By Ibrahim Welye
There is a dangerous habit gradually becoming normal in Nigeria’s public institutions: the assumption that once an instruction comes from a sufficiently powerful office, somebody somewhere must have the authority to carry it out.
A letter arrives from a senior official. A ministry acts on it. Another agency processes the request. A bank opens an account. A department prepares a budget. A committee gives its approval. Before long, what began simply as an instruction has acquired all the appearance of legality.
But there is a question we too often forget to ask: Where is the law that gives you the power to do this?
That question should come before the letterhead, before the signature and certainly before the status of the person issuing the instruction.
In a constitutional democracy, authority does not flow from importance. It flows from law.
A Minister is powerful because the law gives the office certain powers. A governor exercises authority within powers conferred by the Constitution and legislation. The President, despite occupying the highest executive office in the country, does not possess unlimited authority merely because he is President.
Public office does not create its own powers.
Yet increasingly, our institutions appear willing to confuse political authority with legal authority. And that is where the danger begins.
A Government Letter Is Not the Law
There is a strange reverence for official correspondence in our public system.
Once a letter carries the right crest, the right signature or the name of the right office, institutions sometimes behave as though the legal question has already been settled.
It has not.
A completely genuine letter can contain an unlawful instruction. A properly constituted office can act outside its powers. An official can have authority over one matter and absolutely no authority over another.
This distinction is fundamental.
The first responsibility of any ministry, department, agency or public institution receiving an instruction should therefore not merely be: Who sent this?
It should be: Under what law are we being asked to act?
That simple question could prevent an extraordinary amount of institutional misconduct.
Instead, what often happens is an administrative chain reaction.
One institution assumes another institution has done the legal checks. The next institution assumes the first would not have approved the matter without authority. A third sees two government approvals and concludes that the issue must be legitimate.
Eventually, an act for which nobody can clearly identify a legal foundation has accumulated enough stamps, minutes, signatures and approvals to look perfectly official.
We could call this the administrative laundering of illegality.
Something questionable enters the system at one end and emerges at the other wearing the full uniform of government.
The number of institutions involved does not make it lawful.
Ten government agencies cannot collectively manufacture a power that the law gave to none of them.
The Problem With ‘Oga Said’
Many Nigerians will recognise the culture behind this problem.
‘Oga said.’
‘The Honourable Minister directed.’
‘The Governor has approved.’
‘The Presidency wants it done.’
These statements may explain why somebody wants an action taken. They do not necessarily explain why government has the legal authority to take it.
There is a difference.
And a country gradually loses its institutional foundations when its civil servants become more afraid of questioning an instruction than of violating the law.
The public officer who asks for the statutory basis of an instruction is not being difficult.
The legal adviser who says, ‘We do not have the power to do this,’ is not obstructing government.
The permanent secretary who insists that proper procedure be followed is not necessarily resisting political leadership.
Sometimes, these are the very people protecting the government from itself.
Political appointees will eventually leave office. Directors will retire. Administrations will change.
The files will remain.
The signatures will remain.
The payment records will remain.
And when questions are eventually asked, ‘I was instructed’ may explain what happened, but it does not automatically make what happened lawful.
The Precedent You Celebrate Today May Be Used Against You Tomorrow
Perhaps the most troubling part of Nigeria’s relationship with institutional illegality is our tendency to judge it according to who benefits.
When an administration we support stretches the rules, we suddenly discover the virtues of pragmatism.
We say government must be allowed to work.
We say procedure should not frustrate development.
We say critics are being political.
Then power changes hands.
The same institutional shortcuts are used by people we dislike, and suddenly we rediscover the Constitution.
This is how countries weaken themselves.
The danger of tolerating unlawful power is not simply what the present government will do with it. The greater danger is that the power survives the government that created the precedent.
Those benefiting from weakened safeguards today should remember that they will not remain in office forever.
Every shortcut created for your convenience becomes available to your successor.
Every institution taught to obey personalities rather than law will simply transfer that obedience to the next personality.
If an agency learns today that a powerful political instruction is enough to bypass its rules, why should anyone expect that same agency to suddenly become courageous when a future administration gives an instruction against today’s beneficiaries?
