By

Professor Omo Omoruyi

Research Fellow

African Studies Center

Boston University.

This is a continuation of my essay FURTHER TO THE DEBATE on the notion of ‘pact’ entered into by President Obasanjo with the geo-ethno-military-clique and the international community and how that affects President Obasanjo’s decision or prospect for renomination of his party and his reelection by the Nigerian people in 2003. Those who have been commenting on the notion of ‘pact’ such as the contributors to the main article of This Day of February 18, 2001 questioned my authority and what I stood to gain by coming out with my essay. One of the contributors to the This Day’s article dismissed me as IBB man along with Chief Sonny Okogwu as if that meant that anyone who was at one time or other close to IBB should not tell Nigerians that President Obasanjo signed a pact with his sponsors in 1998. I was surprised that those who were using the IBB name to dismiss the fact of a pact, were those who were flying the IBB flag at the same Ndi Igbo Summit.

My authority is my knowledge of the ‘military in politics’ in Nigeria and the approach of the north to politics. What do I stand to gain from raising the issue, nothing other than that I thought my countrymen have the right to demand from their President what he promised his sponsors when he agreed to be their candidate in 1998. I am on record as raising this question since 1999, because I knew he promised them something before he was endorsed in preference to the founders of the PDP, such as Dr. Alex Ekwueme.

The This Day’s comments showed clearly that they still have not read my main essay with the title There Was a One-Term Pact and the basis of my argument. And of course, the This Day’s reporter did not read the Post Express report of the issue in March 1999 after the Presidential election that the President-elect promised the north a one term only and that he would honor the pledge as he honored the pledge in 1976. I could have allowed debaters to continue with the discussion, if contributors are not making a case for themselves.

When I read the press statement credited to Chief Sonny Okogwu’s that there was a ‘pact’ between President Obasanjo and the military, I only had to recall many utterances from those who were in a position to know that there was a ‘pact’ to raise further issues. Those who have been commenting on the notion of ‘pact’ so far have been too consumed by what they stand to gain from the erroneous interpretation of and addition to their understanding of the ‘pact’. They fail to understand the basis of the one-term ‘pact’ and what was to be achieved under the ‘pact’.

One hopes, readers would understand the basis of throwing out the spurious issues as ‘zone’, ‘rotation’ and ‘turn by turn’ because they were not part of the consideration when the ‘pact’ was conceived. The sponsors of General Obasanjo did not have a long-term view of Nigerian politics as to imagine a scheme of succession or rotation. They were faced with a problem after the death of the military strongman, General Abacha, which threw out all the calculations of many zones and politicians in the country. One tries to advance the basis of the geo-ethno-military-clique and the international community inviting Chief Obasanjo to be the successor to the military junta in 1998. In order to deal with the erroneous interjection of spurious issues that led to the part (1) of the essay, the concept of a bridge was conceived. That was the subject of the first essay arising from the pact.

They also fail so far to address the relationship between President Obasanjo’s performance in office and his prospect in 2003 in spite of or as a way of validating the ‘pact’. This is the subject of this essay.

`Those who want to assess the achievement of the current dispensation under President Obasanjo would appreciate the fact that the transition program in 1998/99 was built around one person, General Olusegun Obasanjo and nobody else. It was based on the use of General Obasanjo by the geo-ethno-military-clique and the international community as an instrument to commence the democratization of Nigeria. The interpretation by the geo-ethno-military-clique and the international community might be different on what he was supposed to do while in office and how long it would take President Obasanjo to accomplish the task.

Between the clique and the international guarantor of the program there was a perfect agreement on specific issues, which completely ignored what one should look for in traditional transition program. The assumption was that President Obasanjo while in office would undertake these tasks, which should have been addressed as part of the transition program. The political class without spine bought this too. Various groups complaining today bought this on faith too.

Were we surprised that the transition program did not provide for the political class and the political parties?

Were we surprised that there were no parties as we know them in a democracy and even in the past in Nigeria?

Were we surprised that the Peoples Democratic Party was called the party of General Obasanjo in the international media?

Were we surprised that the results recorded by that PDP in the elections were tied to General Obasanjo?

In my initial analysis of the results of the presidential election, I came to two generalizations. One was that the Nigerian voters did not vote for the PDP but for General Obasanjo. Two was that the Nigerian voters were merely calling on President Obasanjo to take them out of the dismal situation created for them through many years of military misrule.

