THE 'ABACHA IN OBASANJO' SYNDROME: SIGNS AND DIAGNOSIS
By
In the last couple of weeks, there has been a steady stream of concerned commentators and critics of the aberrational political situation currently prevailing in Nigeria, all lamenting what they considered as the woeful failure of the Nigerian government to deliver on the fundamentals of its electoral promises after several months in the saddle. Almost in unison, they have expressed what they have adjudged as an abdication of the saddle of government by President Obasanjo to an amorphous clique who they variously described as parts of the surviving ‘Abacha force’ or the ‘inner core ’ of the ancient regime, who are bent on bringing the government to great disrepute.
Some people like Senator Kuta, are actually talking of an outright hijack of the Obasanjo administration by the numerous Abacha faithful who are still deeply entrenched in government, while Senator Owie would want however could listen to him to know that Obasanjo has now become a hostage of these forces of political negativism. Others, less definite in their assessment of the situation, are in many words insinuating an evil plot or an outright sabotage against the government as manifested in the routine mischief perpetrated by the ubiquitous and powerful Abacha men strategically planted all over the public service of Nigeria. At bottom, therefore, is the inference to the stunning reality that, Abacha, although safely dead, continues to misrule Nigeria from the grave!
There is also the other theory, no less accusatorial, which posits that the current spate of organized lamentation of the ‘obstructive’ Abacha forces in government by loyal Obasanjo functionaries are nothing but futile attempts at cheap buck passing in the face of an embarrassingly low performance scorecard. In other words, this school of thought holds nobody but Obasanjo himself squarely liable for the abysmal failure of the current government to get things done positively. In other words, they charge the Obasanjo’s administration of unfairly using the defunct Abacha regime as a smokescreen for its self-inflicted failure. After all, it was the nation's dire need to urgently repair the locust years of the Abacha reign and others before him, that formed the primary justification and indeed, the rationale, for the emergence of the new regime. In the circumstance, therefore, the minimum that the people would expect is that there should be concrete evidence that things are now being done differently and every effort is being put into remedying the monumental damages wrought on the polity by Abacha’s vandalism. Alas! Instead of relief, some people are now saying that if Abacha indeed used mere horsewhip to torment the unfortunate people of Nigeria, the new order would rather go for a scorpion, and if Abacha robbed the people secretly, the people are now being openly and democratically looted and, and in fact, according to constitutional order of precedence!
Our own considered position is that none of these allegations, packaged either as political innuendo or general partisan insinuation, are by themselves not completely representative of the true story of what has become of the Obasanjo administration on which so much hope was invested in terms of hope and expectation but in return, so much disappointment received as dividends, simply because of the fundamental error of misconception upon which these expectations have been based. The question, which have been repeatedly asked and to which there has not been any answers proffered so far is: If dictator Abacha did not die the way he did, would there have been an Obasanjo presidency? Second, even after the demise of the dictator, what significant political changes can we point to that had taken place in the country which are suggestive of both quantitative and qualitative re-orientation of the national political process from the defunct order? The old problems of corruption, inefficient public service, decadent infrastructure, declining social services, insecurity of life and property and other signs of a failing society have continued unabated. We seem to have accepted tokenism in public life as the norm so much so that it was possible for us to have ranked the event of May 29 1999 at Abuja as a fundamental political change, if not a revolution. The truth is that nothing substantial has changed and, is not about to change soon, unless there is a real change in our perception of the state of affairs, in the dramatis personae and in the modus operandi of governance. In order to formulate a more realistic focus of the issues at hand, we shall attempt to put in verifiable historical perspectives, the deluge of lamentation by all and sundry currently trailing the Obasanjo regime and hopefully conclude our analysis by demonstrating the stark imperatives confronting the nation and the crucial need to ensure that the positive vision of Obasanjo, with all its limitations, is not allowed to be hijacked and blurred by those who do not wish Nigeria well.
We have so easily forgotten that it is the same set of characters that heartlessly rode the self-succession train with Abacha who are still on the saddle: those people we now undeservingly call politicians are those who only yesterday labored so hard to stifle democratic politics in Nigeria under the military. So, where is the change? Where is the difference? President Obasanjo can only do what he is allowed to do by those who invited him to their party, irrespective of his well demonstrated commitment to reverse the declining fortunes of the nation through a governing style anchored on probity and accountability. The question that ought to be answered, decidedly here and now, is whether there is indeed any discernible interest in the well being of Nigeria by those people who saw the transition program simply as an opportunity to maintain the status quo without appearing to be in charge? How does one explain the yawning contradiction in the claims of the President to govern with maximum transparency and the unrepentant continuity in the old corrupt and esoteric ways of the military by nearly all of his men in the government?
