FURTHER TO THE DEBATE ON ‘PACT’ (1) VALIDITY DEPENDS ON OBASANJO AS A ‘BRIDGE’.

By

Professor Omo Omoruyi

I thought I should react to the erroneous interpretation of the 'pact between the President and the geo-ethno-military-clique on the one hand and the international community on the other hand before he was approved as the candidate to succeed the junta in 1998. It is fraudulent that political groups called parties and zones are trying to interject themselves into the understanding called the 'pact'.

WHY THIS PIECE AGAIN

Having said that there was a ‘pact’ from what I knew about the approach of the north to politics, I should have left the debate to others. But recently I am beginning to see that Nigerians who are adept at writing themselves into a deal are complicating the debate. This is the way I see the confusion among the Nigerian politicians who are dealing with the issue of the ‘pact’ entered into by President Obasanjo with his sponsors in 1998.

President Obasanjo ought to have been the only one who can tell Nigerians why he changed his mind from ‘no’ to ‘yes’ to partisan life. Specifically he ought to have told Nigerians what he promised his sponsors when General Ibrahim Badamai Babangida and other retired political generals/military officers approached him from the north with the prospect of becoming the successor to the geo-ethno-military-clique in 1998.

There was no doubt that he was approached with an offer with ‘strings’ attached after the death of one of their darling leaders, General Sani Abacha. General TY Danjuma erroneously compared how ‘we’ (meaning the clique) made General Obasanjo, the President in 1999 to after the death of Abacha to how ‘we’ made him the military Head of State in 1976 after the death of General Murtala Muhammed in the special interview he granted the Guardian December 2000. Unfortunately, as President Obasanjo is doing with respect to other promises he made to the clique, President Obasanjo would not level up with Nigerians so that Nigerians would be made to determine the validity of such a ‘pact’.

There was a ‘pact’ no matter how one defines it. Maybe call it an ‘understanding’ between the candidate, General Obasanjo and his sponsors. I am surprised that Nigerians are looking forward to a written document or a signed document. This is not normal in ‘military in politics’. What is normal in ‘military in politics’ from what I know about the conduct of the clique is that the ‘pact’ is known only those who are supposed to know. Those who are rushing to deny the validity of the ‘pact’ are confusing issues and acting out of ignorance. That he should reach some understanding with his sponsors ought to be a normal affair. The question is how valid is it?

That General Obasanjo became the President was not a life dream having been an all-powerful military Head of State once. General Obasanjo neither thought that one day he would wake up one morning in Abacha’s Gulag and think that he would be released from the Gulag nor did he think that he would become the successor to those who put him in the Gulag.

What the Nigerian politicians should note is that there were neither political parties (PDP, APP or AD) nor geo-political zones (‘southeast’ and ‘south-south’) in the bargain. Why should the leaders of political parties or geo-political zones be jockeying for positions today as the likely beneficiaries of a ‘pact’, which they knew nothing about is very disturbing, if not fraudulent.

There are many confusions introduced into the ‘pact’, which I called ‘an understanding’ between the two wings of the geo-ethno-military-clique and General Olusegun Obasanjo on the one hand and what the international community brokered as the transition program in 1998 on the other. Those who are spending time offering opinion on the notion of ‘pact’ do not seem to be aware of these two aspects of the ‘pact’.

In furtherance of my expose on the issue of ‘pact’, may I state categorically that the decision to pave way for General Obasanjo after the death of General Sani Abacha in June 1998 arose from the issue of a ‘bridge’. I came up with this notion in 1999. What is a ‘bridge’? How did I apply the concept to his emergence?

I took the concept of the ‘bridge’ as the emergence of General Olusegun Obasanjo and not as the emergence of a democratic political order in 1999. The view in the Harvard community, which was shared in the international community in 1998/99, was that General Obasanjo would create the necessary environment for the revival of the battered economy and the collapsing social sector and bring about a democratic order. How long would this take? This was not the preoccupation of the international community. It would appear that the length of time was left to the clique to fix. Was the length of tenure dependent on the definition of the problems by the clique?

There were some members of the clique who believed that this could be done within one term of four years and made sure that the candidate, General Obasanjo was made to understand that. There were others who believed that the tenure would be open-ended and assessed after one term.

The clique and the international community did not have in mind who would be the successor or which area or zone would produce that successor to President Obasanjo. This is the way Nigerian politicians try to write themselves into a deal about which they knew nothing.