I made this clear in my analysis of the election and its aftermath in The News of April 1999. I also discussed the constraints facing the new President in the April 1999 issue of Tell magazine. Some called me an alarmist then. I am happy that my views are holding out today. Hence I can say confidently that I still stand by the views expressed in these magazines.

President Obasanjo should appreciate that he was commanded as it were by the Nigerian voters and the international community to do certain things, partly because they trust him and partly because they did not trust the political class or the political party that nominated him. The Nigerian voters and the international community based their faith in General Obasanjo and not on the political class because of the past records of the political class. They were prepared to err on the side of trust in a transformed General Obasanjo as the President. This is the issue today.

 Were we surprised that the transition program of General Abdulsalami Abubakar did not provide for the National Assembly as a coequal branch of government with the Presidency headed by General Obasanjo? It did not provide for a functioning federal system where the states were to function as autonomous federal units with control over their resources and their lives.

Above all, no one cared about the ‘boundary on rulers’, which we call the Constitution. Was it not strange that there was no Constitution known to all those who were contesting elections at all levels of government?

Was it not strange that the focus throughout the transition period in 1998/99 was on the one man, (General Obasanjo) who was to become the President and omitted the political class, the political parties and the National Assembly? Why do the politicians, political parties and zonal leaders want to interject themselves into the debate when they failed to be relevant in the past? Is it not obvious to the political class, the political parties and the National Assembly that they are part of the lingering political problems afflicting the country today. Is it not obvious to the political class that political education for them should be part of the internal political settlement?

Was it not strange that no one appreciated the enormity of the lingering problems from the past? Was it not obvious that the geo-ethno-military-clique, the international community and the Nigerian voters believed in President Obasanjo for various reasons that he would take advantage of the trust placed in him to address the lingering political problems afflicting the country. Whatever definition we give to the ‘pact’ it was based on trust, that President Obasanjo would see his emergence as based on trust, on what he did in the past and on what he could do now and in the future. Nigerians should go back to what candidate Obasanjo said in his acceptance speech at the PDP convention in 1999. He told the delegates that ‘we’ did it before and ‘we’ will do it again. Who are the ‘We’? Certainly it did not include the PDP.

The notion of Trust is the crux of the ‘pact’ and it is critical to the President Obasanjo’s performance in office on which the President would be judged eventually. This is what President Shehu Shagari meant when he exploded on the BBC Hausa Service in September 2000 and expressed the judgment of the Arewa Consultative Forum that President Obasanjo ‘abused the trust of the north’ during the heat of Sharia controversy. The same sentiments can be found in the criticisms of the President in the Ndi Igbo land and in the Niger-Delta.

It should have been obvious by now that internal political settlement was not part of the transition program. The North might not be interested in wholesale political settlement which would reduce their power in Nigeria. But the President should appreciate that the international community knew the value of an internal political settlement as necessary precondition for a stable democratic order. Many pro-democracy groups in Nigeria and in the international community did not embark upon this, despite the cry for it. The explanation one could proffer then was that people thought President Obasanjo was aware of the yearning of Nigerians from his professed prophesies after his release from Abacha’s Gulag and would use his moral power and authority to address these lingering political problems. They believed that he would set the machinery in motion for addressing them. His tenure in office therefore depends on this, one would argue.

Nigerians of all political persuasions thought that internal political settlement would form part of the transition, just as they thought that a Constitution would grow out of the process of internal political settlement. What did the country have on May 29, 199? A Constitution was foisted on the Nigerian people and sadly, President Obasanjo had since then used that Constitution, which did not grow our of the people of Nigeria as a basis of denying Nigerians their rights.

This was like putting the cart before the horse. Nigerians are seeing the problems today and unfortunately the President is invoking that Constitution to rebuff those who are calling for some kind of discussion as part of a meaningful transition.

The President should not make this faith in his capacity to do certain things to be a misplaced assumption in the international community and in Nigeria. That faith in his capacity to do certain things to move the country forward after he shall have been sworn in on May 29, 1999 should not be betrayed.

Nigerians are faced with two questions today. One is whether the President appreciates the expectations of Nigerians and the international community in the face of the lingering political problems afflicting the country?

The second is whether the President appreciates the value of institution building, that with or without him there would be institutions and processes in place for addressing the lingering political problems? One hopes the President would address these two issues as he ponders over the 2003.

The issue of 2003 and the notion of ‘pact’ would be determined by the way the President responds to the two critical issues above. Therefore, Nigerians would want to score him on how much of the country’s lingering political problems he has been able to tackle since becoming the President as a basis for asking for another four years. Nigerians would want to score him on how much of institution building has been embarked upon since his becoming the President for the resolution of the lingering political problems. President Obasanjo should not be a victim of the ‘pact’ but on his response to these two issues by the end of this year.

