Heretical third term speculations

Heretical 'third term' speculations

One regrettable habit that Nigerians unreservedly imbibed during the many aberrational years of military dictatorship is the capacity for very wild and awfully weird speculations about political developments in the society. And to a reasonable extent, there are ample justifications for such an all-pervading sense of social fatalism: in many previous instances, the nation expected the worst from their rulers and actually got just that. Nothing, as it were, they think is impossible!

We must however concede that there is a very strong historical basis for the active rumour industry in the nation’s political process. For example, we have been through the harrowing experience in the past of being held up in suspense, and for days too, as to who amongst faceless gun-totting coupists would emerge as the new ‘leader’. Because of the cloak and dagger operations under which military leadership used to emerge, the citizens had no choice but to embark on fruitless guesswork and wild speculations about the new government (actually gangster) and its features, its composition, orientation and life span. And because these juntas were not based on any ethical or juridical foundation, they actually managed to conduct their affairs in the most unorthodox ways, and for many years, the nation became the unfortunate testing ground for several esoteric, foolhardy and hardly rational political experimentations.

As a result, Nigeria was reduced to the Hobbessian state of nature in which life was necessarily nasty, brutish and short. More than that, political principles quickly gave way to personal conveniences and rabid survival instincts; legitimate expectations about governance gave way to perpetual speculations and cynicisms about the way and direction governance was heading. Indeed, it was in those dark political days that one of these ‘leaders’ once gleefully adopted the telling sobriquets of ‘Evil Genius’ and ‘Maradona’, after the famous footballer reputed to have given Argentina a World Cup victory by illegally scoring a goal with his hands - an abomination in the realm of soccer! So it is that it became the vogue then that nothing was considered certain in the country anymore; no rule was sacrosanct nor any value considered being beyond wilful violation; treachery and plain falsehood were elevated into an official art. In one word, it was anarchy.

All of these aberrational developments could be rationalised by the fact that there was no supreme constitution or decent political conventions that could moderate what these mutinous soldiers did with the political power that they seized, as the first thing they attacked on gaining power was the Constitution of the nation, thereby giving the warning that they were not going to be guided by civilised principles. So, they did not have to go through the strictures of a limiting set of principles of good government. As dictators, they were laws unto themselves. They did whatever struck their fancy and since they were not necessarily the best examples of human refinement, they brought the nation down to their own very low level – shooting, looting and hedonism.

Naturally, this development gave powerful impetus to the rumour industry and turned political analysts into mere speculators, if not voodoo men. The result was that the quality of governance routinely fluctuated according to the capacity, peculiarity and idiosyncrasy of the man in charge and, because they were generally less than competent individuals, politically speaking, the nation went into a great slide downhill and all that the hapless people could do in the circumstance was to hope and perpetually speculate on what next to expect as nothing was certain.

Now, all that has changed, or ought to have changed, with the adoption of a constitutional democracy since 1999. Unfortunately, old habits, they say, die hard, and it has therefore not been possible for our people to adjust their thinking process from that conditioned into frustrating and perpetual disbelief and ‘assured uncertainly’ about government by the long years of aberrational military dictatorship. It is even more regrettable that those who govern the nation now have themselves not shed off the old mentality of the military as we still continue to observe serious backslidings into the old dictatorial bad habits such as taking the people for granted. In many respects, that is understandable. But what is utterly nauseating is the seemly unwillingness to forgo those old politically unproductive ways even when it is obvious that such would only contribute to undermine the credibility, if not the legitimacy, of the government that is supposed to be “of the people, by the people and for the people”.

For several weeks now, there has been this, in my opinion, baseless speculation, that there are schemes afoot that are designed to elongate the term of office of President Obasanjo from the constitutionally provided maximum two terms to a third illegitimate term. Evidences are readily adduced by those circulating the rumour by citing the series of basically unconstitutional attempts to tinker with the constitution of the Republic, which are clearly outside of the parameters set out in the constitution for such exercises. Well, all these may be procedural misconducts by themselves but it is hard to see how such ultimately fruitless presidential initiatives, more of policy truancy than well-thought out options, could have led to the prevalent conclusion that a third term for Mr. President is in the offing.

Fuelling these speculations, however, are the ineffectual denials that have been emanating from not-too-credible operatives of the regime. We think that this is a very serious rumour that is capable of undermining our hope as a nation that is desirous of a new political orientation in the direction of a constitutional democracy. Many are also justifiably scared into this weird speculative bogey by the unexpected clamour for a new five single term presidency in spite of what the constitution has clearly stipulated. Added to this is the new confusion being officially sponsored in the guise of local government reforms that is strangely suggesting a Mammy-Water type of constitutional arrangement with a presidential head and a parliamentary tail. These are more than enough signs that something ominous is in the works. Must it be so?

What this calls for now is for Mr. President, the chief defender of the national constitution, to immediately come out in his characteristic forcefulness and douse this unproductive speculation once and for all: there is no provisions for a third term in Nigeria and there is no possibility of that happening, under any guise, especially under the present constitutional reality, without inflicting a fatal injury on the body-polity.

We therefore pray that the President acts fast to save this nation from the additional embarrassment of being needlessly portrayed as a rudderless entity by those bogus speculations now making the rounds which we think are rooted in an equally defeatist new national pastime of fatalistically asserting that “anything is possible in Nigerian politics”, no matter how odious.

I seriously think it is time that we accept the fact that not all that is possible is probable, and vice versa, even in politics, because, it is the fact of the certainty of the people’s expectations about their government’s fundamental objectives and directive principles that separates a mindless dictatorship from a constitutional democracy, a free people from those in bondage.

March 2004