The Rule of Law: The Roles of the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary in a Democracy

Abstract

Introduction

That great scholar, Professor Ben Nwabueze, writing in 1981, in examining the picture in our own continent, where, as he rightly posited, presidential tyranny had acquired a frightful reality which had earned for the system a rather pejorative appellation ‘African presidentialism’, defined checks and balances as:

A concept in the relationship between the executive and the legislature whereby the political organs with a view to the balancing of powers are able to check one another in the exercise of their respective functions.

Since the time of the definition given by that scholar, until only recently, the picture which has been presented by the Executive, especially in Nigeria had only gone worse. Militarism, which entered into our body politic in 1966, only gave the country a respite in 1979, the year of the first presidential constitution. It came back with unabated fury only four years later. Introduced into the system was such unprecedented ruthless despotism, which turned the country into the private estate of the despot both in the Federal and State governments. The despot behaved worse than the Roman subjugator did. He harvested at will even what and where he never sowed. The common man was turned into a serf. He became what the Romans would refer to as “adscriptus glebae” or a mere dediticus. The despot killed or maimed at will, all those or whom he had suspected of being disloyal to his nefarious cause. Institutions like the Bar Association were disgraced and put under. Various methods were employed at the discard of these institutions. Some hardy ones were sent down by sheer force arms, while others were won over and led into destruction with the aid of common bribery.