2007: The President, Between Honour and Shame
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
I wonder how Obasanjo likes to be remembered after 2007 or what does he want historians to write about him for generations to come. I am yet to find a Nigerian ruler who means as much the opposite of what he says as the President. This is a person who just a year before he became President educated us on the importance of precision of words, claiming that it is one of the attributes of the military; he strongly criticised Babangida and Abacha for what he called ‘devaluation of words.’ Yet, he has proved himself to be the most reckless in speech and policy, the vaguest in words.
Three months ago, the President at the opening ceremony of the Political Reform Conference came out to clearly mention that the gathering was contemplated for no reason but to find lasting solutions to our political problems. There is no hidden agenda, he declared, to disabuse the minds of delegates who shared our scepticism. Having written on him for six years, I did not believe him. On this page I dedicated two weeks to express the view that the President meant exactly what he did not say, and that was what Nigerians should believe. His supporters and the innocently naïve, as usual, must have accused us of bias, preferring to give the words of Mr. Precision a literal interpretation.
Today, sceptics like me stand vindicated as we have always been on matters dealing with the conduct of the President. Halfway through the conference he sent his AGIP agents to circulate a fake and anonymous constitution. The document, among other things, called for a six year term in such a manner that could make the President the first beneficiary, at least by extending his current tenure for two years. Following the woeful failure of the document to gain acceptance among delegates and the Nigerian public, its couriers came forward and conceded that it is indeed the fabrication of the Presidency.
The main thrust of the fake constitution - a six year term - was rejected not because it is without merit. The delegates looked at the person presenting it and threw it through the window, literally. This is what logicians call argument ad hominem, which in theory is a fallacy. In politics, however, like under many other circumstances, it can be recruited to avert a catastrophe. For what would be a worse catastrophe in our politics than extending by a day the tenure of the most incompetent regime in our history?
It is interesting to see how the rejection of six year tenure of Obasanjo met conditions for both types of ad hominem argument - abusive and circumstantial. It was abusive because of many reasons: the delegates felt that Obasanjo does not have the degree of honesty required to be trusted. They arrived at this from, one, the portrait of his person which he painted as the President in the past six years; two, the manner in which he shamelessly tried to sneak the document into the conference; three, the fronts he used to sell the documents, who included Jerry ‘Ghana’; and, four, the genetic fallacy of Obasanjo belonging to the species of Nigerian leaders who want to perpetuate themselves in power through rigging elections and deceit.
The circumstantial dimension is that of interest: Obasanjo would become the first beneficiary. How do we know that his six-year term argument is not synonymous to the laundering effort of a manufacturer who is marketing his product? The stakes here are high. So the delegates felt justifiably inclined to postpone the adoption of the six year tenure until a future conference.
I join other Nigerians in praising the decision of the conference delegates, though I have been an advocate, along with The Patriots, of single five-year tenure since 2002. This is, in fact, what makes the President’s proposal less transparent. If he were a true advocate of a single tenure, why did not he work for it during his first tenure?
The President should note that he is dancing naked in the market. He does not enjoy our trust anymore, as Nigerians; neither does he enjoy that of his constituency, the United States. Three weeks ago when the
Director of the World Bank was here on a visit, he was compelled by the same mistrust to publicly interrogate Obasanjo whether he will handover power in 2007. Why the question in the first place, if the character of the President was not in doubt? Again, why ask him in public, if doing so in private could suffice?
Despite his setbacks, the President was ready to fight on. After the failure of his emissaries to convince the delegates at the conference, he resolved to fight his own battle directly. He has differently summoned governors of various regions and leaders of the conference to Aso Rock where he did his best to ram his idea of six-year tenure down their throat. He pleaded with them to re-open discussion on the subject when the conference resumes. When the pleading failed, he resorted to his characteristic habit of harassing his guests. The conference chairman in particular was selected for this terrible fate. He threatened to resign. How could the President who said he had no hidden agenda at the beginning of the conference go this far in desperation to actualise his selfish goals?
The governors, knowing how many of them would wish to continue on their seats, were offered the possibility of doing so once they can prevail on their delegates. The Northern governors were the first to be summoned. They refused, or at least some of them refused, claiming that they cannot influence the minds of their delegates. For the first time, the Northern governors, or those of them who spoke against the proposal, have impressed me.
Some weeks ago, I classified Obasanjo along with three other leaders who attempted to perpetuate themselves in power: Gowon, Babangida, and Abacha. I now realise that Obasanjo is in a class of his own, for two reasons: one, unlike Obasanjo who came to power through an election in 1999, none of the three pretended to be running a democratic government, they were all military dictatorships; two, they did not swear to abide by any constitution that stipulated the length of their tenure, while Obasanjo is under oath to abide by the 1999 Constitution that stipulates the maximum of two terms for a President. Now he is attempting to cheat the Constitution by changing its provision at this late hour.
Obasanjo and the beneficiaries of his regime must come to terms with the harsh rule of democracy. They must leave by 2007. It is sheer hallucination to contemplate that there is room to manoeuvre on this matter. The guy was elected in 1999; and when Nigerians were tired of him, he cheated his way through in 2003. Now in 2007, he still feels that the country will cease to exist once he ceases to be its President. Haba. Why did not it freeze after 1978 or when he was in prison? The beauty of democracy is its confidence that among the crowd there will always be someone competent to lead his people, at least better than Baba Iyabo.
I know it is painful leaving Aso Rock. Very painful, indeed. He is leaving behind the privilege of gathering billions within a month, just at the expression of his desire, as he did on his library project; never will he again determine who buys what asset of the federal government; never again will he hire and fire; never will he be in position to marginalise those whom he hates and those he has contempt for. I also understand the grief that is deepening by the day among the beneficiaries of his regime, for some of them may never come close to the corridors of power again. An empire is lost. But this is a fate shared by others before them. They have to swallow the bitter pill of its reality.
They must share the same pill with the governors, many of whom would wish to remain in power forever. They must know that if the seat were lasting, they would not have reached it in the first place. They must join the queue at the tail end, behind past governors who have lost their acquired empire, who can no longer partake in the affairs of the domain over which they once enjoyed absolute monopoly. They are gone together with the people who hanged around them. The only thing that remains is their legacy, if they cared to leave any. Some are remembered today for the good they excelled in; others for the bad; the rest are forgotten because they could not excel in either.
If I were an incumbent, the best thing to do at this late hour is not to fight the obvious that has conquered the rulers before me, for time cannot be conquered, more so with power. Everyday, as the handing over day come closer, there is the realisation that something is not done, another unfinished, and, worse of all, there is not enough time to do the undone or finish the started.
Knowing this very well, I would focus on my exit. How do I make it honourable? Despite my faults and mistakes as the President, for example, what do I do in the next two years to cover them? The mistake often made by leaders under this circumstance is one of the two: either they seek to extend their tenure to create the time they feel will grant them the opportunity to display the nice guy in them, or they go about doing their best to determine who succeeds them. A wise leader, however, though not unmindful of the second reason, will decide to repent and behave well in the remaining period; this is the time to put in his best.
As we have seen, the President has tried the first option, and it has failed woefully. He may think that there is no option now, given his mindset, but to determine a successor by all means. Who succeeds him now becomes the paramount concern. Let us not miss the point here. Any leader will care about who becomes his successor: A good leader would not want a destructive successor who will unwind the clock of progress; while a bad leader would like a successor that will cover his corrupt practices, wishing, in his vanity, to install a stooge whom he can control remotely such that he remains the de facto ruler.
Certainly, in the first instance, Obasanjo and most of the governors would not like a competent successor. So they will opt for the stooge with whom they will strike a ‘no-probe’ deal. Finding such a person will not be an easy task and if given another four years their minds will only be jumping from one candidate to another. They will never find a satisfactory candidate to suit their whim. That is because in the game of power, proxies are always bad candidates. The result is consistent betrayal as soon as they are handed over the baton. Instead of continuing the race on the lane of the incumbent, they successor jumps into another lane or, more often than not, take a completely different direction. So in the game of power, you are your best representative. If our President and governors could realise this, Nigeria would make some progress for the remaining period of their tenure.
However, I doubt if they will abandon the option of a stooge, regardless of its uncertainty and hurdles. First, the PDP’s tradition or guidelines on zoning makes the incumbent to seek for a successor outside his region. This is a major disadvantage, especially if he has to come from an area that the incumbent has marginalised or is contemptuous of. Secondly, the successor has to be acceptable to the politicians of the party in the region; otherwise he will not win their nomination. Thirdly, the incumbent has to sell this candidate to other regions as well before and during the party primaries. Then, finally, the incumbent has to do everything in his power to ensure that the successor-select wins the election.
In taking the above four steps, the incumbent loses the chance of finishing on a good note. To succeed in all the steps means abdicating from his public responsibility and diverting his time and public resources to the cause of succession. More importantly, he must rig elections for the successor.
To this end, Obasanjo has been dangling the carrot of succession to many northern governors, pitching them against one another. His promise or gestures has gone into the heads of many of them; they believe it. Yet, no one can precisely say who the successor will be though we have a good guess of those who will not be, according to his permutation.
It is in this context of succession that his desperate moves in the PDP have to be located. He is doing his best to gain absolute control of the party machinery such that only his candidate will emerge a winner. The sacking of the former party chairman, Ogbe, at gun point, and that of other executives recently is part of the same tragedy. As the party primaries approach, the president will try to meddle with the composition of the party’s leadership at the state and local government levels.. Then, finally, he will change the rules of the party convention that will result in the selection of the presidential nominee. The governors will do the same in their domains. What we are set for in the remaining twenty months or so, therefore, will not be an effort to leave a legacy. It will be the desperation to find a successor who will at least be as bad as the incumbents.
I will still give Obasanjo the advise that he should find a lasting legacy to leave behind, a good one for that matter. I will even suggest one, though it will require him to damn the consequences. That is to abandon the tragedy of finding a nominal successor and go ahead to stage a transparent transition as leaders of other countries are doing. Both Schroeder and Chirac by now know that they will not win the next elections; yet, they will never attempt to rig elections. They will continue to live in Germany and France as respected citizens. Carter and Clinton are still enjoying the benefit of quiet exit. They are true statesmen who continue to represent their countries in missions abroad. In Britain, there is Thatcher and Major. Though we do not hear much about them, they are living in the same condition of honour as other previous world leaders.
Obasanjo must not be different, if he is wise. Nigerians and the international community will often remember him for what he did at his exit. If, on the other hand, he shamelessly manipulates the electoral process and rigs it for an incompetent successor, he will live among us a dishonourable person, like some before him, incapable of travelling without heavy security. If, on the other hand, he elects to stop manipulating his party and conducts transparent transition, that alone will be a milestone achievement that may mask many of his previous shortcomings.
But woe unto a person who will prefer shame to honour; woe unto him for his terrible choice, and woe unto him for what history will say about him.
Showing posts with label Obasanjo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obasanjo. Show all posts
Friday, May 21, 2010
He Betrayed God
DISCOURSE WITH DR. ALIYU TILDE
He Betrayed God
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
Last week, Nigerians witnessed the sixth anniversary of the resumption of democracy. If Nigeria were a country where opinion of the people matters, the polls would have told us the degree to which they are disappointed with the present civilian dictatorship. But public opinion carries no weight in our policy formulation. This leaves us with no option but to rely on opinions expressed in the media.
Hundreds of pages have been written on the anniversary last week. I was not surprised that almost all commentators, from the street beggar to the university professor, scored our federal and state governments very low. It rather came as a relief that those of us who undertook the risk of telling government the truth for the past six years have not been alone in their judgement. A verdict of failure passed by this writer in 1999, only 100 days after Obasanjo’s assumption of office and which was then generally regarded as premature, has regrettably swelled into a national consensus today, no thanks to the gross incompetence and dishonesty that has become the hallmark of governance in the country today.
This is in deed a sad verdict on a regime that came to power based on our trust and the hope for peace and development. So destitute of public trust and so craving for stability was the country that it preferred an ‘Okrika’ to a new cloth. We thought Obasanjo did it successfully before; after all, he comes from a section of the country that often boasts of its intellectual might and complains of systematic political marginalisation. On the latter, it has made the loudest noise after June 12, while on the former it reserves an unquestionable title to its claim. But after six years of unimpeded authority, neither the second-hand cloth nor the knowledge of that region proved to be significant in solving any of our problems. Everything – the trust and the hope – now appear submerged in an ocean of dishonesty, unassailable incompetence and calculated strategies to undermine justice and common good. As a result, today, only the Igbo can lay genuine claim to marginalisation in both corruption and leadership.
It is reported that the President is disappointed with Nigerians over his poor score card. He complains that he is trying his best but Nigerians hardly see it. How can we see nothing? Let the President take an inventory of the problems he inherited and, one by one, score his performance on each. Nothing has improved: Is the Nigerian child getting better education than in 1999? Is the Naira stronger, as it moved from N84 per dollar in 1999 against N150 today? Is food cheaper, when a 50kg sac of rice cost N2,350 in 1999 and N5,500.00 today? Are our homes, streets, offices and factories enjoying better supply of electricity today than in 1999? Are our refineries working? Is fuel cheaper today at N60 per litre than the N22 it was in 1999?
In what way has our welfare improved? Do Nigerians now have access to better housing, affordable health services, and good education? Do we feel more secured as we go to bed or when we chase livelihood on roads, markets, farms and offices? Are our roads better now than in 1999? Is our water cleaner and abundant? Is our railway functioning, or is it dormant as before? Is justice closer to the weak now or is it still the exclusive preserve of the strong?
Is brotherhood among Nigerians stronger today than in 1999? Many commentators have indicated that more Nigerians lost their lives to communal clashes in the past six years than in the preceding thirty years. The acrimony between ethnic nationalities still runs deep, as if the messiah has not arrived. If that acrimony has waned, why is the President wasting his time on a multibillion naira national conference on political reform?
These are the facts – regarding welfare and security – by which the Nigerian constitution will score Obasanjo and our governors very low. They have connived to mismanage our resources and squander our golden opportunity for genuine reform. It is not their fault; though. The mistake is ours, though some would validly argue that we were lured by the power brokers who, in 1998, rehabilitated Obasanjo and packaged him to our adoration. Those brokers must be regretting now, as their nights are not better than ours, or as the late Shata would say, “whoever claims that a bonfire of corn-stalk burned throughout the night, as timber would do, it is he who spent the night sleepless.” Both of us relied on the past, and the past, as the Egyptian would say, dies once.
In some ways, even the regime is humble enough to acknowledge its failure. One of such ways is privatisation of NEPA. The real energy demand of Nigeria is very low compared with even those of countries like South Africa and Iran. It is still something that a national company under a competent leadership can generate and distribute. When the President came to power, filled with the misconception that Engineer Suleiman’s team were incompetent and corrupt, and particularly with highly competent people like Bola Ige as Minister of Power and Steel in his cabinet, the President sacked the NEPA management team. His minister promised the nation that problems of power in the country will be over by the end of 2000. What has happened to that promise is now history. Five years after 2000, Nigeria is generating the least electricity in the past 30 years. In fact, when the President visited Iran soliciting for investors, he was asked the quantum of electricity generation in Nigeria. His reply was greeted with laughter and he was told that what he generates is not enough to support the city of Tehran.