Institutions do not remember who first corrupted their standards.
They simply remember the new standard.
That is why defending the rule of law only when one is in opposition is not a commitment to democracy. It is merely political convenience.
The Real Victim Is the Ordinary Nigerian
Institutional illegality may sound abstract until we consider who ultimately pays for it.
The ordinary Nigerian is expected to obey the rules.
Bring this document.
Complete this form.
Obtain this approval.
Wait for this process.
Pay this statutory fee.
Meet this deadline.
Then another person arrives carrying a letter from an influential office and suddenly the same institution discovers flexibility.
That is how citizens begin to realise that Nigeria has two administrative systems: one governed by procedure and another governed by access.
Once political connection becomes more useful than legal compliance, people stop believing that institutions are neutral.
Businesses become uncertain about whether today’s approvals will survive tomorrow’s administration. Public resources can be directed towards structures whose legal foundations are questionable. Appointments can be created outside established frameworks. Government institutions spend money, time and credibility implementing decisions they may never have had the authority to make.
The cost is eventually paid by citizens through weaker services, wasted resources, arbitrary government decisions and declining trust in the state.
We Should Stop Treating Legal Scrutiny as Disloyalty
One cultural change is particularly necessary.
Public officials must be allowed to say no.
Not a political no.
Not an ideological no.
A professional no.
‘No, Minister, the law does not give this institution that power.’
‘No, Director-General, this procedure has not been completed.’
‘No, Chairman, we need legal advice before proceeding.’
‘No, there is no statutory basis for what we are being asked to do.’
That kind of resistance should be valued, not punished.
A leader surrounded entirely by people who say yes eventually becomes dangerously uninformed about the limits of his own authority.
The best civil servants are not necessarily those who implement every instruction fastest. Sometimes, the most valuable officer in the room is the person courageous enough to prevent everyone else from making a mistake.
Oversight Must Ask a Different Question
Our accountability institutions also need to widen the way they think about misconduct.
We often wait until money disappears before asking questions.
But sometimes the first failure happened long before the money moved.
Before asking whether funds were stolen, an auditor or legislature should sometimes ask: Did this institution have the authority to create this programme in the first place?
Was the entity receiving public resources lawfully established?
Who authorised it?
Under what legislation?
Was a lawful delegation made?
Which institution first accepted the arrangement as legitimate?
What legal advice was obtained?
Those questions matter because government can waste enormous resources implementing something that should never have entered the administrative system at all.
Accountability should follow the entire chain.
And every institution involved should explain its own decision.
‘We acted because another agency approved it’ cannot become the standard defence of public institutions.
Citizens Must Also Be Consistent
There is another uncomfortable truth.
Politicians are not alone in encouraging this culture.
Citizens often excuse illegality when the outcome favours their party, region, religion, ethnic group or preferred leader.
That is a mistake.
A constitutional safeguard surrendered because it inconveniences your opponent will not magically reappear when you need it.
We cannot demand strict legality from governments we dislike and invent excuses for governments we support.
The rule of law cannot be a weapon we bring out against our opponents and put back in the cupboard when our friends are in power.
Either the law restrains everybody or, eventually, it restrains nobody.
Nigeria’s challenge is therefore bigger than any single questionable directive, appointment, agency or programme.
It is about the kind of state we are building.
Do we want institutions whose first instinct is to ask, ‘What does the law permit?’
Or institutions whose first instinct is to ask, ‘Who gave the instruction?’
The difference between those two questions is the difference between an institution and an entourage.
Governments will come and go.
Today’s powerful officeholder will eventually become yesterday’s officeholder. Political beneficiaries will change. Parties will rise and fall.
The institutions will remain.
We should therefore be extremely careful about what we teach those institutions to obey.
Public power is borrowed, not owned.
An official directive can begin an administrative process, but it cannot create powers that the Constitution or legislation does not provide. A dozen official signatures cannot transform an unlawful act into a lawful one.
And whenever government is about to act, one question should remain stubbornly at the front of the file:
Where is the legal authority to do this?
Nigeria will be safer when asking that question becomes an act of professionalism rather than an act of courage.
