GENERALS ARE COMING: SHOULD GENERALS BE WELCOME? 

WHY NOT? (2)

by

Professor Omo Omoruyi

Research Fellow, African Studies Center, Boston University.

In part (1) of the essay, I tried to look at the question, ‘Generals are Coming’ from human rights angle. I am urging on Nigerians not to forget the commitment of Nigeria under the various human rights regimes especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Also we should not forget the rights available to all Nigerians under the Constitution. I came to the conclusion that there is no way to stop any Nigerian of any professional background from participating in politics if the person meets the written qualifications laid down in the Constitution. There is no way to stop any Nigerian, if the Nigerian people through a free, fair and credible election want the person and if Nigeria wants to live under the various human rights regime. This was what we were concerned with and fought for in the past when the June 12 was annulled that the annullist denied Nigerians their democratic rights by such an act.

What I am urging on Nigerians is to accept the verdict of the Nigerian people in a free, fair and credible election as the only way to determine who should be the Nigerian President. This was my position in the defense of the June 12 in the past and it is still the only way to make do our commitment to democracy. We should leave the political future of the Generals to the Nigerian people to determine despite our individual preferences. We can exercise our rights as citizens and as political actors to tell the voters who to vote for at the appropriate time. But we cannot stop the emergence of anybody because of their professions or because of their past outside the Constitution and the law and our commitments under the various human rights regime. Why has this matter become relevant now?

The matter arose because of a new phenomenon called the ‘Generals are Coming’. Nigerians are debating among themselves: ‘Should Generals be Welcome’? Those who are raising the question are concerned about the number of political associations founded and funded by retired military officers. Some are worried by the new phenomenon called the ‘military-jacking’ of political party as we saw in 1999. Some Nigerians are concerned about their past or their professional background. Some Nigerians are scared, conscious of their capacity to purchase the civilian political actors in the past. One can understand their sources of apprehensions. But we can only express our verdict in an election.

I made my personal position clear lest I be misunderstood in the part (1) of this essay. I still want to reiterate what I said then that I would support and work for a candidate with or with no military background who believes in what I believe in. It has to do with the fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian federal system. It includes the ‘depoliticization and de-ethnicization of the armed forces’, ‘resource control’ or ‘local control over local resources’, and the ‘depoliticization of religion’. To me these are what I consider my irreducible minimum in any decision I might make in future to support or assist any candidate or any political party.

I hope Nigerians would develop some individual yardstick for assessing candidates. I also hope Nigerians would stop the practice of discussing persons in isolation. I emphasized this in my essay ‘After Obasanjo: Who/what’ that Nigerians should take pen and paper and array candidates including the present President with respect to how they would resolve the lingering political issues afflicting the country. See the  www.Nigerdeltacongress.com  and the Vanguard of May 11, 2001.

Coincidentally two independent newspapers in Nigeria (Guardian and the Vanguard) last week reported the views of the three retired Nigerian Generals in different public service roles. Their views were expressed from two different parts of the world on the question: the ‘Generals are Coming’.

One was the President, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Nigeria, retired General Olusegun Obasanjo speaking from Blair House in Washington DC. (See The Guardian of May 14, 2001).

The other was a set of newspaper articles and interview in the Sunday Vanguard of May 13, 2001 by two retired Generals, Tunde Ogbeha and Ishola Williams. This will form Part (3) of this essay.

I shall present the three positions as a tale of three Generals. I shall be emphasizing their similarities and dissimilarities. My mission is to emphasize the implication of their views for the democratic development of Nigeria.

President Olusegun Obasanjo is a retired General who through the military and the international community succeeded the military junta in an election in May 1999. He swore to respect the democratic rights of Nigerians. His views on the ‘Generals are Coming’ and what he intends to do about it. Would he welcome it or would he frustrate it? This would be very critical to the new democracy.

There were two interrelated questions posed to President Obasanjo by media reporters at the Blair House during his visit to the US.

One was on the prospect of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, the former military President like President Obasanjo who too served as the military Head of State in Nigeria in 1976/79. The question was what would be the reaction of the President, if General Babangida were to join the presidential race in 2003?

The second question was on the issue of Generals are Coming! This question has to do with the number of retired military officers joining existing political parties as candidates for one office or the other or others forming new political associations with the prospect of running for one office or the other.

If the reports in The Guardian are anything to go by, the President betrayed his anger. To the first question, the President had this to say:

I have no comment’.

He added,

When Babangida decides and says he would run, then I would talk’.

Yes, he declined comment as the above report said. What he did not say was more than what he said. He did comment when he said that he would talk when he decides to run. Many questions quickly come to mind. One, why was it necessary for him to decline comment now? Two, was he telling us that that would be a breach of their pact that he would not run as long as he was interested? Three, why should he have to wait until such a time when Babangida shall have decided to run?

Nigerians are asking these questions because it is obvious that General Babangida would run under two conditions. First, he told Nigerians that if that is what Allah asked him to. Second, he would run if and only if President could not succeed in securing a second term from his party.

General Babangida did not say that his decision to run would depend of the wishes of Nigerians. Why he does not believe in the third condition is a function of what he thinks of the political class from his experience. General Babangida did not say that he had a vision, which he would like to take to the Nigerian people. These two issues form the basis of the difference between General Babangida and General Yar’Adua on the one hand and between General Obasanjo and General Yar’Adua on the other. I shall deal with this later in another essay.

Nigerians are also asking why President Obasanjo did not say why he would not welcome General Babangida specifically to the race. Nigerians are also interested whether he would welcome him or any candidate for that matter to the race as long as such candidates meet the qualifications under the Nigerian Constitution and the Electoral laws of the land. One would have expected President Obasanjo to justify his decision to oppose General Babangida’s running on legal or political grounds, if any. Nigerians would have been interested in his general views on whether he would support the rumored entry of any retired Generals into the race as part of the gains in the democratic dispensation.