This is happening when Ghana, our neighbour, was celebrating ten years of uninterrupted power supply. Iran and South Africa, we must remember are Third World countries, according to capitalist taxonomy. Yesterday, I heard a woman from Baghdad over the BBC complaining that things are so terrible there that they have only four hours of electricity daily. Nigeria, in the absence war, is worse than Baghdad, as any Nigerian that gets up to four hours electricity daily should count himself lucky. Over 100 billion was sunk in revamping NEPA, but that has not changed the status quo: never expect power again.
To run away from the incompetence of generating the 4,500MW it promised, the government has decided to privatise the corporation. We are still not sure that the privatisation of NEPA will not end in another scandal, like that of NITEL. What an irony for a President who just before he assumed power was sounding these words of caution: “…in our situation, we must not saddle the market with the function it cannot perform. Some essential factors of the market for effective regulatory and distributory functions are absent with our level of development. So, to abandon the economy to non-available and non-functioning market forces is to destroy the economy.” Mhm.
The second acknowledgement of failure came from the President in the last quarter of 2003. That was when Nigerians found that he spent one year out of the four years of that tenure overseas soliciting for foreign investment. The President was publicly bitter that the foreign investors have turned down his invitation. He was fuming and asking, “Why”?
Why? The answer lies somewhere in what the President wrote in 1998. He said, “We need massive foreign investment of about five billion dollars annually to get the economy up again. I believe that with the right policy in place under a democratic umbrella with dynamic leadership, trusted and supported nationally and internationally with corruption put under check, this objective is achievable.”
Therefore, we can, on the testimony of the President himself, say that he failed to woo foreign investors because of some or all of the following reasons: (1) failure by his government to formulate the right policy, (2) the government is not democratic, unless he is confusing ‘civilian’ with ‘democratic’, (3) the leadership is not dynamic, (4) it is not trustworthy, (5) it does not enjoy national and international support, and (6) it is corrupt.
The third testimony is the recent damning intelligence report which predicts that Nigeria will collapse within fifteen years. It did not come from cynics like me, but from Obasanjo’s friends and partners: the American government. Why did not the Americans say so during IBB or Abacha? Saying it now implies that the country has sunk further into the abyss of self-destruction. And I doubt if anyone will doubt their evidence, looking at the frequency of communal clashes, the inability of government to avert them, and the prevailing atmosphere of political instability.
Those who once cherished equating the North with its bad leaders now have a very hard reconciliation of facts to make. They have to reconcile that, this time, a southerner has displayed a horrific record of incompetence, forming enough ground on which to construct the conclusion that incompetence and corruption are not the monopoly of any ethnic group. Can the Southwest cry of marginalisation in these two areas – incompetence and corruption - anymore? Or will they claim, as some of them are doing now, that Obasanjo is not a representative sample of their ethnic group?
Nevertheless, our condemnation of this administration must take two points into cognisance. Obasanjo has asked us in his inaugural address not to expect magic; that is, he was not promising to change anything overnight. He was correct. No sane person would expect a population of 120 million people to be reformed overnight and become accustomed to the political ideals of the democracy. No sane person also expected that all difficulties will disappear within a year. What Nigerians are simply complaining now is lack of any sign of improvement in their condition after six years. If we take level of poverty in the country for example, it was about 50% in 1999; but within two years the World Bank reported (in 2002) that it has escalated to 70%. In the same vein, why is there, on the one hand, a decline in electricity generation, in the value of the naira, in agricultural production, in the quality of roads, in security of life and property and a hike in the price of commodities, the prevalence of corruption and fraud, on the other hand, even though the country is witnessing the largest foreign exchange boom in its history? Improvement means an increase in positive indices of development and decrease in the negative ones. What we have witnessed in the past six years is nothing but accelerated retrogression.
The second point that I feel critics of Obasanjo must not overlook is that he could not have succeeded alone. If a villager does not see food on his table, or drugs in the hospital of his village, it could be reasonably argued that Obasanjo may not be the only culprit. We have governors and local government chairmen heading our state and local governments; in many ways they have a more direct bearing on our welfare, save in aspects, like security, where the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction.
There is no doubt that majority of state governments has failed woefully in providing the welfare and development which their people need direly. Most of them, one can confidently say, are worse than Obasanjo. They dupe their people in many ways and rule their states as their personal estates where no one has any right, opinion or regard. Only their candidates can win elections. In fact, the feeble-minded even equates them with God. Subhanallah.
One can say that the actions of such governors have pauperised the population worse than the policies of the federal government. Here, we will mention only one out of many ways by which this pauperisation is achieved. The governors today, with the exception of Malam Shekarau of Kano, have devised various means of controlling the monthly allocations of their local government councils. In many of the states, the control is total. I learnt that in one of the small states in the Northeast, only the salaries of personnel and a running cost of between one and two million naira is disbursed to each local government. And the salary vouchers must be submitted to the Government House for confirmation before the disbursement is approved. The rest is appropriated – or say misappropriated – by the state government through joint projects and so on.
The trend is nearly the same everywhere, such that a local government with a monthly statutory allocation of N60 million will be given only N25million by its state government. The significance of this is that the economy of that local government, as tiny as it is, is starved of N35million monthly. Think of the impact that a monthly disbursement of N35million will have in six years over a rural economy. Without it, how could poverty be alleviated?
We can say a lot of indecent things about governance at the state and local government levels. By their actions, many of these guys make Obasanjo appear as an angel. Why we are strongly critical of Obasanjo is his reluctance to stop the corruption taking place under him as well as that perpetrated by the state governors, about which he has adequate information through the National Economic Intelligence Agency and other security outfits. He also abdicated to governors and the PDP the responsibility of fishing out the competent and trustworthy people who would assist him actualise change. Worse still, he has allowed himself to be controlled by a clique of ethnic and religious chauvinists who have destroyed the leaders he criticised before. Finally, he has failed to show good example. If he did not rig his elections, there would not have been the chance for the governors to rig theirs; if he had checked the excesses of his ministers, the governors would have shown circumspection in devouring the treasury of their state and local governments. But where the President pleads with them to donate to his private library project, for example, by misappropriating public funds, hardly can we spare him of the sharp edge of our sword.
As the executive controlling our security agencies, Obasanjo must take full responsibility of the breakdown of rule of law, the mechanism designed to check the corruption and excesses of public servants and maintain sanity in the society. As the commander-in-chief, he must be held liable for the irresponsible behaviour of his troops.
In conclusion, we may ask: Why has failure become our fate? Has God turned His back on us or have we betrayed Him? What else could we have done other than choose a person who was akin to Joseph; a previous head of state who was once sitting on the death row? Such a person, certainly, in one of his fellowship meetings and prayers at Yola Prison, must have signed a contract with God many times, promising to be righteous if given another chance to live. God has kept his own part of the bargain, and did more. He spared his life; freed him from prison; made him the President; and gave him resources that He never gave to any leader in the history of our nation. Unfortunately, the man, from the verdict which Nigerians passed on his administration last week, has not kept his own part of the bargain. He betrayed God.
He Betrayed God
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
Last week, Nigerians witnessed the sixth anniversary of the resumption of democracy. If Nigeria were a country where opinion of the people matters, the polls would have told us the degree to which they are disappointed with the present civilian dictatorship. But public opinion carries no weight in our policy formulation. This leaves us with no option but to rely on opinions expressed in the media.
Hundreds of pages have been written on the anniversary last week. I was not surprised that almost all commentators, from the street beggar to the university professor, scored our federal and state governments very low. It rather came as a relief that those of us who undertook the risk of telling government the truth for the past six years have not been alone in their judgement. A verdict of failure passed by this writer in 1999, only 100 days after Obasanjo’s assumption of office and which was then generally regarded as premature, has regrettably swelled into a national consensus today, no thanks to the gross incompetence and dishonesty that has become the hallmark of governance in the country today.
This is in deed a sad verdict on a regime that came to power based on our trust and the hope for peace and development. So destitute of public trust and so craving for stability was the country that it preferred an ‘Okrika’ to a new cloth. We thought Obasanjo did it successfully before; after all, he comes from a section of the country that often boasts of its intellectual might and complains of systematic political marginalisation. On the latter, it has made the loudest noise after June 12, while on the former it reserves an unquestionable title to its claim. But after six years of unimpeded authority, neither the second-hand cloth nor the knowledge of that region proved to be significant in solving any of our problems. Everything – the trust and the hope – now appear submerged in an ocean of dishonesty, unassailable incompetence and calculated strategies to undermine justice and common good. As a result, today, only the Igbo can lay genuine claim to marginalisation in both corruption and leadership.
It is reported that the President is disappointed with Nigerians over his poor score card. He complains that he is trying his best but Nigerians hardly see it. How can we see nothing? Let the President take an inventory of the problems he inherited and, one by one, score his performance on each. Nothing has improved: Is the Nigerian child getting better education than in 1999? Is the Naira stronger, as it moved from N84 per dollar in 1999 against N150 today? Is food cheaper, when a 50kg sac of rice cost N2,350 in 1999 and N5,500.00 today? Are our homes, streets, offices and factories enjoying better supply of electricity today than in 1999? Are our refineries working? Is fuel cheaper today at N60 per litre than the N22 it was in 1999?
In what way has our welfare improved? Do Nigerians now have access to better housing, affordable health services, and good education? Do we feel more secured as we go to bed or when we chase livelihood on roads, markets, farms and offices? Are our roads better now than in 1999? Is our water cleaner and abundant? Is our railway functioning, or is it dormant as before? Is justice closer to the weak now or is it still the exclusive preserve of the strong?
Is brotherhood among Nigerians stronger today than in 1999? Many commentators have indicated that more Nigerians lost their lives to communal clashes in the past six years than in the preceding thirty years. The acrimony between ethnic nationalities still runs deep, as if the messiah has not arrived. If that acrimony has waned, why is the President wasting his time on a multibillion naira national conference on political reform?
These are the facts – regarding welfare and security – by which the Nigerian constitution will score Obasanjo and our governors very low. They have connived to mismanage our resources and squander our golden opportunity for genuine reform. It is not their fault; though. The mistake is ours, though some would validly argue that we were lured by the power brokers who, in 1998, rehabilitated Obasanjo and packaged him to our adoration. Those brokers must be regretting now, as their nights are not better than ours, or as the late Shata would say, “whoever claims that a bonfire of corn-stalk burned throughout the night, as timber would do, it is he who spent the night sleepless.” Both of us relied on the past, and the past, as the Egyptian would say, dies once.
In some ways, even the regime is humble enough to acknowledge its failure. One of such ways is privatisation of NEPA. The real energy demand of Nigeria is very low compared with even those of countries like South Africa and Iran. It is still something that a national company under a competent leadership can generate and distribute. When the President came to power, filled with the misconception that Engineer Suleiman’s team were incompetent and corrupt, and particularly with highly competent people like Bola Ige as Minister of Power and Steel in his cabinet, the President sacked the NEPA management team. His minister promised the nation that problems of power in the country will be over by the end of 2000. What has happened to that promise is now history. Five years after 2000, Nigeria is generating the least electricity in the past 30 years. In fact, when the President visited Iran soliciting for investors, he was asked the quantum of electricity generation in Nigeria. His reply was greeted with laughter and he was told that what he generates is not enough to support the city of Tehran.
This is happening when Ghana, our neighbour, was celebrating ten years of uninterrupted power supply. Iran and South Africa, we must remember are Third World countries, according to capitalist taxonomy. Yesterday, I heard a woman from Baghdad over the BBC complaining that things are so terrible there that they have only four hours of electricity daily. Nigeria, in the absence war, is worse than Baghdad, as any Nigerian that gets up to four hours electricity daily should count himself lucky. Over 100 billion was sunk in revamping NEPA, but that has not changed the status quo: never expect power again.
To run away from the incompetence of generating the 4,500MW it promised, the government has decided to privatise the corporation. We are still not sure that the privatisation of NEPA will not end in another scandal, like that of NITEL. What an irony for a President who just before he assumed power was sounding these words of caution: “…in our situation, we must not saddle the market with the function it cannot perform. Some essential factors of the market for effective regulatory and distributory functions are absent with our level of development. So, to abandon the economy to non-available and non-functioning market forces is to destroy the economy.” Mhm.
The second acknowledgement of failure came from the President in the last quarter of 2003. That was when Nigerians found that he spent one year out of the four years of that tenure overseas soliciting for foreign investment. The President was publicly bitter that the foreign investors have turned down his invitation. He was fuming and asking, “Why”?
Why? The answer lies somewhere in what the President wrote in 1998. He said, “We need massive foreign investment of about five billion dollars annually to get the economy up again. I believe that with the right policy in place under a democratic umbrella with dynamic leadership, trusted and supported nationally and internationally with corruption put under check, this objective is achievable.”
Therefore, we can, on the testimony of the President himself, say that he failed to woo foreign investors because of some or all of the following reasons: (1) failure by his government to formulate the right policy, (2) the government is not democratic, unless he is confusing ‘civilian’ with ‘democratic’, (3) the leadership is not dynamic, (4) it is not trustworthy, (5) it does not enjoy national and international support, and (6) it is corrupt.
The third testimony is the recent damning intelligence report which predicts that Nigeria will collapse within fifteen years. It did not come from cynics like me, but from Obasanjo’s friends and partners: the American government. Why did not the Americans say so during IBB or Abacha? Saying it now implies that the country has sunk further into the abyss of self-destruction. And I doubt if anyone will doubt their evidence, looking at the frequency of communal clashes, the inability of government to avert them, and the prevailing atmosphere of political instability.
Those who once cherished equating the North with its bad leaders now have a very hard reconciliation of facts to make. They have to reconcile that, this time, a southerner has displayed a horrific record of incompetence, forming enough ground on which to construct the conclusion that incompetence and corruption are not the monopoly of any ethnic group. Can the Southwest cry of marginalisation in these two areas – incompetence and corruption - anymore? Or will they claim, as some of them are doing now, that Obasanjo is not a representative sample of their ethnic group?
Nevertheless, our condemnation of this administration must take two points into cognisance. Obasanjo has asked us in his inaugural address not to expect magic; that is, he was not promising to change anything overnight. He was correct. No sane person would expect a population of 120 million people to be reformed overnight and become accustomed to the political ideals of the democracy. No sane person also expected that all difficulties will disappear within a year. What Nigerians are simply complaining now is lack of any sign of improvement in their condition after six years. If we take level of poverty in the country for example, it was about 50% in 1999; but within two years the World Bank reported (in 2002) that it has escalated to 70%. In the same vein, why is there, on the one hand, a decline in electricity generation, in the value of the naira, in agricultural production, in the quality of roads, in security of life and property and a hike in the price of commodities, the prevalence of corruption and fraud, on the other hand, even though the country is witnessing the largest foreign exchange boom in its history? Improvement means an increase in positive indices of development and decrease in the negative ones. What we have witnessed in the past six years is nothing but accelerated retrogression.
The second point that I feel critics of Obasanjo must not overlook is that he could not have succeeded alone. If a villager does not see food on his table, or drugs in the hospital of his village, it could be reasonably argued that Obasanjo may not be the only culprit. We have governors and local government chairmen heading our state and local governments; in many ways they have a more direct bearing on our welfare, save in aspects, like security, where the federal government has exclusive jurisdiction.
There is no doubt that majority of state governments has failed woefully in providing the welfare and development which their people need direly. Most of them, one can confidently say, are worse than Obasanjo. They dupe their people in many ways and rule their states as their personal estates where no one has any right, opinion or regard. Only their candidates can win elections. In fact, the feeble-minded even equates them with God. Subhanallah.