How could President Obasanjo or any person for that matter, have in all seriousness, believed that it was possible for him to walk out of the dungeon to which he was unfairly condemned and to be immediately and genuinely installed as an elected president in a constitutional democracy without any attempt to first address the mirage of gaping national questions like constitutional legitimacy of the transition exercise itself, the nature of the post military Nigerian society, true federalism, resources control, human rights, etc., etc., which are confronting the nation, in the manner of the biblical Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, just like that? The reductio ad absurdum of the whole development is further highlighted when it is remembered that, prior to his unexpected release from jail, he was well reputed to have openly loathed Nigerian politicians and the democratic process to no end, so badly was his animus belli on the subject that, when all men of goodwill were campaigning to have Chief Abiola released from his undeserved detention, Obasanjo was on record to have dismissively said that the incarcerated winner of the June 12 election was not the Messiah for Nigeria, another way of saying that democracy has no use in the country, a position also firmly held by many of our politically contaminated soldiers and some of their civilian acolytes. So, there was no logical basis for the nation to therefore expect that upon graduation from Abacha’s gulags, he would emerge as a born-again democrat, good enough to wade into the political waters of Nigeria as a principal contestant, much less, with a redeeming political mission. Well, as it turned out, even at the very last minute, he was hijacked into the political arena and, like in oriental magic, was to be declared the winner by a contrived landslide victory in a presidential election that was decided well before the race even started.
Our task here is to demonstrate that this so-called electoral success did not happen by chance even if everyone went home pretending that there was a contest and that there was a winner. Let us not forget that up till that moment, all the political infrastructure in the country were, after several years of brutal manipulation and subversive panel-beating, programmed to produce one result and one result only, namely, the conversion of Abacha from a military strongman to a civilian czar in the vain hope of conjuring a counterfeit democracy to a world which has suddenly become obsessed with constitutional democracy, by all means possible. It was the hope of the Abacha strategists that once Khalifa is able to transform from his military uniform to kaftan, the unsuspecting or indeed un-perturbed international community would certify Nigerian as haven been democratized with Abacha as the life president as long as he can guarantee the continuous flow of the nation’s highly demanded quality oil to the key nations of the now unipolar world. For most part of this period, Obasanjo was still languishing in jail, totally shut out from the boisterous world of partisan politics. The last thing that would be in his mind then would be to be able to democratically step into the same office the man tormenting him is tightly occupying. Then, all of a sudden, his jailer died and he was to be freed and subsequently proclaimed the president of Nigeria and in apparent stupor, we all applauded the miracle.
Did anyone really believe that the Nigerian cosmos stood still for Obasanjo while he was put out of circulation and while, indeed, those who kept him there where patiently peeping at him like a bird in the cage watching the hourly glass for the occurrence of his eventual withering away? Abacha did not contemplate any human obstacle in his evil plan for Obasanjo and if indeed the goggled man had a second thought on the matter, it was certain that his cronies and loyalists like Adisa and Gwarzo and, of course, the ubiquitous marabouts swarming Aso Rock would have urged him on. Kai!
It has been too easy for us to ascribe the whole development to "miracle’. If there is any thing like miracle here at all, it is actually our rather simplistic attribution of the fortuitous metamorphosis of an ex-prisoner from the valley and shadow of death to the pinnacle of Nigerian leadership to ‘miracle’ or chance. But we think it is far more than that. Indeed, the General came out of the jail house sounding unusually Pentecostal, preaching to whoever would listen that his life, as he now sees it, was of divine design: haven seen all, the highest and the lowest in the iniquitous Nigerian system. What then, he sang, would he still be looking for in government? Poor souls! It was quite tragic that, in spite of all these, and in the anxiety to ‘reap where he did not sow’, the General misled himself to so easily believe that the shenanigan that threw him up as the new-found Messiah in what was clearly the outcome of a damage control measure hastily put in place by the bemused Abacha people was simply ascribable to God’s love for his beloved son, Matthew Aremu Obasanjo. Shouldn’t someone tell us if really Obasanjo was one of the prophets? Sorry folks, it was certainly more than that because we all know, for every action there must be a reaction and certainly, "nothing goes for nothing". Truly, there was once a divine theory of leadership that has since seen its day. But the simplicity with which humans bought the divine rulership theory, hook, line and sinker, while it lasted, is actually one of the practical validation of the thesis that ignorance is the principal raw materials from which miracles are made. Please don’t get me wrong, I do not myself doubt miracles, especially if I can not comprehend the phenomenon in question. But in this case, only a fool would have taken Obasanjo’s presidency as an accident or a genuine expression of a democratic choice by a people starved of their right to self-government. The truth of the matter is that the only miracle in the whole episode was the sudden death of Abacha. And what eventually took place thereafter were well-calculated responses to a very challenging situation by a desperate and leaderless Abacha camp.
