$496m Tucano Aircraft Deal: Buhari goofed on due process, say lawyers

With angry members of the National Assembly allegedly collecting signatures to impeach President Muhammadu Buhari for the legislative bypass in the ongoing $496m Tucano aircrafts deal, legal practitioners insist that failure to seek approval before spending by the President has rendered the transaction ultra vires, hence unconstitutional.

According to them, the country’s constitutional framework makes it incumbent on the president to spend only with legislative approval, even as one of them maintained that anticipatory approval can only be tenable if there were previous approvals that were inadequate to cover a particular expenditure.

With a suggestion that laws could be made to accommodate purchase of military hardware that require confidentiality, another lawyer, however, stressed that since politics is about compromise, the lawmakers may excuse the present constitutional breach if the President avails a tenable reason for his action.

For Port Harcourt-based lawyer, Festus Ogwuche, Buhari’s action is an outright disregard for the Constitution, which he swore to uphold, just as he commended the NASS for the moves to impeach him.

The Guardian, April 29, 2018

 

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