One can say that the actions of such governors have pauperised the population worse than the policies of the federal government. Here, we will mention only one out of many ways by which this pauperisation is achieved. The governors today, with the exception of Malam Shekarau of Kano, have devised various means of controlling the monthly allocations of their local government councils. In many of the states, the control is total. I learnt that in one of the small states in the Northeast, only the salaries of personnel and a running cost of between one and two million naira is disbursed to each local government. And the salary vouchers must be submitted to the Government House for confirmation before the disbursement is approved. The rest is appropriated – or say misappropriated – by the state government through joint projects and so on.
The trend is nearly the same everywhere, such that a local government with a monthly statutory allocation of N60 million will be given only N25million by its state government. The significance of this is that the economy of that local government, as tiny as it is, is starved of N35million monthly. Think of the impact that a monthly disbursement of N35million will have in six years over a rural economy. Without it, how could poverty be alleviated?
We can say a lot of indecent things about governance at the state and local government levels. By their actions, many of these guys make Obasanjo appear as an angel. Why we are strongly critical of Obasanjo is his reluctance to stop the corruption taking place under him as well as that perpetrated by the state governors, about which he has adequate information through the National Economic Intelligence Agency and other security outfits. He also abdicated to governors and the PDP the responsibility of fishing out the competent and trustworthy people who would assist him actualise change. Worse still, he has allowed himself to be controlled by a clique of ethnic and religious chauvinists who have destroyed the leaders he criticised before. Finally, he has failed to show good example. If he did not rig his elections, there would not have been the chance for the governors to rig theirs; if he had checked the excesses of his ministers, the governors would have shown circumspection in devouring the treasury of their state and local governments. But where the President pleads with them to donate to his private library project, for example, by misappropriating public funds, hardly can we spare him of the sharp edge of our sword.
As the executive controlling our security agencies, Obasanjo must take full responsibility of the breakdown of rule of law, the mechanism designed to check the corruption and excesses of public servants and maintain sanity in the society. As the commander-in-chief, he must be held liable for the irresponsible behaviour of his troops.
In conclusion, we may ask: Why has failure become our fate? Has God turned His back on us or have we betrayed Him? What else could we have done other than choose a person who was akin to Joseph; a previous head of state who was once sitting on the death row? Such a person, certainly, in one of his fellowship meetings and prayers at Yola Prison, must have signed a contract with God many times, promising to be righteous if given another chance to live. God has kept his own part of the bargain, and did more. He spared his life; freed him from prison; made him the President; and gave him resources that He never gave to any leader in the history of our nation. Unfortunately, the man, from the verdict which Nigerians passed on his administration last week, has not kept his own part of the bargain. He betrayed God.
Obasanjo's Pregnancy (By Olusegun Obasanjo)
Obasanjo’s Pregnancy By Olusegun Obasanjo
The foundation of Nigerian problems is political and the solutions to Nigerian problems must start from the foundation. Whether we go back to 1914, 1952 or 1960, we have to go back in the process of soul searching and identification of how, when and where we have wronged ourselves. I strongly believe that we need a Reconciliation Conference to clear the ground. It should be composed of the genuine representatives of Nigerian peoples and should include all the living participants in the pre-independence politics. The objective should be to openly discuss allegations and accusations founded or unfounded of one group’s mistreatment, abuse, disappointment, injustice against another across the board concluding in explanations, apologies, forgiveness and total clearing of the air. There are myths and realities of what happened in the past which we pass down from generation to generation. Let the myths be exploded and the realities be understood and accepted with explanations where necessary, apologies where desired but without recriminations and with complete reconciliation. Nothing should be swept under the carpet. All matters tabled should be discussed and nothing should be hidden, covered or disregarded once it is genuinely and seriously raised by identifiable group. I will consider 1952 or thereabout as the ideal starting date. But on no account should we go back to 1914 because no Nigerian could in part, directly or indirectly be held responsible for events from 1914 to 1952. The Reconciliation Conference should end with the adoption of a reconciliation document, listing all the points raised and how cleared. With the muck of the past cleared, we should have a new clean foundation for our political framework and constitution.
My brief experience with the Nigeria Unity Organisation proved to me how very useful such a conference held in good faith and without bitterness, but aimed at clearing the muck could be. There had always been allegations, stories and accusations of what Yoruba leaders and people have done against Ibo leaders and people and vice versa and these have been handed down. The most serious allegation was dated about 1952 when Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe and the NCNC claimed to have been robbed of victory in the West. Chief Sam Mbakwe was honest and courageous enough to raise these allegations in Ibadan in 1995. When Chief M. A. Akinloye, one of the principal actors explained in detail what transpired, Chief Sam Mbakwe said, “We now understand what happened and if I were you, I would have done exactly what you did.” There is no better way of understanding and clearing the air of myths and realities of our past political relationship and interaction…
There are allegations or accusations founded or unfounded levelled by the Yorubas against the majorities and vice versa. The free discussion and explanation of these issues are bound to make for healthy future political activities. The free discussion and explanation of these issues are bound to make for healthy future political activities…
As a complement to the Reconciliation Conference, must be a Truth Commission to ferret out and establish the truth in all areas of our past political, economic and social lives that may be requested for or raised by Nigerians or by the Commission itself and considered by the Commission to be germane and inextricably relevant to its work, its mission and the expansion of our knowledge of truth about the past and the present as a preparation of the future….
I see 1966 as a watershed date and a possible, suitable and convenient starting date for the Truth Commission but on no account should it go beyond 1960. The Reconciliation Conference should, to my mind, substantially take care of most of the issues before 1966. The Commission may be established and be seating concurrently with the Reconciliation Conference but it will require months if not years to do a thorough job. Its essential findings must be published and made available to Nigerians and to those who want to learn from it. The Reconciliation Conference and the Truth Commission in the Nigerian way may be one of Nigeria’s useful contributions to lasting solution to political problems in multi-national societies in Africa and elsewhere.
The third leg of our stool for solid and firm political foundation for our sustained take off is a possible amendment to our Constitution to take account of some of the clearly articulated concerns. This cannot be established until the Reconciliation Conference has completed its task. But it does not necessarily have to wait for the completion of the Truth Commission. The Assembly should be made up of freely elected representatives of the people with ten percent being reserved for professional and trade associations and bodies and groups like traditional rulers who cannot participate in free general elections. Another ten percent should come from the Reconciliation Conference elected from among its members. The Assembly should be free to elect or select its own chairman and work out its own working and operating procedure. It may break the issues to be deliberated upon into two minor issues requiring only a majority vote for a decision and major issues requiring a two-third majority vote of those present who form a quorum for a decision. Approving the operating procedure of the assembly will be regarded as a minor issue requiring only a simple majority. But the issues of revenue allocation, constituents making up the federation – thirty-six states or six zones are major and must require near consensus to take decisions on them since once the decision is taken by a sovereign Assembly, it becomes part of the constitution. For devolution of power, balance and stability, I prefer six zones to be the basis of our federating units.
I will suggest five items, which may be regarded as novelty, which I believe that our recent experiences and experiences from other lands dictate. One, I will like to se a clause for self-determination and self-determination process included in the constitution. I had always thought that a self-determination clause in a federal constitution would be disintegrative and disuniting. But when I listened to the Ethiopian experience and model, I was persuaded and enchanted by it. It makes the federation a true federation and strong both at the constituent level and at the centre because all have a stake and to be out is to be a loser. If a component unit passes and which also involve the rest of the federation, then it has a case worth considering for self-determination. A self determination clause will always make the operators of the constitution conscious of the need to preserve the spirit and the letters of the constitution…
Two, a clause for integration and integration process is to make room for the conditions and the basis on which other states or components of other states may have to satisfy to join and be integrated with a thriving Nigerian federation. I see it as a necessary corollary to the self-determination clause. And no country or state should feel agitated or threatened about such a clause in our constitution if we can insert self-determination clause, we should be able to include integration clause…
The third clause is to deal with the issues of coup d’etat. Once a genie of coup is released out of the bottle it becomes virtually endemic until the tradition, culture and convention of non-military intervention can be recreated and developed within the military and the society as a whole – it will take generations rather than years. Coups cannot be dealt with by legislation alone but it can be fought against in the heart and mind of the people. It is unfortunate that what is normal in the experience of Nigerians who will be about forty years old at the end of the century is military administration….
The fourth clause, I will strongly recommend for inclusion in our next constitution is a compulsory nine-year free education for all Nigerian children. One of the greatest dis-service that almost all administrations have done to Nigeria since 1979 is to progressively uneducated the Nigerian children to the extent that we had more illiterates in 1998 than we had in 1960…
The fifth clause is the elimination of capital punishment. Death sentence must be constitutionally abolished. I know that there are strong feelings for preservation of death sentence including quranical and biblical support. What we know of cruel torture is the so-called investigation by law enforcement agents, official killings nicknamed operation damisa, judicial murder, bloodthirsty leadership and injustice, oppression and corruption at the highest level of the executive, at all levels of judiciary and by all law enforcement agents make it absolutely unsafe and suicidal to entrust the power of death of a Nigerian into the hands of any of these, now and in future. I prefer that we should err on the part of saving lives rather than on the side of destroying innocent lives.
Let me illustrate the level of miscarriage of justice with the case of Sani and Umaru in Yola prison serving life sentence for the murder of an Adamawa State politician carried out by hired assassins. The leader of the group of hired assassins who perpetrated the crime happened to be in Yola prison for another offence while I was there. He confessed to me that he led the assassins because they were hired by a political opponent and that Sani and Umaru knew nothing let alone participating in the crime. Yet they were both sentenced to death by a fire arms tribunal and their lives were spared at the eleventh hour by a special appeal to the governor of the state and they were serving life sentences by the time I left Yola for offence they had not committed.
Our economic system cannot be anything other than a market economy. But in our situation, we must not saddle the market with the function it cannot perform. Some essential factors of the market for effective regulatory and distributory functions are absent with our level of development. So, to abandon the economy to non-available and non-functioning market forces is to destroy the economy… We need massive foreign investment of about five billion dollars annually to get the economy up again. I believe that with the right policy in place under a democratic umbrella with dynamic leadership, trusted and supported national and internationally with corruption put under check, this objective is achievable.
Nigeria was taken captive by conspiracy of deception, oppression, corruption and injustice all for greed and selfishness and it needs liberation.
I remain hopeful that with enough crop of patriotic, well meaning and Godly men and women striving relentlessly and selflessly for the good over darkness in our country and through divine intervention, deliverance and guidance, the great potentials of Nigeria will be actualised.”
COMMENT
The above was written by Obasanjo in his book The Animal Called Man which was published in the year before he became President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I printed these excerpts to prove, in fairness to him, that he was pregnant with the major programs he is presently undertaking right before he became President: the Reconciliation Conference and Truth Commission are expressed in the Oputa Panel; the Sovereign Assembly of what he called “true representatives of the people” is manifested in the ongoing Political Reform Conference; compulsory 9 year education for children is the Universal Basic Education Program. All the five clauses he discussed above have found their way into the fake constitution recently circulated at the conference by the Executive. Privatisation, with a human face then, was also clearly in his mind.
The big question is: what change would have Obasanjo achieved by 2007, after being granted an opportunity to change the situation for eight years? Obasanjo’s pregnancy did not give birth to a child, but a donkey. Did he even care, if we must ask, to release Sani and Umaru from Yola Prison? How many people have been killed by Operation Fire for Fire of Tafa Balogun and how many Nigerians lost their lives in order for the PDP to win over the Southwest and rig the 2003 elections? How many Sanis and Umarus are still in detention as a result of abuses during the election? Is that the meaning of being on the side of life? Are members of his cabinet the “patriotic, well-meaning and Godly men and women he suggested? Is his team “striving relentlessly and selflessly for the good against darkness in our country?
The implementation of these ideas points to a completely different direction. Privatisation has ended up in scandals, one after another, involving the presidency. El-Rufa’I is saying that whatever he did was with the knowledge of the President and his Vice. The government has not published the report of the Oputa Panel. The UBE is a sham, as the government itself has refused to provide the funds required for its implementation. We are yet to see any light, all that looms above us is darkness. No divine intervention, deliverance and guidance, yet.
Talking about corruption, the President needs to be informed that soliciting for funds from government agencies (like the NNPC), governors and the likes of Dangote to build a personal information centre at Abeokuta worth over N7billion is corruption by extortion, which is worse form of corruption. We blame the police for extorting N20.00 at roadblocks. Who will blame the President for extorting N7billion? The BBC told us last week that already over N4billion has been realised. How much did these people contribute to the President’s family when he was in Yola prison?
Excuse me Mr. President.
----------------------------------------
Editor: Please quote the last paragraph in bold at the centre of article: Talking about corruption, the President needs to be informed that soliciting for funds from government agencies like the NNPC, governors and the likes of Dangote to build a personal information centre at Abeokuta worth over N7billion is worse than the corruption perpetrated by Tafa Balogun because it is a corruption not by theft but by extortion. The BBC told us last week that already over N4billion has been realised. How much did these people contributed to the President’s family when he was in Yola prison? Excuse me, Mr. President.”
The foundation of Nigerian problems is political and the solutions to Nigerian problems must start from the foundation. Whether we go back to 1914, 1952 or 1960, we have to go back in the process of soul searching and identification of how, when and where we have wronged ourselves. I strongly believe that we need a Reconciliation Conference to clear the ground. It should be composed of the genuine representatives of Nigerian peoples and should include all the living participants in the pre-independence politics. The objective should be to openly discuss allegations and accusations founded or unfounded of one group’s mistreatment, abuse, disappointment, injustice against another across the board concluding in explanations, apologies, forgiveness and total clearing of the air. There are myths and realities of what happened in the past which we pass down from generation to generation. Let the myths be exploded and the realities be understood and accepted with explanations where necessary, apologies where desired but without recriminations and with complete reconciliation. Nothing should be swept under the carpet. All matters tabled should be discussed and nothing should be hidden, covered or disregarded once it is genuinely and seriously raised by identifiable group. I will consider 1952 or thereabout as the ideal starting date. But on no account should we go back to 1914 because no Nigerian could in part, directly or indirectly be held responsible for events from 1914 to 1952. The Reconciliation Conference should end with the adoption of a reconciliation document, listing all the points raised and how cleared. With the muck of the past cleared, we should have a new clean foundation for our political framework and constitution.
My brief experience with the Nigeria Unity Organisation proved to me how very useful such a conference held in good faith and without bitterness, but aimed at clearing the muck could be. There had always been allegations, stories and accusations of what Yoruba leaders and people have done against Ibo leaders and people and vice versa and these have been handed down. The most serious allegation was dated about 1952 when Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe and the NCNC claimed to have been robbed of victory in the West. Chief Sam Mbakwe was honest and courageous enough to raise these allegations in Ibadan in 1995. When Chief M. A. Akinloye, one of the principal actors explained in detail what transpired, Chief Sam Mbakwe said, “We now understand what happened and if I were you, I would have done exactly what you did.” There is no better way of understanding and clearing the air of myths and realities of our past political relationship and interaction…
There are allegations or accusations founded or unfounded levelled by the Yorubas against the majorities and vice versa. The free discussion and explanation of these issues are bound to make for healthy future political activities. The free discussion and explanation of these issues are bound to make for healthy future political activities…
As a complement to the Reconciliation Conference, must be a Truth Commission to ferret out and establish the truth in all areas of our past political, economic and social lives that may be requested for or raised by Nigerians or by the Commission itself and considered by the Commission to be germane and inextricably relevant to its work, its mission and the expansion of our knowledge of truth about the past and the present as a preparation of the future….