The President would have to deal with these issues between now and end of 2001, as 2002 would be a nomination year and 2003 is the election year. Maybe one should strongly advise the President that unless the answers to these questions become evident by the end of this year, the rule of four-year term of office would make his quest for another four years unrealistic.

The politics of 2003 is everywhere, in the media and in the agenda of all political groups. The ‘South-South’ political leaders or the southern minorities at various meetings and the Ndi Igbo at the last Summit believe that it would be their turn, come 2003. This is a serious matter. I recall the kind of question in the textbook on India in the early 60s about Nehru. The question was everywhere then, ‘after Nehru what’? Some of us were made to answer questions based on this in the university. One wonders if students in Nigerian universities would be made to respond to the question as it applies to Nigeria, if they are not already asking that kind of question in Nigeria about President Obasanjo, ‘after President Obasanjo, what’?

The question would not be answered in the context of what Chief Tony Anenih, the Minister of Works and the ‘Mr. Fix It’ for the President told Nigerians recently that ‘there is no vacancy in the Presidential Villa in the year 2003’. What Chief Anenih said has the same implication for democracy as the plan of Chief Arthur Nzeribe who plans to make the three political parties adopt the President as the only candidate in 2003. Nigerians should be careful with the same people who derailed the democratic transition in the past and worked for Abacha’s self-succession.

The recent statement denouncing Chief Nzeribe’s plan as anti-democratic ought to have been made to also apply to Chief Anenih’s assertion. But the Minister of information seemed to focus on what Chief Nzeribe said and not on what Chief Anenih asserted. One hopes, the President would not at anytime be made to believe in this kind of trash.

One would strongly urge the President not to believe in the assurance of Chief Anenih that the Villa could be shut to others and refuse to work for his legacy. Maybe one should advise President Obasanjo to set the machinery in motion for dealing with the lingering political problems and embark on institution building.

One comes back to this matter because the Nigerian lingering problems would soon be complicated by the question after President Obasanjo, what? I hope the President is following the debate. The future of democracy in Nigeria hangs on the resolution of this question. That he signed a pact of one-term with his sponsors is no longer in dispute, even if the President refuses to tell Nigerians the truth today. What is an issue ‘After Obasanjo, Who/What?

 Was it not an error for the Nigerian voters and the international community to trust one man that he and he alone with the capacity to resolve all the lingering political issues? Was it not an error to exclude the National Assembly and the political class from the machinery for resolving or handling all the lingering problems of Nigeria? Was it not an error that no provision was ever made for the accredited representatives of the ethnic nationalities to meet and resolve these issues and create a more perfect union? In spite of all these, we could ask, how has President Obasanjo performed in this role entrusted to him on faith since he was sworn in as the President?

One had done some content analysis of some issues, which the President seems to be confronted with since taking over on May 29, 1999. How did he fare in all of them?

One should use objective indices to revalidate or reject President Obasanjo as a candidate for 2003.

The leaders of the various groups in the country, the oil producing areas of the ‘south-south’, the Ndi Igbo of the southeast, the Yorubas of the southwest, the middle-belt, the Arewa, and others such as the labor, the military, the students, the businessmen, etc now have a task to perform in preparation for 2003.

They should no longer base their endorsement of Obasanjo on faith or sentiments but on performance. They now have an opportunity to revalidate or reject President Obasanjo candidature for 2003. They should not reject him by simply acting on the fraudulent and anti-democratic ‘pact’.

They also have an objective basis for assessing other candidates with respect to alternative vision and agenda as distinct from President’s vision and agenda. Those in the ‘south-south’ and in the ‘southeast who want to be President in competition with President Obasanjo in 2003 should address the country on their vision and agenda and should also be scored using the same indices.

The leaders of various groups should therefore take their pen and paper and score the President on a scale of ten on his performance in office since 1999 and now as he moves to 2003. This is the way to validate the so-called ‘pact’.

The summary of the political problems from my ‘note-book’, which is not exhaustive, consists of the following:

How is the President resolving the ‘military question’ in politics? This has to do with two questions, fundamental restructuring to produce a representative armed forces and fundamental reorientation to produce an accountable armed forces.

How is the President coping with the prior regimes in the key areas of past human rights abuses and the loot from past corrupt practices?