It should now be clear to discerning Nigerians, putting together statements by figures like Al Mustapha and Bamaiyi, both leading operators of the Abacha political machine, that the death of the arch-dictator could not be glibly put down to an accident or the omnibus Act of God, but a well calculated political survival strategy by those who sensed that they could be marooned in the unfolding cataclysm which was expected in the aftermath of his collapsed evil design. And from a tactical point of view, they succeeded quite well in the objective of negotiating a political safe passage for themselves by using the innocuous Obasanjo presidency as the escape vessel. In our assessment, however, it would have been a fallacy of the highest order for any one to think that these guys simply cast their lot, as it were, and it accidentally fell on Obasanjo who only recently in their own thinking was actually fit only for the gallows. No way. That view would be the result of reading the Nigerian political situation rather too naively because what is more than 120 could be 140.
Even though the game plan seems to have gone sour midway, judging by the highly orchestrated negativism of the Arewa kingmakers to the whole post-Abacha political process lately, what took place was a well-calculated maneuver within the complex interplay of the oligarchic political terrain of Nigeria. The reputedly pliable Obasanjo whom they profitably dealt with in the aftermath of the assassination of General Murtala Mohammend about two decades ago has now metamorphosed into an extremely egocentric individual angling anxiously for a piece of history for himself in a land where so many others have wasted their political opportunities and heritage rather too cheaply. Quite contrary to the expectation of those that anointed him President Obasanjo, now seem to want to be counted as successful where his benefactors have repeated failed and, should that happen, in their arrogant calculation, it would unwittingly destroy the myth of the natural endowment of the Fulani breed of the north as the natural leaders of Nigeria. No one from among the other ethnic group must be allowed to succeed where they have repeatedly failed. They were not going to allow that because they feared such a development would indelibly stigmatized them as political failures and economic vandals forever. And to make matters worse and quite unfortunately too, Obasanjo himself could not see beyond the perimeters of his ever-expanding agbada to appreciate the mounting obstacles being put on his way by this clique and act accordingly. Rather, he was boasting that all was well or rather de kampe, thereby exposing his soft underbelly for easy poaching. And when he started promising certain fundamental changes in the almost ossified political machinery of the country as fashioned by the old guard, it was clear that he had ‘overstepped’ his bounds and for that, he was slated for a programmed humiliation.
Obasanjo should have known that the interests, who are rallying against the development of Nigerian, are legion and entrenched and, like all tyrannies, are not easily conquered. More importantly, he failed to secure the confidence of the common man for whom he thought he was fighting. Instead he was building caucus with people who, but for the peculiar circumstances of the transition that we have tried to explain here, ought to have been in jail for their heinous crimes against the nation. A more perceptive leader would have seized on the mood the time and initiate a New Deal with the People of Nigeria by taking governance, stripped of the old negative officialdom, to the them. Given the enormity of the social and political reconstruction in Nigeria, this would have been the appropriate time for the wearing of the Tai Solarin type of work khaki drill and NOT the provocative fashion parade of Aso Rock today. It would not have been too much for Obasanjo to adopt a populist posture both in action and in deed like Peron in the forties or Mandela until very recently. Instead, he opted for the militarist snobbish ways of the old guard where the people were considered incapable of thinking for themselves or worthy of consultation on issues of major national policy. Given the institutional bastardization of the political system under which the regime was erected, genuine legitimacy for the Obasanjo administration could only have been secured through ‘direct democracy’ or people oriented governance. Instead, he literally went to the nation’s Old Peoples Home to recruit his key officers to man a government that ought to be forward looking; a typewriter team in a computer age --- old names, very rich in service but wretched in success, personal morality and patriotism. In spite of this personnel blunder, people were still hopeful for a change in their fortune. But they seem to know better now.
The enduring fallacy about the actual foundations of the Obasanjo presidency stems from the collective self-deceit characteristically manifested in ideological bankruptcy, which the current military-bred political class occupying the political space in Nigeria inflicted on itself and their obscene anxiety to assume political power under any condition, and by all means possible, a syndrome which Obasanjo himself aptly described as the culture of "anything goes". Their apparent resignation to the reality and spineless conclusion that if they could not confront Abacha on the highly militarized and corrupt political terrain, rather than be left out of the system (often couched as the mainstream), they would rather opt to slave along with him, picking the crumbs along the way. Being social misfits and political invalids, and in the absence of any record of remarkable achievement in life or success in any lawful vocations, these set of politicians sang Abacha’s name to the heavens, wore his images and badges, idolized and hailed him, and in some cases, helped to satisfied his reputed libidinal excesses in the most unnatural ways just to ‘survive in the system’. Suddenly, the Nebuchadnezar expired and the political edifice he had ruthlessly constructed came crumbling down. There were confusion and stampede everywhere.