I see 1966 as a watershed date and a possible, suitable and convenient starting date for the Truth Commission but on no account should it go beyond 1960. The Reconciliation Conference should, to my mind, substantially take care of most of the issues before 1966. The Commission may be established and be seating concurrently with the Reconciliation Conference but it will require months if not years to do a thorough job. Its essential findings must be published and made available to Nigerians and to those who want to learn from it. The Reconciliation Conference and the Truth Commission in the Nigerian way may be one of Nigeria’s useful contributions to lasting solution to political problems in multi-national societies in Africa and elsewhere.
The third leg of our stool for solid and firm political foundation for our sustained take off is a possible amendment to our Constitution to take account of some of the clearly articulated concerns. This cannot be established until the Reconciliation Conference has completed its task. But it does not necessarily have to wait for the completion of the Truth Commission. The Assembly should be made up of freely elected representatives of the people with ten percent being reserved for professional and trade associations and bodies and groups like traditional rulers who cannot participate in free general elections. Another ten percent should come from the Reconciliation Conference elected from among its members. The Assembly should be free to elect or select its own chairman and work out its own working and operating procedure. It may break the issues to be deliberated upon into two minor issues requiring only a majority vote for a decision and major issues requiring a two-third majority vote of those present who form a quorum for a decision. Approving the operating procedure of the assembly will be regarded as a minor issue requiring only a simple majority. But the issues of revenue allocation, constituents making up the federation – thirty-six states or six zones are major and must require near consensus to take decisions on them since once the decision is taken by a sovereign Assembly, it becomes part of the constitution. For devolution of power, balance and stability, I prefer six zones to be the basis of our federating units.
I will suggest five items, which may be regarded as novelty, which I believe that our recent experiences and experiences from other lands dictate. One, I will like to se a clause for self-determination and self-determination process included in the constitution. I had always thought that a self-determination clause in a federal constitution would be disintegrative and disuniting. But when I listened to the Ethiopian experience and model, I was persuaded and enchanted by it. It makes the federation a true federation and strong both at the constituent level and at the centre because all have a stake and to be out is to be a loser. If a component unit passes and which also involve the rest of the federation, then it has a case worth considering for self-determination. A self determination clause will always make the operators of the constitution conscious of the need to preserve the spirit and the letters of the constitution…
Two, a clause for integration and integration process is to make room for the conditions and the basis on which other states or components of other states may have to satisfy to join and be integrated with a thriving Nigerian federation. I see it as a necessary corollary to the self-determination clause. And no country or state should feel agitated or threatened about such a clause in our constitution if we can insert self-determination clause, we should be able to include integration clause…
The third clause is to deal with the issues of coup d’etat. Once a genie of coup is released out of the bottle it becomes virtually endemic until the tradition, culture and convention of non-military intervention can be recreated and developed within the military and the society as a whole – it will take generations rather than years. Coups cannot be dealt with by legislation alone but it can be fought against in the heart and mind of the people. It is unfortunate that what is normal in the experience of Nigerians who will be about forty years old at the end of the century is military administration….
The fourth clause, I will strongly recommend for inclusion in our next constitution is a compulsory nine-year free education for all Nigerian children. One of the greatest dis-service that almost all administrations have done to Nigeria since 1979 is to progressively uneducated the Nigerian children to the extent that we had more illiterates in 1998 than we had in 1960…
The fifth clause is the elimination of capital punishment. Death sentence must be constitutionally abolished. I know that there are strong feelings for preservation of death sentence including quranical and biblical support. What we know of cruel torture is the so-called investigation by law enforcement agents, official killings nicknamed operation damisa, judicial murder, bloodthirsty leadership and injustice, oppression and corruption at the highest level of the executive, at all levels of judiciary and by all law enforcement agents make it absolutely unsafe and suicidal to entrust the power of death of a Nigerian into the hands of any of these, now and in future. I prefer that we should err on the part of saving lives rather than on the side of destroying innocent lives.
Let me illustrate the level of miscarriage of justice with the case of Sani and Umaru in Yola prison serving life sentence for the murder of an Adamawa State politician carried out by hired assassins. The leader of the group of hired assassins who perpetrated the crime happened to be in Yola prison for another offence while I was there. He confessed to me that he led the assassins because they were hired by a political opponent and that Sani and Umaru knew nothing let alone participating in the crime. Yet they were both sentenced to death by a fire arms tribunal and their lives were spared at the eleventh hour by a special appeal to the governor of the state and they were serving life sentences by the time I left Yola for offence they had not committed.
Our economic system cannot be anything other than a market economy. But in our situation, we must not saddle the market with the function it cannot perform. Some essential factors of the market for effective regulatory and distributory functions are absent with our level of development. So, to abandon the economy to non-available and non-functioning market forces is to destroy the economy… We need massive foreign investment of about five billion dollars annually to get the economy up again. I believe that with the right policy in place under a democratic umbrella with dynamic leadership, trusted and supported national and internationally with corruption put under check, this objective is achievable.
Nigeria was taken captive by conspiracy of deception, oppression, corruption and injustice all for greed and selfishness and it needs liberation.
I remain hopeful that with enough crop of patriotic, well meaning and Godly men and women striving relentlessly and selflessly for the good over darkness in our country and through divine intervention, deliverance and guidance, the great potentials of Nigeria will be actualised.”
COMMENT
The above was written by Obasanjo in his book The Animal Called Man which was published in the year before he became President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I printed these excerpts to prove, in fairness to him, that he was pregnant with the major programs he is presently undertaking right before he became President: the Reconciliation Conference and Truth Commission are expressed in the Oputa Panel; the Sovereign Assembly of what he called “true representatives of the people” is manifested in the ongoing Political Reform Conference; compulsory 9 year education for children is the Universal Basic Education Program. All the five clauses he discussed above have found their way into the fake constitution recently circulated at the conference by the Executive. Privatisation, with a human face then, was also clearly in his mind.
The big question is: what change would have Obasanjo achieved by 2007, after being granted an opportunity to change the situation for eight years? Obasanjo’s pregnancy did not give birth to a child, but a donkey. Did he even care, if we must ask, to release Sani and Umaru from Yola Prison? How many people have been killed by Operation Fire for Fire of Tafa Balogun and how many Nigerians lost their lives in order for the PDP to win over the Southwest and rig the 2003 elections? How many Sanis and Umarus are still in detention as a result of abuses during the election? Is that the meaning of being on the side of life? Are members of his cabinet the “patriotic, well-meaning and Godly men and women he suggested? Is his team “striving relentlessly and selflessly for the good against darkness in our country?
The implementation of these ideas points to a completely different direction. Privatisation has ended up in scandals, one after another, involving the presidency. El-Rufa’I is saying that whatever he did was with the knowledge of the President and his Vice. The government has not published the report of the Oputa Panel. The UBE is a sham, as the government itself has refused to provide the funds required for its implementation. We are yet to see any light, all that looms above us is darkness. No divine intervention, deliverance and guidance, yet.
Talking about corruption, the President needs to be informed that soliciting for funds from government agencies (like the NNPC), governors and the likes of Dangote to build a personal information centre at Abeokuta worth over N7billion is corruption by extortion, which is worse form of corruption. We blame the police for extorting N20.00 at roadblocks. Who will blame the President for extorting N7billion? The BBC told us last week that already over N4billion has been realised. How much did these people contribute to the President’s family when he was in Yola prison?
Excuse me Mr. President.
----------------------------------------
Editor: Please quote the last paragraph in bold at the centre of article: Talking about corruption, the President needs to be informed that soliciting for funds from government agencies like the NNPC, governors and the likes of Dangote to build a personal information centre at Abeokuta worth over N7billion is worse than the corruption perpetrated by Tafa Balogun because it is a corruption not by theft but by extortion. The BBC told us last week that already over N4billion has been realised. How much did these people contributed to the President’s family when he was in Yola prison? Excuse me, Mr. President.”
You're Still Old Brand, Mr. President
You Are Still Old Brand, Mr. President
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
In spite of persistent attempts by government agents and a good portion of the press to conceal his woeful failure over the past four years, Obasanjo admits that he scored a less than average mark during that period. At the national thanksgiving and dedication service last week he was reported to have prayed that his “second and final term would be better.” The papers also reported his self-description as “a brand new president.”
There are indications that Obasanjo has already started gathering disciples for his “brand new President” gospel. Preaching this gospel at the said service, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God assured us that “Nigerians can be sure that they will see a master democrat in this second term of Obasanjo. The Obasanjo that we are about to see in the next four years will be different from the one we used to know.” I believe that this pastor is not alone. There are many others in Abuja and beyond who have already accepted the gospel even before listening to any of its verses, just by virtue of who its apostle is.
Some of us are not ready to suffer a repeat shock. We recall bitterly how the ‘messiah’ propaganda carried us away four years ago. Our preference for Obasanjo in 1999 was largely based on the hope that he will reintroduce a good degree of sanity in governance similar to the one that prevailed during his tenure as a military head of state. On this basis we voted for him, hoping for a forward march that would start yielding dividends even before the end of his first tenure. However, that tenure, which ended a fortnight ago, turned out to be a disaster according to the testimonies and standards of many individuals and organizations at home and abroad. That is how we have learnt to believe in only what we see regarding matters of governance under Obasanjo.
To begin with, the claim to be a “brand new president” who “will be different from the one we used to know” is a clear admission that his failure during his first tenure was deliberate; a calculated attempt in political expediency. It shows that his actions and inactions during the first term were predicated by his desire to secure a second term. Now that he has got the “second and final term”, the inhibitions of such a desire are over. He is free to be an Obasanjo who is “different from the one we used to know.” So the President’s self-description and his pastor’s assurance are more indicting than complimentary.
Which “master democrat” is the pastor assuring Nigerians of, given the president’s four-year dictatorial style of leadership and his 4-19 record? What Obasanjo are we assured of other than the one that emasculated the legislature? What president do we have before us other than the one whose government condoned corruption as much as any other bad government in history?
To become “brand new”, Obasanjo needs to take revolutionary steps that are sharply in contrast to his style during the previous tenure. The zeal for work and commitment to transparency has to permeate through members of his family and cabinet. Its momentum must also be strong enough to affect the conduct of security and law enforcement agents with whom he will check the corruption of governors and civil servants. Unless this is achieved, any claim to being a “brand new president” will remain only a post-election rhetoric, calculated to mollify a nation ‘shocked and awed’ by the massive rigging of 4-19.
Otherwise, I do not see merit playing the most important role in determining his political appointments. As in 1999, patronage and expediency will still reign supreme. He cannot defy his party together and the generals and foot soldiers who did everything possible – good or bad – to ensure his re-election. The party and its aspirants will not allow him spoil their chances in 2007 by his later day romance with prudence and service.
The consequences of daring the party leadership and its members will make Obasanjo capitulate on his dream of leaving a memorable legacy. Right now, there is a fierce competition for ministerial positions from every state. Browsing through the list leaves us with the impression that in its compilation, merit was the least criterion considered.
Talking about national assembly, does Obasanjo feel that he can get his bills passed without any ‘Ghana must go’ that it was accustomed to during his first tenure? Simply put, he is asking them to commit economic suicide. We have witnessed many of them spending well over N50million to get ‘elected’, some as much as N100million and above to become senators. Could they make such a high investment as a sacrifice to the nation without expecting any monetary return apart from their salaries and allowances that are not even enough to maintain their political estates in place? Then they could as well have chosen to work with Buhari as the President.
In his sermon at the thanksgiving service, the fire-spitting President of the Christian Association of Nigeria appealed to “new leaders of Nigeria”, including Obasanjo of course, “to fight corruption at all levels and to refuse to be instrument of corruption.”
The gospel of the Bishop was not new at all. Four years ago, the president was once its apostle when he dreamt of running a transparent government with enough conscience and courage to probe previous corrupt regimes. At his inauguration then, Obasanjo was confident enough to warn us, saying, “there will be no sacred cows.” He added, “Corruption is a crime, and therefore timeless.”
“Aha,” we said, “this guy will extract our rights from those who enjoyed the largesse of corrupt regimes since 1985.” But wiser people did not share our high spirits. I remember Dr. Bala Usman warning Obasanjo that corruption will fight back. And it did with all ferocity. Before Obasanjo could equip himself with the legislation necessary to set up a tribunal to fight it, the corruption monster invaded the Presidency. Half of the corruption in the last four years took place within the presidency, reported Transparency International. Many times the President must have complained of the smell of corruption emanating from the office next to his.
The corruption monster was also fed by the National Assembly and by ministries and parastatals of both federal and state governments. If we will remember, immediately after their inauguration in 1999, allegations of bribery in the national assembly started flying. Later, the legislators received money for impeaching their leaders and the money was right there on national television for everyone to see. As for corruption in various ministries and parastatals, there isn’t better evidence than the indicting publication of the Auditor-General of the Federation.
There were reports of state governors purchasing multimillion-dollar estates overseas in addition to the Saddam-size palaces that are littering elite neighbourhoods like Jabi Road in Kaduna. By the time of their second nomination, no fewer than twelve PDP governors were reported to have cases to answer before the anti-corruption tribunal.
What was the response of our ‘messiah’ then? While not a single minister was ever dismissed on basis of corruption, Obasanjo sacked the Auditor General of the Federation for his revealing publication. Poor Auditor! The PDP governors got their second nomination tickets and all but two have been returned for a second tenure. The same thing happened with ANPP and AD counterparts. They have not shown greater commitment to probity than their PDP colleagues. Business to the governors in both parties has already resumed as usual. One of the unlucky governors, Dr. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso of Kano, is highly expected to clinch a ministerial appointment in the new Obasanjo cabinet.
The greatest commitments that Obasanjo will have for democracy during his tenure must definitely include independence of the legislature and holding free and fair elections in 2007. However, on 2007 the stakes will remain as high as they were last April. The PDP and its presidential candidate will not allow any retreat from the established practice of massive rigging.
Regarding an independent legislature, we have a clue here already. He has expressed intense interest over the leadership of the National Assembly. This is normal. However, we expect a “brand new president” to go for the best material. Instead, Obasanjo and the PDP have abandoned the scholarly and independent-minded Bugaje for someone lesser. It is clear this “master democrat” still longs for the good old days when the legislature was under Salisu Buhari and Evans Enwerem.
The next few months will certainly provide some clues in answer to our questions and perhaps, luckily, do away with our pessimism. The complete answers will come only after four years. There is already another discouraging clue though: Obasanjo still sticks to his old excuse. He repeated this in the thanksgiving service, saying, “…The last four years have been uneasy years of learning.” To become “a brand new president,” Obasanjo needs to effectively diagnose his failure and attack its virus. He must accept defeat and own up by relating his failure to his own actions and inactions as the executive president and commander-in-chief. Taking the escapist route of blaming the “uneasy learning process” portends only three possibilities: he has a wrong diagnosis of his illness, or he is not sincere enough to admit it, or both.