How is the President resolving the ‘politics of oil’ or the ‘ownership question’ of oil or the ‘resource control’ advocacy?

How is the President resolving the ‘Ndi Igbo question’ in Nigerian politics?

How is the President coping with his role as the peacekeeper in the West African sub-region?

How is the President coping with the expectations from the international community such as the World Bank and IMF in relation to the Nigerian welfare?

How is the President dealing with the political class in general and with his political party and other political parties?

How is the President dealing with the other elective branch of government, the National Assembly?

How is the President solving the issue of representation in Nigeria? Does the President see Nigeria as made up of three ethnic nationalities or of many ethnic nationalities?

How does the President conceive of the states or zones and other groups in civil society?

How is the President’s handling the complex issue of marginalization all over the country?

How is the President handling the complex issues of group/regional claims and counter-claims and demands and counter-demands all over the country?

How is the President handling the issues of the ‘politicization of religion’? Nigerians want a resolution of the Sharia issue and the formal resolution of the status of Nigeria in such Islamic organizations as the OIC, IDB and D8 within the context of a multi-religious society.

How is the President handling the complex issue of social and economic reconstruction that had collapsed after many years of military misrule?

How is the President handling the personal security issues in the country?

How is the President handling the complex issue of declining faith of Nigerians in their government?

How is the President handling the declining quality of life in Nigeria?

 

One is on record as expressing opinion on what President Obasanjo should have done and on what he should be doing in some of these areas in the past, some from my personal knowledge as a Political Science Professor and from my experience in public life.

One is also on record as emphasizing that the President is under a severe constraint because of the way he emerged and he is not doing well in many of the foregoing.

One would not want to apply ones yardstick to measure the President’s capacity to deliver on these policy measures so far. This should be left to the various groups in the ‘south-south’ the ‘southeast’, the ‘southwest’, the ‘Arewa’, the ‘Middle-Belt’, the political class etc. It is for the leaders of these zones to judge whether he had been able to handle these problems today.

The political leaders should also be fair to the President by adjusting their score. If President Obasanjo cannot resolve these problems, what machinery or modalities for resolving these problems he was able to institute and how genuine is his effort so far. This in the final analysis would determine the validity of the one-term ‘pact’. Nigeria cannot continue under a condition of no war and no peace!

The question for pundits is why did the President go back on what he genuinely believed as the modality for resolving the lingering political problems? One is referring to what he prophesied at the Baptist Church, Abeokuta that I called the Sermon on Olumo Rock immediately he was released from the Abacha’s Gulag in June 1989. On that occasion the preacher and spirit-filled Chief Matthew Olusegun Obasanjo prophesied as follows:

It is never too late for patriotic men and women of goodwill to get together and dialogue to find generally acceptable solution to the unnecessary problems’.

What Nigerians are asking today is whether President Obasanjo still believes in this prophecy and if not, why not? What is the difference between what advocates of a National Conference are calling for and what the President prophesied to in June 1998? The President’s inability to go back to what he genuinely believes in and prophesied to would be fatal to his quest for a second term.

President Obasanjo still has time to come to term with the modalities for dealing with these political problems, if and only if he has the political will and wants the renomination of the PDP and the re-election of the Nigerian people. The questions are (a) does he have that political will and (b) does he want to be a politician? President Obasanjo is the right person to answer these questions. There is no evidence of whether he has the political will. Certainly everything he has done so far such as his treatment of the people of the Niger-Delta and in his relation with the National Assembly show that he is not a politician and does not want to be one.

The President should appreciate that what the distinguished Nigerians are advocating is in consonance with what he prophesied to in June 1998 before he was cornered by the retired military officers from the north with an offer to succeed the late General Abacha as the President. If he had problem with what God told him in Abacha’s Gulag and prophesied to at the Baptist Church Abeokuta, President Obasanjo should listen to the former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Professor Adebayo Adedeji, the former Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Ola Vincent and the former Chairman of the Daily Times, Alhaji Babatunde Jose. They could not all be wrong and President Obasanjo the only one right.

These eminent Nigerians are on record as proffering one and only one suggestion. They are canvassing the convocation of a National Conference to resolve the lingering political problems because the President alone or the President and/or with the National Assembly cannot resolve these problems. Nigerians are beginning to see the President, the political parties, the political class and the national Assembly as part of the lingering political problems.

President Obasanjo should appreciate that these eminent Nigerians could not have been driven or motivated by partisan or regional or ethnic considerations, accusation used to reject such suggestion from other Nigerians.