I recall the very first mid-night speech general Abdusalam gave to the nation to officially announce Abacha’s death where he incoherently pledged to continue the political program and processes of his deceased mentor. I was on hand at the studios of the African Independent Television [AIT], Lagos, that very night in the capacity of a Guest Analyst on the live telecast. The political editor, of AIT, Mr. Igbarumen, pointedly asked me what I made of the speech just given by the brand new military head of state. It was a tricky question because at that point in Nigeria nobody trusted the military anymore and there were rumors that it is was possible that the cunning dictator was still alive but was using the story of his ‘death’ to fish out those who hated him. People were not satisfied with the fact that the man has really not been looking healthy up till that time or that his bloated lifeless body was shown on the national TV being loaded into the cargo compartment of the presidential aircraft the previous evening. Well, I replied the quizzing journalist by saying that from what General Abdusalam has just told the nation, nothing has changed and I gave the analogy of a train that has simply changed driver on the same route. The passengers would have no reason at all to expect a different route or a different arrival time from that which was previously scheduled. Within the limits of those fearful days, I went on further to tell the viewers that as long as Abdusalam Abubakar has pledged to continue in his late master’s footsteps, Nigerians have no reason to expect anything dramatic in the aftermath of the personal transition of the evil-man-in-chief for, even if the boss dies, there are always willing heirs to perpetrate the legacy of the departing patriarch.
As a matter of fact, everything that the late dictator put in place in furtherance of his self-succession plan worked quite perfectly and without any opposition until he personally abandoned it on the superior command of death. It became clear to most Nigerians that the absence of the arc-dictator did not in any way lighten their burden. It was not to be expected, in any case, that his henchmen would, in the absence of a secured safe passage, abandon the mission of their boss, dead or alive. More importantly, the security apparati of the nation were still securely under their control. Accordingly, the military did not deviate from the program which Abacha put in place neither could they radically change the dramatis personae of the remaining phases of the political program until it was practically impossible to continue. In this connection, exception should be made of the South West, now AD controlled states, which the Abacha terror machine could not totally subdue.
On the other hand, there were mounting evidence that the people of Nigeria wanted something fundamentally different from that of the military, which has oppressed them for so long. It was quite discernible to any observer of the political scene that the military has overdrawn it accounts with the people and an uprising was in the making unless the soldiers beat a retreat. From all indications at that time, if the military did not act fast enough the mob would most likely have taken over and the consequences for the totally discredited military establishment could have taken the Iranian form or even worse. It was at that stage that the operators of the Abacha political estate needed another face that would create a semblance of change before the evidently restive population clamoring for democracy so as to save themselves from the showdown that was likely to come from the public just getting adjusted to the reality that the feared Abacha was no more and that they have only been contending with mere scarecrows for some time. It was a season highly pregnant with vengefulness, which was going to pair the people against the military establishment. The sudden fall of the Iroko tree, which Abacha became, paved the way for a possible riotous marching on the establishment by a thoroughly frustrated population. The signs were everywhere: the military has lost its muscles and mind while the people were poised to reclaim their sovereignty and impose their will on the state which they have come to perceive as the sole source of their tribulations.
Evidence of this state of affairs is abundantly buttressed by the phenomena of ethnic militias like the OPC and other groups that were ready to do battle with the State that and its institutions, which they no longer respected. It was at this critical point that Obasanjo came into the equation of Nigerian power politics, an entry that was more or less that of survival of the ruling clique in the post-Abacha Nigeria. It was clear that the military has found itself completely discredited and indeed, rejected, and at the same time was not exactly sure of what would happen if it gives up power unconditionally. General Abubakar knew that the situation on the ground was beyond further manipulation in the old fashion. It was time to turn in power to the people peacefully before they seize it forcefully. So they came up with an Obasanjo presidency. In many respects, it was a very smart move especially as the strategy caught many otherwise scrupulous people napping. The desire for democracy was so high in the country that anything packaged as democratic, no matter its ancestry or composition, was going to sell and in this case, it did very well.
The next problem, which the military men faced, was how to convince the rightly embittered Obasanjo that it was possible to come out of the jailhouse in the morning and be entering the presidential race in the evening. Given his recent ordeal from which he has hardly recovered, it would be extremely difficult to convince him that the military regime could still be trusted, given his popular refrain then that the Nigerian Army has been "destroyed beyond repairs". Looking sickly and evidently devastated, it was quite unlikely that the man would take such a proposition any seriously. And it was the effort to overcome this obstacle that several eminent emissaries of which General Ibrahim Babangida was the most noted were dispatched to Otta Farm where Obasanjo was convalescing, to plead with him and prepare his mind for the big task of coming out and rescue the military form the impending wrath of Nigerians in the guise of saving the nation. Being a former military ruler himself it was easy to appeal to his ego and sentiment of an ex-soldier to accept the job. All they wanted from him was a "yes" as every other thing needed to secure the presidency was ready. Obasanjo did not need to bother about where the money for the election would come from neither did he has to bother about the political organization needed to put the program into action. The military has logistically seen to that and were still prepared to convinced the rightly skeptical man, perhaps beyond all reasonable doubts, that his ‘election’ has been assured as they therefore went ahead to obscenely saturate the electoral process with tons of looted Naira. In one fell swoop; billions and billions of Naira were pumped into the scheme.