An advice worth giving Obasanjo and his handlers here is that they should allow his actions to speak louder than his words. His actions since 4-19 tell us he is still the ‘old brand’ president we know.
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
In spite of persistent attempts by government agents and a good portion of the press to conceal his woeful failure over the past four years, Obasanjo admits that he scored a less than average mark during that period. At the national thanksgiving and dedication service last week he was reported to have prayed that his “second and final term would be better.” The papers also reported his self-description as “a brand new president.”
There are indications that Obasanjo has already started gathering disciples for his “brand new President” gospel. Preaching this gospel at the said service, the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God assured us that “Nigerians can be sure that they will see a master democrat in this second term of Obasanjo. The Obasanjo that we are about to see in the next four years will be different from the one we used to know.” I believe that this pastor is not alone. There are many others in Abuja and beyond who have already accepted the gospel even before listening to any of its verses, just by virtue of who its apostle is.
Some of us are not ready to suffer a repeat shock. We recall bitterly how the ‘messiah’ propaganda carried us away four years ago. Our preference for Obasanjo in 1999 was largely based on the hope that he will reintroduce a good degree of sanity in governance similar to the one that prevailed during his tenure as a military head of state. On this basis we voted for him, hoping for a forward march that would start yielding dividends even before the end of his first tenure. However, that tenure, which ended a fortnight ago, turned out to be a disaster according to the testimonies and standards of many individuals and organizations at home and abroad. That is how we have learnt to believe in only what we see regarding matters of governance under Obasanjo.
To begin with, the claim to be a “brand new president” who “will be different from the one we used to know” is a clear admission that his failure during his first tenure was deliberate; a calculated attempt in political expediency. It shows that his actions and inactions during the first term were predicated by his desire to secure a second term. Now that he has got the “second and final term”, the inhibitions of such a desire are over. He is free to be an Obasanjo who is “different from the one we used to know.” So the President’s self-description and his pastor’s assurance are more indicting than complimentary.
Which “master democrat” is the pastor assuring Nigerians of, given the president’s four-year dictatorial style of leadership and his 4-19 record? What Obasanjo are we assured of other than the one that emasculated the legislature? What president do we have before us other than the one whose government condoned corruption as much as any other bad government in history?
To become “brand new”, Obasanjo needs to take revolutionary steps that are sharply in contrast to his style during the previous tenure. The zeal for work and commitment to transparency has to permeate through members of his family and cabinet. Its momentum must also be strong enough to affect the conduct of security and law enforcement agents with whom he will check the corruption of governors and civil servants. Unless this is achieved, any claim to being a “brand new president” will remain only a post-election rhetoric, calculated to mollify a nation ‘shocked and awed’ by the massive rigging of 4-19.
Otherwise, I do not see merit playing the most important role in determining his political appointments. As in 1999, patronage and expediency will still reign supreme. He cannot defy his party together and the generals and foot soldiers who did everything possible – good or bad – to ensure his re-election. The party and its aspirants will not allow him spoil their chances in 2007 by his later day romance with prudence and service.
The consequences of daring the party leadership and its members will make Obasanjo capitulate on his dream of leaving a memorable legacy. Right now, there is a fierce competition for ministerial positions from every state. Browsing through the list leaves us with the impression that in its compilation, merit was the least criterion considered.
Talking about national assembly, does Obasanjo feel that he can get his bills passed without any ‘Ghana must go’ that it was accustomed to during his first tenure? Simply put, he is asking them to commit economic suicide. We have witnessed many of them spending well over N50million to get ‘elected’, some as much as N100million and above to become senators. Could they make such a high investment as a sacrifice to the nation without expecting any monetary return apart from their salaries and allowances that are not even enough to maintain their political estates in place? Then they could as well have chosen to work with Buhari as the President.
In his sermon at the thanksgiving service, the fire-spitting President of the Christian Association of Nigeria appealed to “new leaders of Nigeria”, including Obasanjo of course, “to fight corruption at all levels and to refuse to be instrument of corruption.”
The gospel of the Bishop was not new at all. Four years ago, the president was once its apostle when he dreamt of running a transparent government with enough conscience and courage to probe previous corrupt regimes. At his inauguration then, Obasanjo was confident enough to warn us, saying, “there will be no sacred cows.” He added, “Corruption is a crime, and therefore timeless.”
“Aha,” we said, “this guy will extract our rights from those who enjoyed the largesse of corrupt regimes since 1985.” But wiser people did not share our high spirits. I remember Dr. Bala Usman warning Obasanjo that corruption will fight back. And it did with all ferocity. Before Obasanjo could equip himself with the legislation necessary to set up a tribunal to fight it, the corruption monster invaded the Presidency. Half of the corruption in the last four years took place within the presidency, reported Transparency International. Many times the President must have complained of the smell of corruption emanating from the office next to his.
The corruption monster was also fed by the National Assembly and by ministries and parastatals of both federal and state governments. If we will remember, immediately after their inauguration in 1999, allegations of bribery in the national assembly started flying. Later, the legislators received money for impeaching their leaders and the money was right there on national television for everyone to see. As for corruption in various ministries and parastatals, there isn’t better evidence than the indicting publication of the Auditor-General of the Federation.
There were reports of state governors purchasing multimillion-dollar estates overseas in addition to the Saddam-size palaces that are littering elite neighbourhoods like Jabi Road in Kaduna. By the time of their second nomination, no fewer than twelve PDP governors were reported to have cases to answer before the anti-corruption tribunal.
What was the response of our ‘messiah’ then? While not a single minister was ever dismissed on basis of corruption, Obasanjo sacked the Auditor General of the Federation for his revealing publication. Poor Auditor! The PDP governors got their second nomination tickets and all but two have been returned for a second tenure. The same thing happened with ANPP and AD counterparts. They have not shown greater commitment to probity than their PDP colleagues. Business to the governors in both parties has already resumed as usual. One of the unlucky governors, Dr. Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso of Kano, is highly expected to clinch a ministerial appointment in the new Obasanjo cabinet.
The greatest commitments that Obasanjo will have for democracy during his tenure must definitely include independence of the legislature and holding free and fair elections in 2007. However, on 2007 the stakes will remain as high as they were last April. The PDP and its presidential candidate will not allow any retreat from the established practice of massive rigging.
Regarding an independent legislature, we have a clue here already. He has expressed intense interest over the leadership of the National Assembly. This is normal. However, we expect a “brand new president” to go for the best material. Instead, Obasanjo and the PDP have abandoned the scholarly and independent-minded Bugaje for someone lesser. It is clear this “master democrat” still longs for the good old days when the legislature was under Salisu Buhari and Evans Enwerem.
The next few months will certainly provide some clues in answer to our questions and perhaps, luckily, do away with our pessimism. The complete answers will come only after four years. There is already another discouraging clue though: Obasanjo still sticks to his old excuse. He repeated this in the thanksgiving service, saying, “…The last four years have been uneasy years of learning.” To become “a brand new president,” Obasanjo needs to effectively diagnose his failure and attack its virus. He must accept defeat and own up by relating his failure to his own actions and inactions as the executive president and commander-in-chief. Taking the escapist route of blaming the “uneasy learning process” portends only three possibilities: he has a wrong diagnosis of his illness, or he is not sincere enough to admit it, or both.
An advice worth giving Obasanjo and his handlers here is that they should allow his actions to speak louder than his words. His actions since 4-19 tell us he is still the ‘old brand’ president we know.
ASUU and Mammy-Market Scholars
Between ASUU and Mammy-Market Scholars
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
May 30, 2003
I was a lecturer for nearly a decade, up to 1992. Now I am a student again, waiting to graduate this year. Next year, I will hopefully be a parent to one of the students in our universities. So from all angles I am a stakeholder in the ongoing face-off between the Federal Government and Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Without any hesitation, today, I intend to give Obasanjo and his government a lethal blow in support of my former colleagues who I believe have been undergoing difficult times for over five months now. After this while, the government has not responded to any of their demands and our commentators have virtually turned the union into a punching bag, leaving the main culprit – the federal government – to go Scot-free. A very worrying part of the crisis is that Obasanjo, the most prolific scholar of Mammy-Market Literature and now again the ‘President, no thanks to 4-19, is being more vulgar in language than any other commentator on the matter.
What is the crime of ASUU? The association simply wants the federal government to implement an agreement it freely reached with the union in June 2001. The most important article of that agreement is the issue of funding our universities. The lecturers are advocating for compliance, over a period of say three years, with a standard of 26% of our federal and state budgets to be used in the entire education sector. With their share from the allocation the universities – not the lecturers – can embark on updating their libraries and equipping their laboratories, building new hostels and conducting research, thereby gradually bringing life back to our universities. They are also protesting the commercialisation of the universities, deceptively called “autonomy”, that will make university education inaccessible to the children of common Nigerians. And in Nigeria 99.9% of the population are commoners.
In addition, my former colleagues are demanding the reinstatement of 60, yes 60, staff of University of Ilorin, 44 of whom are lecturers whose appointments were terminated for participating in nationwide strike, a termination that a government visitation panel described “unjust”. Of course, the list is not complete without some minor requests like review of their salaries, loans and allowances, as any other union would demand in a mismanaged economy decimated by a sky-hitting inflation.
The response of Obasanjo and his government, as usual, is to renege on every article of that agreement. The government now capitulates that it has many sectors to deal with. So 26% of its expenditure is too much for education alone. It also has things like sports and foreign trips to fund. Agreed that the universities need funds, the government argues, the best way to get such funds is to commercialise the universities. On the dismissed lecturers, Obasanjo is asking them to count themselves lucky. He would have meted a greater punishment on them if it were not for their respectable position as university teachers, he said. To crown his belligerence, even at the height of his last campaign, Obasanjo dismissed having anything to negotiate with the lecturers on.
Public commentators have joined their Commander-in-Chief in singing the anti-aluta ‘anthem’. Some are even using the same pedestrian parlance, calling the striking lecturers “irresponsible” for demanding 26% of our budget. Is it too much to spend 26% of your income on the education of your children? Almost every commentator is asking ASUU to call off the strike, unconditionally. None is applying any heat on the government to get it do something tangible on its part. The devil is ASUU. Simple.
The truth is that recent successive governments have been as slow as the dinosaur in responding to the poor condition of learning in our universities. Very little has improved since the Attahiru Jega-led strike in 1992. Successive governments have only responded by reviewing the personal benefits of the lecturers while leaving the remaining demands to wane with time. While we crucify ASUU for a five months strike, we have left the government to go away acquitted from a charge of over a decade-long literal ‘murder’ of learning in our institutions and forsaking the future of our children.
Perhaps some statistics will help to give the reader a better picture of the condition of our universities. Not a single additional room in the name of hostel has been built in Ahmadu Bello University since the last hall – Suleiman Hall – was completed in 1976. That is 27 years! Yet the population of students in that university is now over 30,000, seven times more than what it was in 1976. The last hostels constructed at Usmanu Danfodio University and University of Jos were in the early 80s. At the students’ village of UNIJOS, I have seen a kitchen – yes kitchen – area of a former dining hall partitioned as female students’ hostel at N10,000 per bed-space! It is still so. In Nigerian universities, more than 95% of journal subscriptions have not been renewed since 1983. Twenty years! No new science equipment has been bought for laboratories apart from those available, again, twenty years ago. Now over 95% of them are either stolen or unserviceable. I know a department that could boast of hundreds of microscopes in 1982 but today has only one left! Not a single litre or gram of reagent is available. That is the condition of the universities.
Why do we then blame the lecturers for turning out half-baked graduates under such situations? In fact, if it were not for the competition for survival between WAEC and NECO that has depreciated the standard of our GCE, over 90% of the students wouldn’t have qualified for admission into the universities. How could our lecturers produce a fine fabric of silk from raffia?
Actually the condition has pricked the conscience of all patriotic Nigerians, not only ASUU’s. Nine years ago an eminent former Vice Chancellors, Professor Ishaya Audu, delivered a lecture on The National Moral Crisis: The Role of Education at Arewa House, saying:
“Collapse of standards at the university level has not only national but international, short and long-term implications. A so-called ‘Honours Graduate’ in science in Nigeria today may not have seen, let alone performed, basic standard scientific experiments. He may not compare favourably with even a secondary school graduate in a developed country. He certainly has not read the latest scientific textbooks in his subject since they are not available in the library not to talk of current scientific journals. How could Nigeria then compete in the modern scientific world? Is it any wonder that our country is literally ‘developing backwards’? …Where university lecture theatres were built to accommodate 350 students some social science classes now average one thousand students attending lectures at a time, hence more than half of the students stay outside trying to catch the voice of the distraught and overstretched lecturer. How could such a ‘graduate’ stand his ground in the international arena as a supposed diplomat? Need one say more!”
Yes Prof., when you are dealing with Mammy-Market scholars. Nine years after his speech nothing has happened. Certainly Professor Audu is not one of those Obasanjo could describe as “irresponsible”, “skirt-chasers”, or “handout sellers”. The problem is not the lecturers but a ‘democratic’ government that has failed, worse than the military regimes before it, to respond to the demands of its people. In the past four years the country has consistently earned annually more foreign exchange than any previous government in Nigeria. With a slight sense of responsibility, part of that money would have been used to purchase equipment, journals and textbooks for our institutions as well as finance conference trips and study and sabbatical leave of many lecturers. Locally, more hostels, laboratories and lecture theatres would have been built to cater for the ever-increasing intake, with better supply of electricity and water. Instead, throughout his first tenure, Obasanjo has disappointed us with series of multi-billion Naira corruption scandals, making mother earth to rank our country its second most corrupt son.
With over 70% of Nigerians earning less than a dollar per day, how does the government expect the Nigerian public to fund education? How could the country with one of the lowest per capita income in the world expect to produce scholars like Professors Ishaya Audu, Iya Abubakar, Wole Soyinka, Akingkube and Jibril Aminu by commercialising university education? Let us remember that state governments still give only N7,000.00 ($50) as annual scholarship award for their students. Education would then become available only to children of corrupt ex-generals, government bureaucrats and petty-bourgeoisie, who after all, lack the motivation and endurance to sit down and learn.
The answer to the present crisis in our education sector is one: let us look at Obasanjo straight in the eyes and say: “Hey, our money is not for maintaining fleet of cars for every minister, adviser, permanent secretary and director in addition to the billions spent on their accommodation. Neither is it for purchasing an extra-presidential jet, or spending endless nights on overseas visit, or for constructing a sixty-five billion Naira stadium, or for rigging elections. It is for building our society in which education is foremost. Therefore, what is your commitment to improving the condition of learning in our schools?” Surprisingly, I do not think Obasanjo has promised anybody anything in this regard before his 4-19 re-election.
Without such commitment I wonder what will the lecturers return to their duty for. Should they resume lecturing over 1000 students in theatres meant to cater for only 350, or teaching without recent textbooks or up-to-date journals, or continue producing science graduates and medical doctors without any single laboratory experiment – not even a glance through a microscope or working on any cadaver?
Well since everybody is asking the lecturers to return and find alternative means of resolving the impasse, I have a suggestion for them. Let them say, “Okay, Okay. Let the universities open again but no more “half-baked graduates.” We vow never again to graduate any student who cannot ‘stand his ground in international arena’. No science student will graduate until he completes all prescribed practical lessons, the lack of facilities not withstanding. It is none of our business. No student will pass any course in the university without writing his assignments using the latest literature in the subject. Let the students remain where they are for decades. Should any of them complain, we would refer him to the university management for explanation.”