The reporter pressed him further on the second question specifically on the ‘Generals are Coming’. With the original question unresolved and still bothering him, the President Obasanjo lost his temper. He described the trend in the wave of party formation by retired military officers as the ‘height of insensitivity’. Why should the President describe the entry of retired Generals that way? Does this expression flow from the President’s understanding of the new democracy?

Without referring to his antecedents as the former military Head of State in 1976/79, he wondered how retired military officers could be planning to return to power according to him,

The questions Nigerians should be and are asking are critical to the President’s idea of military rule. What is his idea of the period covered by military rule? Does it occur to President Obasanjo that the military misrule of Nigeria began in January 1966? Does it occur to the President that retired military officers under the question the Generals are Coming apply to those who served in one capacity or the other? Does the President appreciate the fact that he as the former Generals who held both command and political assignments between 1966 and 1979 cannot escape the blame of the military regime?

President Obasanjo in an emotion-charged voice asked,

It is this outburst that reminds one of what he said about his former boss, General Yakubu Gowon who wanted to run as the Presidential candidate of the National Republican Convention (NRC) in 1993. General Obasanjo was asked of what he thought of the plan of General Gowon to contest the election to which he sarcastically dismissed:

‘Maybe General Gowon wants to go and collect the brief case he left behind in the State House in 1975’.

Of course, this question haunted him in 1998 when he announced his intention to contest the election.

What General Obasanjo said about General Gowon reminds one of two other expressions of General Obasanjo in the past about Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief MKO Abiola in 1979 and in 1993 respectively. I am referring to the fight of these illustrious political leaders from the south that were competing with the northern political leaders for the leadership of Nigeria in a free, fair and credible election.

In 1979 Head of State Obasanjo went on the air to declare that

This was interpreted by the Yorubas, as referring to Chief Obafemi Awolowo.

In another unguarded response to reporter at Harare on his position on the prospect of Chief Abiola regaining his mandate, General Obasanjo was reported to have replied that

‘Abiola is not necessarily the Messiah that Nigerians are looking for’.

Needless to say that these and other utterances of General Obasanjo haunted him in the past and during the election in 1999 and would continue to haunt him in future. This is the way one should look at the outburst at the Blair House in Washington about the ‘Generals are Coming’. The Nigerian President has a knack for speaking before he thinks on any major issues such as the one on the ‘Generals are Coming’.

An American friend who read the response of President Obasanjo to the two questions was disappointed with the level of comprehension of the Nigerian President as to what is required of him when faced with these kind of questions. I asked what he meant by that? He thought the Nigerian President speaking from the seat of the US democracy missed an opportunity to parade his claims to be a democrat, a major reason for inviting him of all African leaders by President Bush. He thought the Nigerian President should have the occasion of the questions to demonstrate his commitment to the basic freedoms in the Constitution allowed all Nigerians and his commitment to uphold the human rights obligations of Nigeria under the various human rights treaties.

I asked this fellow what the Nigerian President would have said and his response was simple. He gave me the following sentence:

I am passing this answer to the President in case he faces another occasion. That does not mean that he would not work against any candidate who might want to oppose him unfairly in 2003. That is his right as a politician. He did not need to explode and display his anger and his frustration when faced with the prospect of the Generals are Coming’ as if the generals are engaged in a coup plot.

Nigerians as he said in Japan recently would join him to frustrate any illegal seizure of power by the military. He can count on Nigerians not because he said it but partly because of many years of misrule by the military including General Obasanjo regime and partly because Nigerians know that there is no alternative to democracy.

Nigerian problem today is not with democracy or the fact that ‘Generals are Coming’. Nigerian problem today is with President Obasanjo and his policy of unilateralism as if he was a military Head of State. President Obasanjo should be told categorically that Nigerians would not join him to stop any retired military officer who wants to, unlike what he did in 1999 engage in a legitimate democratic process and method to dethrone him come 2003.

President Obasanjo joined those who stole the PDP from those who founded the party and crashed it after using it to get to power. This is the view of such founders of the PDP as Dr. Alex Ekwueme, Chief SB Awoniyi, Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, Mahmud Tukur, etc. The ‘south-south’ who voted for him massively in 1999 is now an object of political justice. For the interest of the President and his handlers, political justice means the use of the court to advance a political end. This is what President Obasanjo is doing by using the Attorney General, Minister of Justice to rush to the Supreme Court to advance a political end. I hope my people of the ‘south-south’ see it that way and adopt a political action to retaliate in 2003.

With greatest sense of respect to my friend Chief Bola Ige, I hope he realizes that the decision to take a highly political matter to the Supreme Court when he declined to take what he and his President called the ‘political sharia’ to Court is disingenuous. I am referring to the use of the Supreme Court to deny the ‘south-south’ people and others in the south their rights to the God given resources.

The Ndi Igbo who despite the humiliation to their favorite son, Dr. Ekwueme threw their support to him in 1999 are regretting their action in 1999 because of his conduct since becoming the President. The way the President is manipulating the Ndi Igbo leadership of the Senate is disgraceful and is contributing to the crisis of leadership of the National Assembly.

Is the President not seeing challenges from these sources to his second term? Is that why he exploded at the Blair House to seemingly innocuous questions and betrayed his anti-democratic instinct?

Independently, two Generals, Ogbeha and Williams had different view from what President Obasanjo said about the vexed question, ‘Generals are Coming’. This will for the basis of Part (3), which will be a review what they said.