President, the Senate President, the Speaker and the Chief Justice of Nigeria are not themselves corrupt and that therefore I might be wasting my time, and that of my readers in calling on corrupt leaders to check their corrupt friends.

I respond as follows. I do not know how clean or corrupt the pinnacle of our political system is. What I know is that in our own history, corrupt leaders have sometimes investigated and sanctioned corrupt associates.

We should therefore always encourage those at the pinnacle to probe and prosecute corruption around them. It's good for their image but even more important, it's good for the nation.

Although I called on the president to spy on his corrupt friends and punish them, I have also continuously argued that we must all monitor our leaders, particularly the president, to ensure he keeps to his oath of office. The promotion of good and democratic governance is never an either or affair. It is always an issue of pursuing multiple strategies simultaneously.

I therefore wholeheartedly agree with the suggestion that in addition to checks and balances between and within branches of government, the press also has a massive role to play in investigating and exposing corruption and bad governance in our society. I therefore maintain my call on the president to spy and expose his friends while calling on all Nigerians committed to democratic values to focus all eyes on the president and his entourage so that we can push him towards delivering on his oath of office.