Finally, the National Universities Commission (NUC) would within few months visit the Villa and tell Obasanjo, “Look, university is not Mammy-Market. We need enough theatres and hostels, equipped laboratories, well-stocked libraries, and so on. You either provide funds for these or we will be forced to close the universities indefinitely.” At the end some leftovers from the national booty will start trickling down to the universities. Only on this condition should ASUU call off its strike. And nobody who has been to a university will blame the dons for applying the principle of total quality control.
Meanwhile, I believe that ASUU by going on strike without pay for five months has expressed enough concern for the future of our children. However, they are getting nothing in return more than insults delivered in the pedestrian vocabulary of Mammy-Market scholarship.
In spite of what the critics of our lecturers say, I am bent on sending my daughter only to a Nigerian university. But as she leaves for the first time I will have a word of wisdom for her: “Daughter, once on campus, a skirt must not be your best dress.”
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
May 30, 2003
I was a lecturer for nearly a decade, up to 1992. Now I am a student again, waiting to graduate this year. Next year, I will hopefully be a parent to one of the students in our universities. So from all angles I am a stakeholder in the ongoing face-off between the Federal Government and Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
Without any hesitation, today, I intend to give Obasanjo and his government a lethal blow in support of my former colleagues who I believe have been undergoing difficult times for over five months now. After this while, the government has not responded to any of their demands and our commentators have virtually turned the union into a punching bag, leaving the main culprit – the federal government – to go Scot-free. A very worrying part of the crisis is that Obasanjo, the most prolific scholar of Mammy-Market Literature and now again the ‘President, no thanks to 4-19, is being more vulgar in language than any other commentator on the matter.
What is the crime of ASUU? The association simply wants the federal government to implement an agreement it freely reached with the union in June 2001. The most important article of that agreement is the issue of funding our universities. The lecturers are advocating for compliance, over a period of say three years, with a standard of 26% of our federal and state budgets to be used in the entire education sector. With their share from the allocation the universities – not the lecturers – can embark on updating their libraries and equipping their laboratories, building new hostels and conducting research, thereby gradually bringing life back to our universities. They are also protesting the commercialisation of the universities, deceptively called “autonomy”, that will make university education inaccessible to the children of common Nigerians. And in Nigeria 99.9% of the population are commoners.
In addition, my former colleagues are demanding the reinstatement of 60, yes 60, staff of University of Ilorin, 44 of whom are lecturers whose appointments were terminated for participating in nationwide strike, a termination that a government visitation panel described “unjust”. Of course, the list is not complete without some minor requests like review of their salaries, loans and allowances, as any other union would demand in a mismanaged economy decimated by a sky-hitting inflation.
The response of Obasanjo and his government, as usual, is to renege on every article of that agreement. The government now capitulates that it has many sectors to deal with. So 26% of its expenditure is too much for education alone. It also has things like sports and foreign trips to fund. Agreed that the universities need funds, the government argues, the best way to get such funds is to commercialise the universities. On the dismissed lecturers, Obasanjo is asking them to count themselves lucky. He would have meted a greater punishment on them if it were not for their respectable position as university teachers, he said. To crown his belligerence, even at the height of his last campaign, Obasanjo dismissed having anything to negotiate with the lecturers on.
Public commentators have joined their Commander-in-Chief in singing the anti-aluta ‘anthem’. Some are even using the same pedestrian parlance, calling the striking lecturers “irresponsible” for demanding 26% of our budget. Is it too much to spend 26% of your income on the education of your children? Almost every commentator is asking ASUU to call off the strike, unconditionally. None is applying any heat on the government to get it do something tangible on its part. The devil is ASUU. Simple.
The truth is that recent successive governments have been as slow as the dinosaur in responding to the poor condition of learning in our universities. Very little has improved since the Attahiru Jega-led strike in 1992. Successive governments have only responded by reviewing the personal benefits of the lecturers while leaving the remaining demands to wane with time. While we crucify ASUU for a five months strike, we have left the government to go away acquitted from a charge of over a decade-long literal ‘murder’ of learning in our institutions and forsaking the future of our children.
Perhaps some statistics will help to give the reader a better picture of the condition of our universities. Not a single additional room in the name of hostel has been built in Ahmadu Bello University since the last hall – Suleiman Hall – was completed in 1976. That is 27 years! Yet the population of students in that university is now over 30,000, seven times more than what it was in 1976. The last hostels constructed at Usmanu Danfodio University and University of Jos were in the early 80s. At the students’ village of UNIJOS, I have seen a kitchen – yes kitchen – area of a former dining hall partitioned as female students’ hostel at N10,000 per bed-space! It is still so. In Nigerian universities, more than 95% of journal subscriptions have not been renewed since 1983. Twenty years! No new science equipment has been bought for laboratories apart from those available, again, twenty years ago. Now over 95% of them are either stolen or unserviceable. I know a department that could boast of hundreds of microscopes in 1982 but today has only one left! Not a single litre or gram of reagent is available. That is the condition of the universities.
Why do we then blame the lecturers for turning out half-baked graduates under such situations? In fact, if it were not for the competition for survival between WAEC and NECO that has depreciated the standard of our GCE, over 90% of the students wouldn’t have qualified for admission into the universities. How could our lecturers produce a fine fabric of silk from raffia?
Actually the condition has pricked the conscience of all patriotic Nigerians, not only ASUU’s. Nine years ago an eminent former Vice Chancellors, Professor Ishaya Audu, delivered a lecture on The National Moral Crisis: The Role of Education at Arewa House, saying:
“Collapse of standards at the university level has not only national but international, short and long-term implications. A so-called ‘Honours Graduate’ in science in Nigeria today may not have seen, let alone performed, basic standard scientific experiments. He may not compare favourably with even a secondary school graduate in a developed country. He certainly has not read the latest scientific textbooks in his subject since they are not available in the library not to talk of current scientific journals. How could Nigeria then compete in the modern scientific world? Is it any wonder that our country is literally ‘developing backwards’? …Where university lecture theatres were built to accommodate 350 students some social science classes now average one thousand students attending lectures at a time, hence more than half of the students stay outside trying to catch the voice of the distraught and overstretched lecturer. How could such a ‘graduate’ stand his ground in the international arena as a supposed diplomat? Need one say more!”
Yes Prof., when you are dealing with Mammy-Market scholars. Nine years after his speech nothing has happened. Certainly Professor Audu is not one of those Obasanjo could describe as “irresponsible”, “skirt-chasers”, or “handout sellers”. The problem is not the lecturers but a ‘democratic’ government that has failed, worse than the military regimes before it, to respond to the demands of its people. In the past four years the country has consistently earned annually more foreign exchange than any previous government in Nigeria. With a slight sense of responsibility, part of that money would have been used to purchase equipment, journals and textbooks for our institutions as well as finance conference trips and study and sabbatical leave of many lecturers. Locally, more hostels, laboratories and lecture theatres would have been built to cater for the ever-increasing intake, with better supply of electricity and water. Instead, throughout his first tenure, Obasanjo has disappointed us with series of multi-billion Naira corruption scandals, making mother earth to rank our country its second most corrupt son.
With over 70% of Nigerians earning less than a dollar per day, how does the government expect the Nigerian public to fund education? How could the country with one of the lowest per capita income in the world expect to produce scholars like Professors Ishaya Audu, Iya Abubakar, Wole Soyinka, Akingkube and Jibril Aminu by commercialising university education? Let us remember that state governments still give only N7,000.00 ($50) as annual scholarship award for their students. Education would then become available only to children of corrupt ex-generals, government bureaucrats and petty-bourgeoisie, who after all, lack the motivation and endurance to sit down and learn.
The answer to the present crisis in our education sector is one: let us look at Obasanjo straight in the eyes and say: “Hey, our money is not for maintaining fleet of cars for every minister, adviser, permanent secretary and director in addition to the billions spent on their accommodation. Neither is it for purchasing an extra-presidential jet, or spending endless nights on overseas visit, or for constructing a sixty-five billion Naira stadium, or for rigging elections. It is for building our society in which education is foremost. Therefore, what is your commitment to improving the condition of learning in our schools?” Surprisingly, I do not think Obasanjo has promised anybody anything in this regard before his 4-19 re-election.
Without such commitment I wonder what will the lecturers return to their duty for. Should they resume lecturing over 1000 students in theatres meant to cater for only 350, or teaching without recent textbooks or up-to-date journals, or continue producing science graduates and medical doctors without any single laboratory experiment – not even a glance through a microscope or working on any cadaver?
Well since everybody is asking the lecturers to return and find alternative means of resolving the impasse, I have a suggestion for them. Let them say, “Okay, Okay. Let the universities open again but no more “half-baked graduates.” We vow never again to graduate any student who cannot ‘stand his ground in international arena’. No science student will graduate until he completes all prescribed practical lessons, the lack of facilities not withstanding. It is none of our business. No student will pass any course in the university without writing his assignments using the latest literature in the subject. Let the students remain where they are for decades. Should any of them complain, we would refer him to the university management for explanation.”
Finally, the National Universities Commission (NUC) would within few months visit the Villa and tell Obasanjo, “Look, university is not Mammy-Market. We need enough theatres and hostels, equipped laboratories, well-stocked libraries, and so on. You either provide funds for these or we will be forced to close the universities indefinitely.” At the end some leftovers from the national booty will start trickling down to the universities. Only on this condition should ASUU call off its strike. And nobody who has been to a university will blame the dons for applying the principle of total quality control.
Meanwhile, I believe that ASUU by going on strike without pay for five months has expressed enough concern for the future of our children. However, they are getting nothing in return more than insults delivered in the pedestrian vocabulary of Mammy-Market scholarship.
In spite of what the critics of our lecturers say, I am bent on sending my daughter only to a Nigerian university. But as she leaves for the first time I will have a word of wisdom for her: “Daughter, once on campus, a skirt must not be your best dress.”
The Monster Ahead
The Monster Ahead
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
In our discussion today, we will examine the threat of a one-party dominated Nigeria following the ‘victory’ of the PDP in the last election. Voices of conscience are beginning to alert the nation of its dangers.
Without any ambiguity, it is universally accepted that one-party dominated state is a total negation of what democracy stands for: choice. Nevertheless, the President has been advocating for it, purporting that from our experience multi-party democracy accentuates our “disintegrative tendencies.” On the contrary, both theory and practice would easily convince the dispassionate that a widespread ‘victory’ won by fraudulent electoral practice will only result in further corruption, apathy and, possibly, a shutdown.
Theory
In his book, Democratisation, first published in 1993, Professor Ben O. Nwabueze, a prolific law author and member of The Patriots, noted that “election rigging is a tragic aberration more for what it portends for the future than for the harm it has done in the past and present… A political party which has no chance of ever winning an election will have lost the raison d’etre for its existence. Sooner or later it will fade away through its members defecting to the ruling party as the hazards of opposition weigh more and more heavily upon them. In the process, the ruling party will eventually emerge as the only party for all practical purposes.”
To appreciate how the author arrived at this conclusion, it is necessary to present other premises of his argument in addition to the effects of hazards of opposition mentioned above. He wrote:
“From the standpoint of the political parties and their candidates, rigging deprives election of its character as a competition in which all the contestants can equally aspire to win. Where the capacity of the contestants to rig is vastly unequal because one of them is in a position of irresistible influence over the electoral body and has power of control and direction over the organised coercive force of the country, represented by the police, as well as vastly greater resources of money and patronage, then the other contestants have no real chance of winning. An election in these circumstances cannot be a competition in any meaningful sense of the word.
"An election contest in which the result is not determined by the votes lawfully cast for the contestants but by fraudulent manipulation is a mockery of the very idea of a competition. And without free competition for power, politics loses its essence. It is part of the terrible thing about election rigging that once successfully employed by a political party to get itself into power the tendency is for the party, rather than give it up and thereby risk defeat at future elections, to try to perfect its forms and techniques to a point where it becomes entrenched as part of the political culture, thereby excluding altogether the chances of elections ever being conducted in a free and fair manner."
Let us summarize what the author said above by saying that where rigging becomes the chief instrument of winning election, equality in aspiration to win could only exist when there is equality in the capacity to rig. Capacity to rig here is defined by three parameters: one, position of irresistible influence over the electoral body; two, power of control and direction over the organised coercive force of the country – represented by the police; and three, vastly greater resources of money and patronage. Since the opposition doesn’t have any share in the ‘possession’ of the electoral body, the police and the treasury, it should never expect to win. The ruling party then can stay in power almost ad infinitum.
Practice
The experience of nations especially in Africa and the Middle East has proved the absolute validity of Nwabueze’s argument. Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Kenya, Zambia, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Iraq – to mention few – have all claimed to be multiparty democracies while in actual fact each of them is ruled by only one party for decades. Toppling such parties, as we have seen recently in Kenya and nearly in Zimbabwe, is possible only after prolonged subjugation and final resolution of the entire nation, expressed through the ‘rainbow’ confederation of other parties. In the extreme, Iraq had to be ‘liberated’ from the clutch of the tyrannical Ba’athist Party only by foreign occupation.
The tendency in Nigeria is for any party in control of federal government to use its position to manipulate the electoral process to the total disadvantage of the others. Most of us will vividly recall how in August 1983 President Shehu Shagari’s government conducted national elections in which his party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), won a ‘landslide victory’ that clearly resulted from rigging.
On the conduct of the elections, late Dele Giwa wrote an article, The Comic Republic, published in Sunday Concord of September 25, 1983, saying, “To say the elections which took place in Nigeria were rigged is to be guilty of inadequacy of apt language. The truth is that the word has not yet been coined to give expression to what has happened to the democratic process in Nigeria.”
The main opposition party then, Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), was among the first to right away raise the alarm against the emerging one-party state. Apparently condemning FEDECO’s declaration that NPN had swept the senatorial polls in Oyo State, the UPN said that such a development had confirmed the “total subjugation of the country and Nigerians into a one-party dictatorship.”
Then Ray Ekpu wrote an article in his column titled The Bogey of One Party State published in the National Concord of September 4, 1983, saying, “If it comes as a result of democratic process, as I am sure is going to happen in 1987, I don’t see anybody going to vote anywhere other than the NPN in 1987…
“I do not believe that the founding fathers of the Second Republic intended that we should spend one billion Naira and go through the excruciating motion of campaigning and elections if they didn’t intend that we should have a choice…”
Those were the voices of yesterday. Today, twenty years later, the nation is again under another siege, by a conqueror that is as clever in the art of rigging as the NPN. The PDP government has conducted elections recently in which it won 28 out of the 36 states in the country; with another majority in both houses of the National Assembly and, of course, the presidency. The dexterity exhibited by the party in manipulating the elections and sentiments of Nigerians is just excellent. In some local governments percentage voter turnout were as high as 100%. In what looks like magic, INEC reported a voter turnout of 156.7% in presidential votes of Plateau State and only 76.7% in its gubernatorial. And INEC was happy to publish these figures on the Internet.
While many Nigerians are disappointed with the outcome of the elections and we are still yet to hear the last from the courts regarding 4-19 especially, attention is starting to focus on the next four years and the consequences it entails on the future democracy in the country. If propriety over the electoral body, the police and the treasury is what is required to perpetuate the power of a party committed to fraud, then the PDP is here to stay. It is a reality, sad though, which we cannot run away from.