I came to this notion of bridge also from what President Obsasanjo said himself after the election. He was frank in telling Nigerians that his election or selection was for one purpose and one purpose only. He told the world that and Nigerians that his election was not democracy but that his election would ‘create’ an opportunity for the commencement of democracy. Was this not a ‘pact’, an understanding he entered into by him with his sponsors? He told the country and the world rightly so, of course, that his election would not deliver democracy on the spot.

When I was invited in 1999 at two Universities in Boston (Northeastern and Boston) to shed light on the implication for democracy in Nigeria of the emergence of General Obasanjo, I tool a cue from his various press statements after the election and coined the concept of a ‘bridge’ in 1999 as a way of assessing the event of May 29, 1999. This, in my view should be the way of assessing the new President and whatever ‘pact’ or ‘understanding’ he entered into with his sponsors. This is not all.

In assessing General Obasanjo as bridge, we should do it within the context of the ‘Pact’ between the geo-ethno-military-clique represented by General Abubakar and newly released inmate of General Abacha’s Gulag. Why should Nigerians be interested in one event at a time and fail to focus on past developments in the media? I find this very disturbing.

The idea of a ‘pact’ should not have been new and should not have become an issue when Chief Sonny Okogwu , General Babangida’s brother in law talked about it. If Nigerians would cast their mind back a little, this was hinted as far back as March 2, 1999 when it was reported in the Post Express that one Senator-elect, Alhaji Ibrahim Kura Mohammed said, "General Obasanjo promised to serve for only one term". The same Mohammed went further to add the bombshell, a blackmail if you like to the ‘pact’ that "he (General Obasanjo) would honor his pledge as he did in 1976". Was this not what General Danjuma meant when compared the emergence of General Obasanjo in 1999 after the death of General Abacha with his emergence in 1976 after the death of General Murtala Muhammed?

The Post Express report was immediately after the election. Unfortunately, it would appear that the Nigerian politicians were too preoccupied with who would be Ministers under the President-elect and with the contracts that would grow out of the new administration. They did not want to be bothered by the next election. It would appear that because things are NOT going well for many people in the north, ‘southeast’ and in the ‘south-south’, they then resurrected the notion of a ‘pact’ and how their zones would benefit from it.

In doing this, these self-serving Nigerian politicians then proceeded to write themselves into the ‘pact’ by introducing other loaded concepts such as zoning and rotation. The Igbo political leaders introduced the notion of zoning into the lexicon of the politics of the Second Republic even though the their colleagues from the north told them that zoning did not mean rotation. We saw how the northern leaders used that interpretation to frustrate the ambition of Chief MKO Abiola in 1982. Is that still not their views today with respect to who would succeed President Obasanjo?

For the interest of those who are confusing a serious issue with their ambition, it should be noted that ‘zoning’, ‘rotation’, and ‘the order of baton change’ were never part of the ‘pact’ or ‘understanding’ between the geo-ethno-military-clique and the General Obasanjo. If these were so, General Bamaiye would have said so during the revelations at the Oputa Commission on Human Rights Violations. Of course, General Danjuma would have said so when he spoke to the Guardian in December 2000 on how General Obasanjo was made the President in 1999 in the manner he was so made in 1976. Of course, the lamentation of the Arewa leaders would not have been so loud.

There is another element, which should be brought into the discussion. This has to do with the role of the international community led by the US, UK and South Africa. The notion of a ‘pact’ sold to and bought by the international community was different from the notion of ‘pact’ understood by the clique. The international community saw the emergence of General Obasanjo as capable of serving as a ‘bridge’ between the status quo and the future. The international community, the guarantor of the transition program, was not interested in the notions of ‘zoning’ and ‘rotation’. In fact, the international community was contemptuous of both the political class and the military and did not believe in any of them as being capable of delivering democracy to the Nigerian people. This view has not changed at all from their conduct in the National Assembly. They are not happy with what zoning is doing to the National Assembly.

It should be noted that the international community sees Nigeria as constituting of two parts, the north and the south; the Christian-South and the Muslim-North; the military (north) and the civilian (south).

In my lectures in the US, I identify the various senses in which what constitutes a bridge appear in the popular discourse in the international community and in the Nigerian press. This paper is still available; all the points I raised then are still valid.

When one does the content analysis of the print media on the eventual emergence of President in the international media, the common assertion was that ‘after many years of uncertainty’, President Obasanjo would be a ‘good beginning’. The summary of the various opinions in the international media conveyed different notions of a movement from a dismal past and present to a future ‘something’, which could be a democratic order. How long it would take to get to the future something was not part of the ‘pact’.

