The question, “do you know who I am?”, harmless as it seems, when asked in a friendly tone to know if the person being spoken to recognises you, is commonly used as an arrogant way of expressing one’s level of importance. In a city like Abuja, with many accidental millionaires, with no traceable means of income or pedigree for self-recognition, this question is often asked and has landed many a man in trouble, as it probably did the Chairman of the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), Danladi Umar, recently.
More than one week after Umar, together with his driver assaulted a security guard, Clement Sargwak, at Abuja’s famous Banex Plaza in Wuse 2 area of the nation’s capital city, not only has he failed to resign from office, there has been no word from his bosses in the form of an investigative panel or a query.
Umar was seen in a viral video seething with anger and shouting at the security guard, then charged at and dealt blows on him, followed with kicks, before he was stopped by some policemen. In the ensuing melee, visibly angry onlookers got violent and hurled rocks at vehicles in Umar’s convoy, smashing the windscreens of some of them as he made to leave the plaza.
A statement by the CCT would later reveal that Umar owned up to his misconduct but blamed it on provocation. According to the statement, the avoidable imbroglio was over parking space.
Umar, who has been visiting and fixing his phones at the plaza for over 18 years and who feels he should be recognisable to every worker and entitled to any available parking space was miffed that a mere guard would challenge him and in typical Abuja ‘big men’ style of “Do you know who I am,” did not hesitate to use his powers on the hapless security guard as many of our leaders are wont to act against citizens, and resorted to violently assaulting him.
Witnesses said that the security guard was only doing his job of directing the driver on where to park. They even claimed the driver had driven recklessly and almost knocked down a pregnant woman standing in one of the marked parking spaces. Thankfully, he didn’t.
The conduct of the CCT chairman, to say the least, was unbecoming of a public officer of his status, heading an institution whose job is to scrutinise the conduct of public office holders and hold them to high standards of morality in their official capacity and private conduct. Chapter 58 of the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) and Tribunal Act Chapter 58 LFN 1990 specifically mandates the CCB “to establish and maintain a high standard of public morality in the conduct of government business and to ensure that the actions and behavior of public officers conform to the highest standards of public morality and accountability.”
A man of his status ought to have been more cautious and exercised self-restraint but maybe that was one of the days we say in street lingo that “his village people were following him.”
Umar is not new to controversy. He is known for highhandedness and has been involved in cases that generated huge controversy in the country. He once threatened to jail journalists and “You will stay there until I retire, that is 28 years from now,” for allegedly “distorting facts from proceedings”, during the trial of former CJN, Walter Onnoghen, on a six-count charge of false assets declaration, based on a controversial order by the tribunal.
In 2015, he became the first CCT chairman to issue a warrant of arrest against a sitting senate president when he ordered the arrest of former Senate President Bukola Saraki, after he failed to appear before the tribunal over alleged false assets declaration. Saraki was eventually discharged and acquitted.
If the action of Umar against the guard was brutal, the assault of the agency’s media man, Ibraheem Al-Hassan on the English grammar was vicious. The statement by Al-Hassan defied every rule of grammar and was filled with all manner of howlers. Not only did he reduce the matter to an ethnic one, describing those who came to the rescue of the guard as BIAFRAN Boys and low personalities who were getting public sympathy as is typical with such situations, when Umar was the one who was assaulted and managed to escape with a dislocated finger.
The Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), following calls, has promised to act on the matter. The NBA President, the way I see it, has his job cut out for him and should not delay in taking decisive action in line with the association’s disciplinary procedures.
Umar should be prosecuted not only for public misconduct, but for reducing the issue to an ethnic one, fanning the embers of ethnic tension in the country. Ethnic profiling is dangerous and must not be tolerated.
The CCT chairman, on account of his public conduct has lost the moral high ground to continue to decide on cases of public conduct by public office holders and should therefore excuse himself from the office and not wait to be asked to step aside.
Elsewhere in the world, leaders resign for matters one would ordinarily say are less serious. Just last year, in next door Rwanda, the State Minister of Constitution and Legal Affairs, Evode Uwizeyimana, was sacked after pushing a female security guard who tried to get him to park his car properly and pass through security checks to the ground.
This is uncommon in Nigeria. But if they do not resign, do we allow them to stay on and continue to bring the offices they hold to public odium and disrepute?
This is a straightforward matter and President Muhammadu Buhari should have no qualms taking action. Umar has not denied that he committed that which he is being accused of. The video and pictorial evidence are overwhelming.