As for rigging in the future, the PDP will not “give it up and thereby risk defeat at future elections,” to recall Nwabueze’s thesis, but “try to perfect its forms and techniques to a point where it becomes entrenched as part of the political culture.” So in 2007, we expect INEC to be more inefficient and more compliant to the wishes of the presidency than it is today. Sure, the police force then will be better equipped and ready to assist INEC and the PDP in perpetrating more bizarre electoral malpractices than thumb-printing ballot papers in public view, arresting opposition leaders or candidates and chasing away their agents at polling stations. The greatest casualty will be the treasury. Without the fear of any accountability, it will be looted completely to finance party resorts, campaigns and election rigging.
Consequences and Choice
That is why opposition voices, the media and civil rights groups rose to fight against the victory of the NPN in 1983. Today, also, there are voices, few though, with the conscience to speak the truth and warn the nation of the dangers ahead. In a recent interview, human rights activist and author, Arthur Nwankwo, was unequivocal in raising the alarm of the impending disaster, as reported in the cover story of Insider magazine this week:
“The declarations or selections announced of the 2003 polling exercise represent the fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional attempt of General Obasanjo, using his carefully-chosen and entrenched agents in INEC with Abel Goubadia as chairman, as chief agent, and unfortunately with the military and police supervising, to foist on Nigerians his own brand of dictatorship via a one-party state.
“The choice before Nigerians is, therefore, quite clear: either to resist and reject the attempt in all its manifestations or acquiesce to their eternal regret. I believe Nigerians will choose on the side of democracy. Victory in this present battle will set our democracy on an irresistible course.”
I am sorry to state that amidst the preponderance of PDP’s conquest and the tremendous resources – including primordial sentiments – it is ready to invest in an elaborate conspiracy to consolidate its victory, voices like that of Nwankwo could hardly be heard. And if they are ever heard, they will stand rejected.
There are enough arsenals in the hands of the PDP to subvert the efforts and unity of the opposition conglomerate, Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP). A good section of the press is already committed to brutalizing the image of the opposition as bad losers. The International Community was quick to disregard the reports of its observers and send its congratulations to Obasanjo through the voices of Bush, Blair and Chirac... How then could it support the voice of opposition? Perhaps, it is still subscribing to the belief that ‘despotism’ is what ‘the barbarians’ deserve, as expounded by John Stuart Mill in the 19th Century, or it knows fully that only despotism – not true democracy – could guarantee its economic interest in our country.
More disturbing for Nigerians, however, is the conspiracy of three factors that will enable Obasanjo to successfully forge ahead with his one party state. One is his ideological commitment to it. Right now he is ready to concede that only two or three parties are enough. But as the Insider has quoted from his reply to Arthur Nwankwo in 1989, he believes that “one party system is very much in consonance with a possible and logical outcome of our political development. And I still stand by that…” In another place he claims that “a well thought one-party system is “an effective panacea to the disintegrative tendencies in our political system.”
It is wishful to reason that by simply belonging to the same party, all ‘disintegrative tendencies’ of party members will dissolve or withdraw to a position of “integrative” alignment in the absence of any ideological force that will bind them to its grid other than the greed. The party becomes another heterogeneous body, as the nation it seeks to unite, expressing in it all differences regarding the national question and which, as a result of the internal friction will decelerate the system to standstill.
Two, the same ‘disintegrative tendencies’ that Obasanjo decried – regional and ethnic – are today the strongest pillars that support the hegemony of his party. In the last election, the Southwest supported him clearly not because it wants to belong to what its politicians call ‘the mainstream of Nigerian politics’ but because of ethnic considerations. Added to this, with active collaboration of the chairmen of the PDP and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), sectarian sentiments have become the claws that enable the grip of the party on many Christians outside the Southwest. Obasanjo is publicly presented on national television as a CAN president. His critics must therefore be ready to stand the intolerance of these clerics who have occupied the heart of the president.
Three, with a total control over his party, and the party having majority in national and state assemblies, nothing, practically nothing, can stop the President from amending the constitution to limit the number of parties in the country and review his tenure beyond 2007.
Obasanjo’s defendants are saying that his experience in the last four years has changed his penchant for a one-party Nigeria. That is for the marines! His record as a president clearly points at his intolerant tendency. He portrayed a complete disregard for the legislature, the arm of government that is the main difference between military and democratic rule in Nigeria and which, together with the judiciary, are assigned the constitutional duty of checking the excesses of the executive. He first preferred to foist on it unfit leadership, people with a screw thumb of forged documents: Evans Enwerem and Salisu Buhari. When Okadigbo and Na’Abba took over, he sponsored many attempts to impeach them, succeeding in the former. His opposition for the legislature took him as far as committing forgery.
The fear now is that, in consonance with the disposition of one-party states, tyranny will be the lot of Nigerians in the next four years and beyond. The dominant party in such a state appropriates the sovereignty of the nation. Opposing the party or the people controlling it is interpreted as violating the sovereignty of the state. Violence becomes inevitable and treason becomes the common charge used to imprison or annihilate opposition. In the words of Danlami Nmodu, one-party system “fosters the rule of terror. In most instances, the tragic tales of police state and Gestapo take root and opposition members are stifled with unmitigated ruthlessness…” Back in 1983, Ray Ekpu said, “You can’t look back at history of one party state without terror, nor look forward without despair.”
It is the despair of the future that all patriotic citizens of this country must move quickly to avert. This is a nation of over 110million people, 70% of whom are living under poverty, over 60% illiterates who in the last four years have shown their readiness to serve as foot soldiers of regional and sectarian causes. It is a highly inflammable country…
Thus, Nmodu concluded his article, The One Party Tragedy, saying, “It needs be stated that the logic of contemporary development imposes a special duty on the people to gird their loins against any recrudescence of autocracy, tyranny and dictatorship which the one party system seeks to foist. The freedom to choose is inalienable. It should be jealously guarded to save the nation.”
Conclusion
However the signal that Nigerians will stand up against the one-party monster is as weak today as it was in 1983. In The Guardian of August 25, 1983, Pini Jason described his disappointment that in spite of the massive rigging that took place, Nigerians will allow a government to be formed on the basis of that election: “In all we have done so far, our public functionaries have shown that generally, there is no beauty and no sense of the good in our lives. That we are not determined climbers seeking to reach the Everest of excellence. Our shoddy performance surprisingly imbues us with contentment – that most debilitating state.”
We expressed a similar degree of pessimism last week in this column. Very few Nigerians will be ready “to gird their loins against… autocracy, tyranny and dictatorship.” As a way out Nigerians prefer to look on to the other party – the military – for rescue. Nowhere was this better expressed than in the bargain between Chief MKO Abiola and the service chiefs in his bid to actualise June 12.
Carried by the desire to maintain democracy today, the military option looks illogical to many. However, it once made sense, at least economically, as calculated by Ray Ekpu in 1983 when he spoke against the then emerging one-party scenario:
“If this is what we want, I suggest that the civilians cannot do it right, in which case they may as well allow the soldiers to do it. And since a small band of generals or majors needs no Houses of Assembly, we may even get some change back.”
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
In our discussion today, we will examine the threat of a one-party dominated Nigeria following the ‘victory’ of the PDP in the last election. Voices of conscience are beginning to alert the nation of its dangers.
Without any ambiguity, it is universally accepted that one-party dominated state is a total negation of what democracy stands for: choice. Nevertheless, the President has been advocating for it, purporting that from our experience multi-party democracy accentuates our “disintegrative tendencies.” On the contrary, both theory and practice would easily convince the dispassionate that a widespread ‘victory’ won by fraudulent electoral practice will only result in further corruption, apathy and, possibly, a shutdown.
Theory
In his book, Democratisation, first published in 1993, Professor Ben O. Nwabueze, a prolific law author and member of The Patriots, noted that “election rigging is a tragic aberration more for what it portends for the future than for the harm it has done in the past and present… A political party which has no chance of ever winning an election will have lost the raison d’etre for its existence. Sooner or later it will fade away through its members defecting to the ruling party as the hazards of opposition weigh more and more heavily upon them. In the process, the ruling party will eventually emerge as the only party for all practical purposes.”
To appreciate how the author arrived at this conclusion, it is necessary to present other premises of his argument in addition to the effects of hazards of opposition mentioned above. He wrote:
“From the standpoint of the political parties and their candidates, rigging deprives election of its character as a competition in which all the contestants can equally aspire to win. Where the capacity of the contestants to rig is vastly unequal because one of them is in a position of irresistible influence over the electoral body and has power of control and direction over the organised coercive force of the country, represented by the police, as well as vastly greater resources of money and patronage, then the other contestants have no real chance of winning. An election in these circumstances cannot be a competition in any meaningful sense of the word.
"An election contest in which the result is not determined by the votes lawfully cast for the contestants but by fraudulent manipulation is a mockery of the very idea of a competition. And without free competition for power, politics loses its essence. It is part of the terrible thing about election rigging that once successfully employed by a political party to get itself into power the tendency is for the party, rather than give it up and thereby risk defeat at future elections, to try to perfect its forms and techniques to a point where it becomes entrenched as part of the political culture, thereby excluding altogether the chances of elections ever being conducted in a free and fair manner."
Let us summarize what the author said above by saying that where rigging becomes the chief instrument of winning election, equality in aspiration to win could only exist when there is equality in the capacity to rig. Capacity to rig here is defined by three parameters: one, position of irresistible influence over the electoral body; two, power of control and direction over the organised coercive force of the country – represented by the police; and three, vastly greater resources of money and patronage. Since the opposition doesn’t have any share in the ‘possession’ of the electoral body, the police and the treasury, it should never expect to win. The ruling party then can stay in power almost ad infinitum.
Practice
The experience of nations especially in Africa and the Middle East has proved the absolute validity of Nwabueze’s argument. Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Kenya, Zambia, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Iraq – to mention few – have all claimed to be multiparty democracies while in actual fact each of them is ruled by only one party for decades. Toppling such parties, as we have seen recently in Kenya and nearly in Zimbabwe, is possible only after prolonged subjugation and final resolution of the entire nation, expressed through the ‘rainbow’ confederation of other parties. In the extreme, Iraq had to be ‘liberated’ from the clutch of the tyrannical Ba’athist Party only by foreign occupation.
The tendency in Nigeria is for any party in control of federal government to use its position to manipulate the electoral process to the total disadvantage of the others. Most of us will vividly recall how in August 1983 President Shehu Shagari’s government conducted national elections in which his party, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), won a ‘landslide victory’ that clearly resulted from rigging.
On the conduct of the elections, late Dele Giwa wrote an article, The Comic Republic, published in Sunday Concord of September 25, 1983, saying, “To say the elections which took place in Nigeria were rigged is to be guilty of inadequacy of apt language. The truth is that the word has not yet been coined to give expression to what has happened to the democratic process in Nigeria.”
The main opposition party then, Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), was among the first to right away raise the alarm against the emerging one-party state. Apparently condemning FEDECO’s declaration that NPN had swept the senatorial polls in Oyo State, the UPN said that such a development had confirmed the “total subjugation of the country and Nigerians into a one-party dictatorship.”
Then Ray Ekpu wrote an article in his column titled The Bogey of One Party State published in the National Concord of September 4, 1983, saying, “If it comes as a result of democratic process, as I am sure is going to happen in 1987, I don’t see anybody going to vote anywhere other than the NPN in 1987…
“I do not believe that the founding fathers of the Second Republic intended that we should spend one billion Naira and go through the excruciating motion of campaigning and elections if they didn’t intend that we should have a choice…”
Those were the voices of yesterday. Today, twenty years later, the nation is again under another siege, by a conqueror that is as clever in the art of rigging as the NPN. The PDP government has conducted elections recently in which it won 28 out of the 36 states in the country; with another majority in both houses of the National Assembly and, of course, the presidency. The dexterity exhibited by the party in manipulating the elections and sentiments of Nigerians is just excellent. In some local governments percentage voter turnout were as high as 100%. In what looks like magic, INEC reported a voter turnout of 156.7% in presidential votes of Plateau State and only 76.7% in its gubernatorial. And INEC was happy to publish these figures on the Internet.
While many Nigerians are disappointed with the outcome of the elections and we are still yet to hear the last from the courts regarding 4-19 especially, attention is starting to focus on the next four years and the consequences it entails on the future democracy in the country. If propriety over the electoral body, the police and the treasury is what is required to perpetuate the power of a party committed to fraud, then the PDP is here to stay. It is a reality, sad though, which we cannot run away from.
As for rigging in the future, the PDP will not “give it up and thereby risk defeat at future elections,” to recall Nwabueze’s thesis, but “try to perfect its forms and techniques to a point where it becomes entrenched as part of the political culture.” So in 2007, we expect INEC to be more inefficient and more compliant to the wishes of the presidency than it is today. Sure, the police force then will be better equipped and ready to assist INEC and the PDP in perpetrating more bizarre electoral malpractices than thumb-printing ballot papers in public view, arresting opposition leaders or candidates and chasing away their agents at polling stations. The greatest casualty will be the treasury. Without the fear of any accountability, it will be looted completely to finance party resorts, campaigns and election rigging.
Consequences and Choice
That is why opposition voices, the media and civil rights groups rose to fight against the victory of the NPN in 1983. Today, also, there are voices, few though, with the conscience to speak the truth and warn the nation of the dangers ahead. In a recent interview, human rights activist and author, Arthur Nwankwo, was unequivocal in raising the alarm of the impending disaster, as reported in the cover story of Insider magazine this week:
“The declarations or selections announced of the 2003 polling exercise represent the fraudulent, illegal and unconstitutional attempt of General Obasanjo, using his carefully-chosen and entrenched agents in INEC with Abel Goubadia as chairman, as chief agent, and unfortunately with the military and police supervising, to foist on Nigerians his own brand of dictatorship via a one-party state.
“The choice before Nigerians is, therefore, quite clear: either to resist and reject the attempt in all its manifestations or acquiesce to their eternal regret. I believe Nigerians will choose on the side of democracy. Victory in this present battle will set our democracy on an irresistible course.”
I am sorry to state that amidst the preponderance of PDP’s conquest and the tremendous resources – including primordial sentiments – it is ready to invest in an elaborate conspiracy to consolidate its victory, voices like that of Nwankwo could hardly be heard. And if they are ever heard, they will stand rejected.
There are enough arsenals in the hands of the PDP to subvert the efforts and unity of the opposition conglomerate, Conference of Nigerian Political Parties (CNPP). A good section of the press is already committed to brutalizing the image of the opposition as bad losers. The International Community was quick to disregard the reports of its observers and send its congratulations to Obasanjo through the voices of Bush, Blair and Chirac... How then could it support the voice of opposition? Perhaps, it is still subscribing to the belief that ‘despotism’ is what ‘the barbarians’ deserve, as expounded by John Stuart Mill in the 19th Century, or it knows fully that only despotism – not true democracy – could guarantee its economic interest in our country.
More disturbing for Nigerians, however, is the conspiracy of three factors that will enable Obasanjo to successfully forge ahead with his one party state. One is his ideological commitment to it. Right now he is ready to concede that only two or three parties are enough. But as the Insider has quoted from his reply to Arthur Nwankwo in 1989, he believes that “one party system is very much in consonance with a possible and logical outcome of our political development. And I still stand by that…” In another place he claims that “a well thought one-party system is “an effective panacea to the disintegrative tendencies in our political system.”