Did the Nigerian politicians recall the way the notion of a ‘bridge’ was introduced by the US? In 2000 the National Security Adviser to the US President, Mr. Sandy Berger had occasion to brief the media on the proposed visit of the US President. His emphasis was on President Obasanjo, who he described as ‘the one bringing democracy to Nigeria and on who many parts of Africa would depend’. Even the speeches of the US President during his visit to Nigeria were laced with how the survival of the Nigerian State was dependent on the personal integrity of one person out of million Nigerians. That person was President Obasanjo and not the political class or the military elite.

President Clinton had faith in Obasanjo’s ability to move the Nigerian political class to imbibe the democratic habits. He said it in so many ways during his visit to Nigeria and when he was receiving the Nigerian delegation that visited him when he was packing out of the White House.

There are two questions, which we should consider. One is whether President Obasanjo is a believer in democratic habits. Two is whether he would be able to do what he is been entrusted with, with respect to changing the anti-democratic habits of the political class. Nigerians and the international community are better judges whether he has been able to do that after two years in office. Some are even asking whether he himself understands the enormity of the problem from the way he has been behaving as an elected President, Commander in Chief since 1999.

These are some of the questions, which the international community is concerned about. The international community is not concerned about the Nigerian quest for a short cut to political power through an ‘arrange’ method or through ‘zoning’ and ‘rotation’, which in itself is part of the anti-democratic habits of the political class that must be corrected.

Those who are introducing the artificial zoning cum rotation system to the ‘pact’ between the geo-ethno-military-clique and President Obasanjo are reacting to the perceived failure of President Obasanjo to deliver on his promises to various groups in the country. This is understandable.

Immediately General Abacha died, the clique faced a succession crisis, which was resolved by taking two measures: (a) get Chief Obasanjo released from Abacha’s Gulag and (b) make him the successor of the clique. There were no political parties then; the zonal leaders of the ‘southeast’ or the ‘south-south’ were not critical to the resolution of the succession crisis after the death of General Abacha. We should therefore not confuse issues by introducing the three political parties or the geo-political zones into the political equation of the ‘pact’ between the geo-ethno-military-clique or the international community and President Obasanjo. It was done for a purpose and the purpose is that President Obasanjo would serve as a ‘bridge’.

For the purpose of discussion, let us itemize the senses in which the concept of bridge implicit in the ‘pact’ was used in the international discourse and in the Nigerian media to apply to the emergence of the President.

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could be the link between the ruling political leaders from the north and the southwest, the area that produced the winner of the June 12, Chief MKO Abiola;

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could serve as the link between the north and the south, who have been itching for the power shift;

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could be a link between the military junta and the highly politicized military (the military in government) and the political class;

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could be a link between the military institution and the civilian;

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could serve as a link between the outgoing Head of State and the incoming President;

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could arise from the singular act of the election or of the installation;

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could be taken as the gap or the period in time between the day of election and the swearing in of the new President;

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could be the tenure in office of the incoming President (one term or two terms);

President Obasanjo as a bridge that could ensure the international credibility of the outgoing Head of State and the international reputation of the incoming administration.

President Obasanjo as a bridge that would constitute the environment for the revival of the dilapidated social/economic structure.

 

What the foregoing various notions tell us is that we are still on our way to ‘democracy’ based on the ‘will of the Nigerian people’. Hence the above notions of the term ‘bridge’ would be used to determine the achievement of the new dispensation.

The validity of the ‘pact’ in the final analysis would depend on the general assessment of the different notions of President Obasanjo as a ‘bridge’. This means that there are constraints in the movement from one end to the other. I do not want to comment on the various notions and how the President has fared so far in each of them because of time and space. Each can be a paper in its own right.

Maybe this is an opportunity to call on Nigerians to use the various notions to assess President Obasanjo’s achievements with respect to how he performs the various notions and whether he qualifies for a renomination by the PDP. This would be a measure of whether he qualifies for a reelection come 2003 by the Nigerian people. I believe this is what my comrade, Chief Solomon D. Lar meant when he warned those who are campaigning for his reelection to allow President Obasanjo to be judged in future by applying these foregoing to his term in office. The validity of the ‘pact’ in the final analysis depends on how well he performs as a ‘bridge’.

This is not all; the validity of the ‘pact’ depends on (a) how he tackles the lingering political problems and (b) the machinery put in place to tackling the political problems. 

This will be the subject of the next essay.

April 2001