Honestly, even if Obasanjo was a perennial doubter, these stupendous performances were enough to convince him and so, he finally accepted the Greek gift of a presidency. I have mentioned elsewhere the events at one of the meetings in Otta to which I was invited along with some noted human rights advocates, apparently to put a touch of popularity to the SOS being piled on the old man. Of the one hundred or so people who gathered there, only a handful of us could tell the man that this cajoling look like a bait by a group desperately seeking a safe passage from the imminent disaster awaiting them. The others, mostly former military men and their civilian lackeys from several regimes past, shouted us down with Obasanjo's hosanna. Patriots like Olisa Agbakoba, Ayo Obe, Pini Jason, Pat Utomi, are some of my witnesses for this scene. It was clear to us that Obasanjo was already firmly in the grip of these political buccaneers. I watched as he was grinning from ear to ear like a beautiful bride, not minding our pleas for him to just say "no" or, at least, set some pro-democratic conditions for those discredited military politicians frantically drafting him into the game. The rest is now history. The essential elements in this pact, as I understood it, was that the north and its military wing did not want be totally swept away from its previously entrenched position of power along with the general denigration of the military which has for several years served the region’s interests very well through the unfair monopolization of political power and, by implication, patronage and the resultant economic benefits that go with it.
Because of the evidently northern interests which the Obasanjo option represented, even his fellow Yorubas, still smarting from the sustained assault of the Abacha regime on them, the ‘killing’ of Abiola in jail and other sundry grievances, totally denounced and rejected the idea and ultimately ensured that he was electoral rejected at the polls on their soil. To ensure that the plan did not falter, they shrewdly pressured their vassals states in the southern parts of the country to help guarantee the success of Obasanjo in the election through massive support while the north was itself careful enough not put all her eggs in the Obasanjo PDP basket by keeping some safely away in the APP camp. Talk about real politics! Central to this arrangement were the preservation of the status quo in the larger segment of the political process, i.e., the National Assembly, the states and local government and other key institutions of states. The result was that the whole of the erstwhile Abacha team was preserved at all the critical levels of government. But for some AD states, it would have been possible to say that almost every participant of note in the Obasanjo system was already deeply involved in the stalled Abacha program. Of course, if the AD was not registered, there would have been no election in the southwest and that would have been a legitimacy problem for the regime, so it was allowed to participate to create a semblance of competition in that part of the country. For a start, INEC the official political gatekeeper simply registered only those parties with a preponderance of notable Abacha faithfuls. For another, it was only those individuals who benefited from the enormous patronage system, which Abacha instituted, that could muster the financial muscles required to contest the highly monetized elections, no matter the political party in which they found themselves.
Perhaps more importantly, those politicians who were outside of the military/Abacha camp were not quite sure if the transition program was for real, considering the notorious fact that several programs have been unnecessarily aborted in the past and also, they did not fully comprehend what the rules were. In fact, many of them were just getting used to free lives outside of hiding and precautionary self-exile or just coming out of jail and economically crippled or all of these hardships combined. So, the coast was cleared for a majority of the Abacha followers to contest the elections and they won handsomely, irrespective of the monumental skeletons lurking in their political cupboards. The National Assembly was particularly saturated with these distasteful characters such as the anti-June 12 militarists, Abacha badge wearers, all seeking to launder their bloodied images and convert their savage reputation to that of "honorable" and "distinguished" men of Nigerian politics. This explains the presence of anti-democratic and oppressive names like Brigadier David Mark of the abandoned property fame, General Inienger and a host of other notable military junta officers in a legislative institution supposedly meant for democrats.
At the inauguration of the new government, it was obvious that the President truly wanted to run a democratic government with a mission to salvage the nation. That was very clear from all his utterances and actions. But Obasanjo alone could not constitute the government. Those politicians he inherited from the Abacha days had their own agenda quite different from his. In many respects, he was alone, an oasis in the desert of crooks and charlatans. On the one hand, his political associates had their own agenda, which was quite different from his own vision of the new Nigeria. On the other hand, there was no political connection between what the government stood for and what the people of Nigeria actually wanted. So from day one the President found himself flanked by party men who did not share in his vision. This was openly manifested at the National Assembly, which draw an instant battle line between itself and the presidency. They amply emphasized this point by harping on the negative aspects of the notion of separation of powers and irresponsible allusion to a constitutionally non-existent parliamentary sovereignty in a presidential constitutional system! For many months these Abacha men haggled and wrestled on how best they can allot to themselves whatever was left in the national account through the instrumentality of jumbo allowances and mind-boggling emoluments in an economy that was at its nadir.
