Impeachment doesn't mean removal from
office, but it's often a prelude to removing a public official from office. To
impeach is to “charge (a public official) with an offense or misdemeanor
committed while in office.”
In other words, it means
to formally accuse a public official of a crime. In the United States, it is
only the House of Representatives that has the power to impeach the
president.
The next procedure
after impeachment is trial and then removal or acquittal. In the United States,
only the Senate has the power to try and remove or acquit a president who has
been impeached (by the House of Representatives).
Only two presidents have
been impeached in America’s history, and both were acquitted by the Senate.
They are President Andrew Johnson (America’s 17th president who was acquitted
by just one vote) and President Bill Clinton (America’s 42nd president). Donald
Trump will be the third president to be impeached, but he won't be removed
because his party constitutes the majority in the US Senate. (I wish he would
be removed).
Nigerian newspapers
interchange “impeach” with “remove from office” because they are copying the
drafters of the Nigerian constitution who don’t seem to know what “impeachment”
really means.
In the only two passages
in the Nigerian constitution that the word “impeachment” appears, it is used as
if it meant “removal.” Section 146 (3) (a) of the document says, “where the
office of vice president becomes vacant – by reason of death, resignation,
impeachment, permanent incapacity or removal in accordance with section 143 or
144 of this Constitution….”
Again, in Section 191 (3)
(a) of the constitution the following sentence appears: “where the office of
deputy governor becomes vacant – by reason of death, resignation, impeachment,
permanent incapacity or removal in accordance with section 188 or 189 of this
Constitution….”
Well, an office can’t
possibly become "vacant" by reason of “impeachment.” Just like people
don’t go to prison simply because they have been accused of an offense, a vice
president’s office can’t become vacant simply because he or she has been
impeached. That would be a perversion of justice.
Impeachment simply means
accusation, and accusation alone is never a basis for conviction. To convict an
accused person, you have to try him or her first. Plus, conviction is not the
only possible outcome of a trial. An accused (or impeached) person can be acquitted
after trial, as was the case for the two US presidents that were impeached.
Curiously, the Nigerian
constitution never uses the word “impeachment” in relation to the president and
state governors; it instead talks of the procedures for the “removal” of the
president and of governors from office.
The people who wrote the
1999 Nigerian constitution are clearly not sufficiently educated about the
meanings of the terminologies they deployed in the constitution. And they
passed on their ignorance to the Nigerian news media and to the Nigerian
populace.
© Farooq Kperogi
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