President Obasanjo should appreciate that these Nigerians are very competent and patriotic. President Obasanjo should understand that these eminent Nigerians from their experience in Nigerian public and private life know the source of the problems and how intractable these problems are and that Nigeria would continue to be under this prevailing situation for a long time to come.

If this machinery were put in place today by the President, the issue of a ‘pact’ would be irrelevant. The President and the National Assembly would find that some of these problems that are crying for resolution everyday would be abated. The President and the National Assembly would therefore have time to devote to the day to day running of the affairs of the country.

But there is one issue from experience of the past. Nigerians are reacting to how the military Heads of State or President tampered with the decisions of the Constituent Assembly in the past.

A confession will be in order here. I authored what I genuinely thought were agreed position from the past in Nigeria and thought that the mission of the Constituent Assembly was to improve on them and not change them such as the federal system and non-adoption of any religion as state religion. Instead of taking it as such these agreed positions were usually referred to as the ‘no go areas’ for the Constituent Assembly in 1988.

I should still make further confession. I crafted the draft of a White Paper suggesting how to streamline some of the contradictory provisions in some of the decisions of the Constituent Assembly in 1989 for genuine patriotic reasons as a guide for the Armed Forces Ruling Council. I was surprised that what I sent to the military President from my office at the University of Benin turned out to be the official decision of the AFRC. I shall deal with these issues extensively in my memoir. I have to make this confession before IBB accuses me that I misled him. I did not. There was nothing I finally crafted for him, which was not discussed with him before I crafted them and before he read them. What shocked me was that the military governing organs had no interest in those papers so long as it did not affect them.

What the President has been using to dodge the suggestion for convocating a Conference is the issue of ‘sovereignty’. Readers would find that I never use the term Sovereign National Conference, partly because it is unnecessary and partly because in the most successful case where a National Conference was used to resolve the political problem, the issue of ‘sovereignty’ was earned by civil society after convening the Conference. It was not conferred on the delegates before its convocation. It was consequential, in my view. I am referring to the case of Benin, next door to Nigeria. A National Conference was an essentially a Francophone instrument of democratic transition, which was not embraced in Anglophone territories. Even in other territories, the issue of ‘Sovereignty’ for the National Conference was mixed.

Nigerians who are clamoring for the issue of ‘Sovereignty’ as a precondition for the convocation should not have allowed the military junta to trick the country in 1998 with a fraudulent transition program. However advocates of a National Conference should be aware of the experiences elsewhere. Maybe they should read for insights, Pearl Robinson, ‘The National Conference Phenomenon in Francophone Africa’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History 36 (1994) pages 575 to 617.

What is important is simple. Would the President be able to reach some understanding with those who would be convened to deal with the lingering political problems that whatever decision they arrived at, at the Conference would be final and could only be overridden by a plebiscite of the Nigerian people conducted for that purpose? Is this not what Chief Olusegun Obasanjo meant by the three conditions he set for such a ‘get-together of patriotic men and women of goodwill’? Was this a euphemism for a National Conference? For the purpose of reminding the President, the three conditions prophesied to in the Sermon on Olmo Rock were:

they should assemble;

they should dialogue;

they should find generally acceptable solution to the problems.

These are the conditions that a National Conference should meet today and no less.

In conclusion, that there is a ‘pact’ of a one-term between President Obasanjo and his sponsors should not be in dispute. There was or there is one. I argued in the main essay that we should not look for a document but understand the circumstances leading to the emergence of President Obasanjo, a non-politician and a non-party man in preference to politicians and founders of the party. What is an issue is not only the validity of such a ‘pact’ but the modality of seeking for alternative. Nigeria should not be faced with the choice of candidates without a vision but who simply said trust me and the future would be better. This was what the country was faced with in 1999.

Two conditions are put forward for validating or overturning the ‘pact’. They are equally applicable to President Obasanjo and those who would want to replace him.

The first condition is whether President Obasanjo performs or is performing the critical function of a ‘bridge’? The various notions of ‘bridge’ were identified in first easy on the debate on ‘pact’. Nigerians should score him on each of these notions.

The second condition is whether President Obasanjo performs or is performing the function of a ‘problem solver’? The various issue areas are identified in this essay on which President Obasanjo could be scored.

Finally, we should use the yardstick we apply to President Obasanjo to measure those who want the President’s job with respect to the criteria of a ‘bridge’ and a ‘problem-solver’. This is the answer to the question: ‘After Obasanjo, Who/What’?

June 2001