Quite clearly, it was obvious that the new civilian government did not pretend to be anything democratic. Its most charitable assessor thought of it as a transitional regime that would ultimately pave the way for a true and functioning democracy. Faced with this reality, the President probably thought that the end would justify the means or that the office would sanctify the holders. In other words, he hoped that the Abacha men in the new order would eventually shed their old evil ways and begin to do things democratically or that by merely calling the regime democratic, things would eventually fall in their places. Here, the president got it all wrong. The leopard does not easily change its skin. He even thought that mere prayers devoid of work would be enough to transform the nation from the path of evil to that of sanity. Was Matthew Aremu also one of the prophets? He forgot that the party under which he ‘fought’ for the presidency was everything but a political party in the democratic sense. This took him two full years to understand, as he himself had to lament at their last convention that what brought most of them together was the rabid expectation of patronage and not the willingness to serve the fatherland. In Obasanjo’s own words, speaking about his party the PDP, " what has held us together at all, is that our party is in power and there is a strong expectation of patronage, our party lacks cohesion". He went further to frankly admonished his party men as lacking in cohesiveness, discipline, ideology-based human ideas, solidarity and a socially motivated unity of purpose. Well said. Needless to say that had he seen this dirty side of his party men when they came to Otta on their kneels begging him to join the fray, he probably would have pondered a bit and reject them. Too late, he is already stuck with them and to some extent his destiny is now tied to theirs, politically. There is however a faint hope that he could still extricate himself if he would for once take side with the suffering people of Nigeria and come clean from those vampires around him parading as chieftains of the PDP, a party whose dubious ancestry has already been explained.
There was no way that such an amalgam of anti-democratic forces could have been able to successfully nurture a democratic project such as confronted the nation in 1999. You cannot plant yam and be expecting to harvest cassava or vice versa. The political arena was more like the gathering of buccaneers than that of politicians duly motivated by the desire to serve the nation. And as the president himself would admit above, these social vandals were only brought together by the magnetic force of political patronage and the culture of "eating" and nothing more. In spite of these realities, the man has been committing himself to such arcane objectives like transparency, probity in government, accountably and patriotism in a system thoroughly infested by crooks, looters and agents of national decline. Contrary to all his hopes, it is obvious that his party men took those admonitions to have been meant for the marines, for they did not listen. It is has remained business as usual. And just to prove their point, they have since gone ahead to deregulate corruption and constitutionalize official stealing by using the terminologies of democracy and that of the legislative process as licenses.
In no time, the no "no business as usual" slogan of the President was promptly dumped into the Abuja savannah as the legislators started to pillage the national economy, fixing for themselves palatial allowances, awarding bogus and criminally inflated contracts and striving to recoup their political investments with primitive alacrity, ostensibly against the rainy day. Rather than busy themselves with files and official documents on national problems, Ghana-must-go bags became the symbols of authority at the legislative chambers. While the president seem to have pledged himself to redeeming the national economy and bringing back the good old days, his colleagues in government clearly mistook that to mean a return to the Abacha years and as a result, whatever Abacha did secretly, Obsanjo's men are doing same openly and with presidential gusto. Of course, such immediately sent a wrong signal to the population and unmitigated chop-chop, greed and insatiable appetite for corruption has become the order of the day.
Consequently, the government seems to have lost its respect and needed legitimacy. But for the well-demonstrated shamelessness of Aso Rock occupants, what has now become of Nigeria is the equivalence of abdication of political responsibility by those elected to reconstruct the nation from the ruin of the Abacha years. The next question is did Nigerians really have a legitimate expectation that things were about to change? If so, on what basis?
From the foregoing analysis, it would have been a real miracle if things have gone differently. The tragedy however is that the ultimate loser in the whole transaction are the hapless citizens of Nigeria whose hope for a better life had been unduly delayed, if not permanently destroyed. Two years into the new civilian government, nothing seems to have happened positively to the lives of our people. All that they can point to is a rapidly declining quality of life as the national human development index plummeted to an abysmal depth. The economy has been so mismanaged that the national currency has become the laughing stock of the international monetary system. From and exchange rate of about 85 Naira in 1999, it is now as low as 135 to the dollars. This is the same currency that had enjoyed a remarkable superiority to the US dollar on an exchange rate of about two dollars to one Naira a few years ago before military vandals took over!
All these happening in spite of the good intentions of the president is a loud confirmation of a serious organic disconnection between him and his team. The quality of governance, relative to general expectation, has so gone down that every Dick and Harry now thinks it can do a better job than the Obasanjo regime. That attitude seems to explain the recent audacity of highly depraved characters like Babangida and his fellow travelers testing the waters and wanting to stage a come back through the ‘democratic option’ as if Nigeria is theirs for inheritance. There is really nothing legally wrong in Babangida or any other coupist, for that matter, hoping for political power, but it would however be more rightly go to jail first for the crime of mismanaging the country and corrupting all her values, and next be born again, and begin to see vision, just like Obasanjo, if he is ever to convince even the crocodiles, for, there exists no basis to rationally compare the two beyond the fact that they were both soldiers. IBB must be told that on the cross with Jesus Christ on the crucifixion spot at Golgotha were two thieves while one was wise enough to seek forgiveness the other arrogantly missed the golden opportunity and thus ended up in hell fire. Needless to say that these developments are the calculated outcome of the great Arewa strategists: if Obasanjo fails in this project, it would shut up the mouth of those southerners and minorities across the country who have come to associate political failure in Nigeria with northern leaders, military and civilian alike.
So far, there is not a single issue that the Obasanjo regime has attempted to solve that it has succeeded in by any measure. Granted that the party in power did not have any political program. But is however legitimate to expect that any sane administration in Nigeria should have no problem identifying certain fundamental problems undermining the viability of the state right now that crying for attention. To some extent, Obasanjo himself made some very accurate evaluation of the situation an the ground: the failing economy, the collapsed social infrastructure like NEPA, NITEL and NIPOST, etc., miserable state of the nation education system, insecurity of life and property and the growing anarchism in the streets as typified phenomena like OPC, Bakkassi, Arrow boys, and the resurgence of inter-ethnic and inter-religious animosity in Nigerian and more importantly, the Niger Delta question which is evidently at a breaking point. The success or failure of the regime would be measured by how far these chronic national problems are solved. These are daunting problems even for the most endowed societies and for the presently debilitated Nigeria, they become a lot more complicated. And it is for this same reason that many continue to ponder why it was possible for the president to have embarked on an extensive global ‘thank you tour’ as if he was elected to know the world. Of course, those who drew up his itinerary knew what they are doing: keep him out of town where the unmitigated looting goes on. By the time the President returned to Abuja to start the business of governing, so much water has already passed under the bridge of good governance.
Within this same period, governments in Nigeria have been known to embark on such wasteful projects and criminal pillage of the limited resources available like attempting to dredge inland rivers just to create avenues for contract awards while no money is available to neither pay workers nor run basic public facilities. Obasanjo will not succeed as long as he is hemmed into the late Abacha program. The party he was drafted into, runs the late Abacha program of massive spoliation and developmental vandalism. The party he was drafted into to lead, ought to be alien to him but since power is sweeter than honey the man is singing a new tune. Everything about PDP was already in place while he was languishing away in prison, anyway. He was not, by any stretch of the imagination, involved with the promotion of the party and there is therefore no way his personal weight could have been felt seriously in the conduct of the affairs of the party at the commencement of the relationship. Far example, the PDP does not share his idea of corrupt-free politics neither is the party ready for the discipline necessary to turn the damaged economy around. Apart from the late Abacha and his family members, no other politician of note has been indicted for corruption so far and it is a well known secret that Abacha was not the first to have looted the national economy and even while he looted, he did not do it alone. How come the anti-corruption regime of Obasanjo has not mustered the courage to dare the others who constitute the bulk of his party membership? Does it not bother the President that transparency that he has so loudly harped upon is still an alien word in most government circles, two years into his presidency? Is government now a zoo for breeding sacred cows that the president repeatedly told us must be allowed to thrive?
The truth is that there is very little that he can do about the situation because, as we have already demonstrated, he is not in charge of the policy thrust of the mainstream PDP, the ruling party. And as far as the political structure is concerned, he is at best an invitee, certainly not a foundation member and the fact of his been a mere "draftee" will always limit his powers and even stunt his ambition within the party. As it has turned out, they have successfully used him to create a buffer between the aggrieved people of Nigeria and themselves when they were utterly vulnerable. Now that the danger of popular uprising, in their warped thinking, seems to have subsided the true owners of the party have taken control and showing their true colors.
Indeed, it is remarkable that whenever the president takes a fundamental policy decision that might set him against public opinion, such as happened in the wages and fuel cases; these dubious characters always manage to set him up for massive political demolition. There has never been any visible conceptual cohesion or focus on any major policy decision initiated within the Obasanjo presidency. There is no need to begin to enumerate the policy issues in which it could be said that the man had been artfully set up for political humiliation. For example, the uncoordinated raising of the national minimum wages and the reckless price hikes on petroleum products; the contrived Executive-Legislators imbroglio and the bungling of the Niger Delta situation; the discriminatory lawsuit by the FGN on resources control in contradistinction with the Sharia challenge; the resort to the Abacha-type constitutional conference which will nether be legitimate nor viable politically; the abandonment of administrative and fiscal discipline and sundry gubernatorial relict, are all blameworthy enough that if we had had a parliamentary system of government in place it would have been enough to lead to sustainable votes of no confidence against his administration. Some of these policy somersaults that had necessitated the president to humbly come out and apologize to the nation were totally avoidable. But like the holy book asks, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? "No, God forbids", is the scriptures’ answer! This is the right time to change style and be properly focused if the Obasanjo’s second coming would not end up in a fiasco. And to be meaningful, such changes must not be predicated in the laughable calculus of the year 2003, for that would just be like the case of the runner who for the anxiety of having the coveted cup stopped at the first lap and started demanding for the coveted trophy even while the race was still on. 2003 or beyond will definitely depend on the momentum that the government can garner now on its performance scoreboard. What guarantee has any one that 2003 will meet any politician still in good standing? The defense of democracy entails the conscious effort of all participants to play by the rules but inordinately scheming to hang on even when there is no basis to want to, go beyond the lust of power and sit-tight mentality, it is the very weapon truly fashioned against democracy by the enemy of democracy. There has to be a rational possibility of the survival of the democratic process before talking of re-election by hook or crook. Such would unwittingly court the type of tragedy that befell the old Austro-Hungarian Empire which, for fear of death, committed suicide.
Government can not take the goodwill of the people for granted all the time. Neither is it a good approach to public management to want to sweep nagging problems under the carpet as they will always return to haunt the government concerned, especially in a system which normatively demands for periodical accounting at the polls. The president should go to the people once more to energize his mandate by relating to them directly and acting according to his understanding of social justice rather than as fashioned for him by those people around him such as we have categorized as the perpetuators of the evil Abacha legacy which is usually manifested in the greedy exploitation of state powers for personal gains. I would like to counsel in this connection that he must bridle his tongue while he speak to the people of the country as he had already committed terrible verbal atrocities in many sensitive places. Henceforth, he should learn to talk presidential, so to say. Rather he should be a consummate doer of all that is necessary to rebuild the moribund nation. When education is in tatters, public utilities are dilapidating, there ought not to be enough for money for the jumbo emoluments public officials have given themselves. That was the way Abacha did it. There should be some qualitative differences this time around. Government must lead the way in prudent management of resources by cutting down on the current provocative self-awarded allowances. Government has never been, and it should never be turned into a moneymaking venture for public officers. It is for service by men and women with the spirit if public service and humility, not brutes nor thieves as has been our experience so far as a nation.
It would help the polity if good pay was made available to those who really work and not to those whose duties entail only the custody of the public purse. At independence in 1960, professors in our universities earned more than ministers and legislators. But today, many of them are too excited to be made mere assistants to semi-illiterate politicians, certainly not for the opportunity to serve the nation but the opportunity to escape poverty. In those days, the nation could say that she has universities whose products were comparable to those from other lands. More importantly there was hope in a better future as there was good investment in education. But the military came and did not bother about tomorrow, so, they ate all for the day. As you read this, our universities are under lock and keys because the government would not honor agreements that was meant to ameliorate on the insulting conditions under which professors work in Nigeria. It was Abacha’s agenda to kill education in Nigeria and perpetuate servitude. Now that he is gone, that policy ought to have changed in the new dispensation. Whoever that can reverse this would have a secure place in the nation’s Hall of Fame. But any leader who misses on the opportunity to do good would also be consigned to the rising dumpsite on which many of our leaders have been trashed and where many are also heading.
Obasanjo must break away from the straight jacket imposed by such anti-people policies and place himself squarely in the driver's seat by taking steps that will restore the glory of Nigeria. The problems of Nigeria are well known and solving them is the basis upon which the government was instituted. If that is achieved, the sagging spirit of the nation will rise again and the current despair will replace hope and there will be no need to want to stay in office forever. Clinton is no more in office but no American would deny him the honor for studiously turning the economy around from depression to an unprecedented boom and making prosperity a national attribute for the Americans. That is positive legacy. In the minds of the people, Clinton has an everlasting place, And in that case, he will not need spoilers like Nzeribe to campaign for his umpteen term. The Babies in the womb would also do it for him. Nigeria is dying to witness a hero in action and not someone who will only remind them of the late Abacha.
Professor Mike Ikhariale,
HRP,
Harvard Law School,
Cambridge, MA 02138