It is wishful to reason that by simply belonging to the same party, all ‘disintegrative tendencies’ of party members will dissolve or withdraw to a position of “integrative” alignment in the absence of any ideological force that will bind them to its grid other than the greed. The party becomes another heterogeneous body, as the nation it seeks to unite, expressing in it all differences regarding the national question and which, as a result of the internal friction will decelerate the system to standstill.
Two, the same ‘disintegrative tendencies’ that Obasanjo decried – regional and ethnic – are today the strongest pillars that support the hegemony of his party. In the last election, the Southwest supported him clearly not because it wants to belong to what its politicians call ‘the mainstream of Nigerian politics’ but because of ethnic considerations. Added to this, with active collaboration of the chairmen of the PDP and Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), sectarian sentiments have become the claws that enable the grip of the party on many Christians outside the Southwest. Obasanjo is publicly presented on national television as a CAN president. His critics must therefore be ready to stand the intolerance of these clerics who have occupied the heart of the president.
Three, with a total control over his party, and the party having majority in national and state assemblies, nothing, practically nothing, can stop the President from amending the constitution to limit the number of parties in the country and review his tenure beyond 2007.
Obasanjo’s defendants are saying that his experience in the last four years has changed his penchant for a one-party Nigeria. That is for the marines! His record as a president clearly points at his intolerant tendency. He portrayed a complete disregard for the legislature, the arm of government that is the main difference between military and democratic rule in Nigeria and which, together with the judiciary, are assigned the constitutional duty of checking the excesses of the executive. He first preferred to foist on it unfit leadership, people with a screw thumb of forged documents: Evans Enwerem and Salisu Buhari. When Okadigbo and Na’Abba took over, he sponsored many attempts to impeach them, succeeding in the former. His opposition for the legislature took him as far as committing forgery.
The fear now is that, in consonance with the disposition of one-party states, tyranny will be the lot of Nigerians in the next four years and beyond. The dominant party in such a state appropriates the sovereignty of the nation. Opposing the party or the people controlling it is interpreted as violating the sovereignty of the state. Violence becomes inevitable and treason becomes the common charge used to imprison or annihilate opposition. In the words of Danlami Nmodu, one-party system “fosters the rule of terror. In most instances, the tragic tales of police state and Gestapo take root and opposition members are stifled with unmitigated ruthlessness…” Back in 1983, Ray Ekpu said, “You can’t look back at history of one party state without terror, nor look forward without despair.”
It is the despair of the future that all patriotic citizens of this country must move quickly to avert. This is a nation of over 110million people, 70% of whom are living under poverty, over 60% illiterates who in the last four years have shown their readiness to serve as foot soldiers of regional and sectarian causes. It is a highly inflammable country…
Thus, Nmodu concluded his article, The One Party Tragedy, saying, “It needs be stated that the logic of contemporary development imposes a special duty on the people to gird their loins against any recrudescence of autocracy, tyranny and dictatorship which the one party system seeks to foist. The freedom to choose is inalienable. It should be jealously guarded to save the nation.”
Conclusion
However the signal that Nigerians will stand up against the one-party monster is as weak today as it was in 1983. In The Guardian of August 25, 1983, Pini Jason described his disappointment that in spite of the massive rigging that took place, Nigerians will allow a government to be formed on the basis of that election: “In all we have done so far, our public functionaries have shown that generally, there is no beauty and no sense of the good in our lives. That we are not determined climbers seeking to reach the Everest of excellence. Our shoddy performance surprisingly imbues us with contentment – that most debilitating state.”
We expressed a similar degree of pessimism last week in this column. Very few Nigerians will be ready “to gird their loins against… autocracy, tyranny and dictatorship.” As a way out Nigerians prefer to look on to the other party – the military – for rescue. Nowhere was this better expressed than in the bargain between Chief MKO Abiola and the service chiefs in his bid to actualise June 12.
Carried by the desire to maintain democracy today, the military option looks illogical to many. However, it once made sense, at least economically, as calculated by Ray Ekpu in 1983 when he spoke against the then emerging one-party scenario:
“If this is what we want, I suggest that the civilians cannot do it right, in which case they may as well allow the soldiers to do it. And since a small band of generals or majors needs no Houses of Assembly, we may even get some change back.”
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Discourse 130 The Sinking Titan
Friday, September 6, 2002
Obasanjo: The sinking Titan
Dr Aliyu Tilde
This is the text of Friday Discourse (130) which we could not publish three weeks ago.
It is three years since this column featured Obasanjo Has Failed, an article that passed a verdict of failure on this regime while it was only 100 days old. We did not call Obasanjo, sat him on the ground, and looked into the future of his administration by reading the sand, as Malam Babba Na Kofar Gabas would do. Neither were we the old woman in the famous song, Qari’atul Funjan, of the late Abdul Halim Hafiz, while sitting with Obasanjo in a café, read his overturned cup and said, "My son, you are doomed, you are doomed..."
Similes
We were neither Babba nor Hafiz. What we did was a rational calculation of the performance of Obasanjo against the background of our expectation as a nation as at May 1999. He is the captain of our ship for four years. Our opinion was high regarding his navigational competence, just as passengers of the Titanic had on their captain. Suddenly, to our utter dismay, we found that he could not read a compass properly. So right from our takeoff, he deflected from the course of his destination. All calls on him to do the right thing fell on deaf ears. He was dumb. Then, the weather became cloudy, the sky dark, and the winds violent. As the tides started to rise and twist the ship in whatever direction they pleased, we started seeing water seeping into some of its cabins. Who would, after seeing the impending disaster, wait for a Hafiz to tell him, "My son, you are doomed, you are doomed..."?
But men are those who even at points of desperation are given more to hope than to despondency. They would rely on necessity to ignite their instinct to escape danger in one way or another. When the instinct fail, some would pray for a miracle; others would subscribe to fortune. However, for Obasanjo, his instinct was too dull to capture the strength of the signals of the impending danger, so the ingenuity to device an escape failed to be ignited. Neither did he qualify for a miracle, of course, for the mountain of misdeed piled by his administration. As for fortune, it knocks only on the doors of the lucky, and Obasanjo was as unlucky as he was dumb and faulty. Who is surprised now that his ship is really sinking?
Obasanjo, we said in that article, came to power under a unique circumstance, when the entire nation believed that only a person like him could successfully lead the Fourth Republic out the mess it would inherit by May 29, 1999. Nigerians were humble in their hopes, which were limited only to national reconciliation, democracy and corruption. All that is needed was the honest intention of the leader and the goodwill of his citizens.
Nigerians were not naïve when they massively supported Obasanjo in 1999. They had valid reasons on which they founded their expectations. As a southerner, we thought Obasanjo was a good choice to quench the fires of hate and ethnic sentiments that were ignited by the crisis of June 12 and its aftermath. As the only military head of state then who handed over power to a civilian administration we thought he was honest enough to be entrusted with a country that had been brutalized for fourteen consecutive years. On corruption, we thought he was prudent enough not to permit the plunder of our resources. However, by his commissions and omissions, he has only helped to compound our problems. Now the Naira is officially at N130 to a dollar, food has tripled its price, and government is so bankrupt that it cannot even pay the salaries of university lecturers and magistrates. The worst part of it is that Obasanjo is not ready to go quietly.
As for the citizens, they have proved their support and loyalty beyond reasonable doubt by voting massively for him, regardless of party, ethnic and regional affiliations. It was left to the leader to sustain that support and nurture it further through performance which, though not expected to be wonderful, would at least start mitigating the suffering and turmoil of the past. Obasanjo deliberately chose to abandon the course of performance and preferred incompetence, condoned corruption, elevated sycophancy and pursued the parochial goals of vendetta and ethnic chauvinism.
We are the least happy regarding this development. We wished in the succeeding months and years Obasanjo were able to prove us wrong regarding what we said about his administration, 100 days into its tenure. Surely, this is our country; it is greater and far more important than the ego of any of us. After all, had he succeeded, we could have simply taken shelter in ascribing the inaccuracy of our prediction to the imprecision that escorts humans whenever they adventure into the wilderness of the future.
Corroboration
It is no longer 100 days now, not a year, not first half of the tenure. It is few months to its end. It is unfortunate that our earlier verdict regarding the performance of Obasanjo has come to typify the opinion of the majority. It is no longer only a North that laments over marginalization, underdevelopment or instigated unrests to divide its people for reasons of political expedience. Today, all zones of the country, except the Southwest, are complaining of neglect and inertia. They have come to appreciate the colossal incapacity of the President to competently administer our politics and economy. Even media houses that were hitherto enthusiastic about supporting him, together with those who used to dine over his table at Aso Rock and rub their palms with the cream of his largesse in return for turning a blind eye on the inadequacies of his administration have started to cry wolf.
Two examples are enough. Consider the editorial of Thisday which was published three days ago, on Tuesday 6 August 2002, titled, As the Nation Bleeds: Our President Goes to Jamaica Again. It noted that the President has squandered our reputation overseas. His hosts are tired of his ubiquity. During his last visit there he was not received at the airport, but had to drive, according to the editorial, "to State Department, the equivalent of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs to meet with Secretary Powell. This is the same Powell who drove to the airport to meet the president of Equatorial Guinea who was accorded the treatment worthy of a visiting head of state."
The editorial went on to say: "At a time when the country is bleeding from all its pores, when the economy is in a tailspin and the polity is overheating, we expect the president to roll up his sleeves, jump into the trenches and lead the spirited struggle to tease a realistic way out of this muddle. But either out of a myopic understanding of the crisis at hand, or just a plain disdain for the country, our president jumped on another flight of fancy. All we can be reminded of is the unfortunate image of Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns."
But the most interesting part of the editorial was in the conclusion: "At a time when dark clouds are gathering all over Nigeria, this trip is a flight in irresponsibility. And to be sure, Nigeria is in dire straits. The economy sinks deeper into coma. The 2002 budget is yet to be implemented even when the year is in the third quarter. Inflation and interest rates are hitting the roof. The exchange rate is on a yo-yo. The Naira is on a cascade. The Federal Government and the state government owe workers’ salaries and will owe more. Unemployment multiplies daily. Poverty chokes the land.
"The same regime of rudder-lessness and uncertainty pervades the political realm. Four days to the date fixed for local government elections, electoral registers are yet to be received. The electoral commission carries itself like an imperial agent, rather than serving as an unbiased umpire. Violence dogs primaries of political parties. Party conventions are meddled with. Gradually, democracy that we all suffered for is slipping out of hand. The system is being needlessly overheated.
"These are the challenging problems that qualify for a national emergency. And that is the more reason why the president should sit at home and shepherd this country through these turbulent times… Unfortunately, Obasanjo surrounds himself with courtiers who deceive him that he is doing a marvellous job… But the ugly truth is that these are fat lies. Nigeria is going down the slope…"
All we can say to Thisday here is, "Good morning."
Consider also the Vanguard columnist Pini Jason who wrote a piece last Tuesday titled, This Government is Wicked. (Wicked? I wish I could be so sure and bold!) He said, in reaction to the pro-Obasanjo sentiments and statements expressed by a columnist in the Guardian, "President Obasanjo has himself and his advisers to blame for his unpopularity among Nigerians. He and his team of Abacha men and anti-democrats have really annoyed Nigerians. They took Nigerians for granted as if they put their lives on the line to fifth Abacha for Obasanjo and the rump of Abacha men can treat them anyhow. Haba! Look at the crises that litter our political landscape. They are all as a result of Obasanjo bullishly heading in the wrong direction, while pretending that he knows it all.
"Those who say that it is too early to expect miracles from Obasanjo miss the point. After three years, certain directions ought to be discernible, not the confusion we have everywhere. It seems we have to wait for Godot!"
That is precisely the point we made three years ago. Directions cannot be discerned because the ship has strayed right from the onset. The "confusion we have everywhere" is precisely because the ship is sinking and the captain has abandoned the wheel, as the editorial cited above has indicated.
Mr. Pini Jason is advising us to wait for the Godot, whatever that means. However, you do not wait at the middle of nowhere. Unless you waive and shout loudly, the rescue team would not know that there is someone alive seeking rescue. Which is the reason why the nation must come together, in unison once more, to chase this administration out of office as it did with others before. We owe that woman a moral obligation to save her from her wicked guardian. We must find her not only a better guardian but also a better husband.
The ground for that consensus is gradually becoming firmer, its voice stronger. Even at this early stage, people like Wole Soyinka have started making obvious comparisons between the regime of Obasanjo and that of Abacha. By the end of this year such comparisons will be odious, as the English would say. The only person that Obasanjo will be compared with then will be himself. He will have no parallel in history. He will take over the trophy of bad governance from whoever is holding it among our past leaders now. He will become not only the champion, but also the symbol and embodiment of maladministration.
Framework
The framework for chasing him out of power is already on ground. We do not need any movement or organization to fight him from overseas, certainly not a NADECO or anything similar. Nigeria is operating a democracy, or at least, that is the benchmark rules of governance to which Obasanjo has sworn to employ as his modus operandi. The constitution has specified a definite time and a definite procedure for his exit. It is not discretionary, not a promise, not a concession, but a duty which he swore to undertake. Anything less would tantamount to courting a trouble of a proportion far more catastrophic than he could imagine.
We would not like to sound alarmist but no rational mind will rest assured that everything is well with 2003 in view of the obvious things that happened regarding the constitution of independent electoral commission, state independent electoral commissions, local government elections, voters registers, and so on. How sure can we trust a government that would withhold, for two years, funds required to renew voters register, a constitutional pre-requisite for any nationwide election? How reliable is a government that does not believe in fairness but has an insatiable penchant for scheming to gain political advantage for its party or officials while executing every statutory function?
How can we trust electoral commissioners who were appointed to ensure the political survival of their incumbent masters rather than seek to offer equal opportunity to all parties? How competent is a government to conduct free and fair elections if it cannot even contain the violence that has characterized the primaries of its party? How safe are we when the deliberate mistakes that terminated previous republics are eagerly repeated today with a recklessness of the stupid and the impunity of the tyrant?
The answer to all these questions is that Nigerians must learn to stick to their guns, come 2003. If we want an end to tyranny and incompetence we must be ready to terminate the lifespan of this government come 2003, in spite of whatever crude and desperate effort it makes in its dying minute. We must be on the supremacy of the constitution and the democratic process over the ambitions and dictates of Obasanjo.
He has nowhere to hide. Nigerians can see right through him. He has lost the genuine sympathy of his party members. In the past three years he has used excessive resources and influence to get things done his own way only, both in the party and the government. But victory extracted at the instance of undue influence and injustice could only compel hate and command repulsion. Here the dictum of Danfodio must be remembered: An empire can endure with unbelief but never with injustice.
Conclusion
The ruling PDP and the President’s campaign managers are boasting of incumbency and access to insurmountable amounts of resources. Adamu Ciroma, the chief campaign manager of Obasanjo, once asserted that since they could not be defeated when they were yet to ascend power, they couldn’t be defeated now when they are in it. What a tragedy to reason this way!
This quickly reminds us of Pharaoh. He once boasted to his Egyptian subjects saying, "Oh my people! Does not the power of Egypt belong to me and aren’t these rivers flowing beneath me? Do not you see?" Few years later, the Almighty made the rivers to flow over him.
It is déjà vu. We have seen and heard it before in the NPC, NPN, SDP and UNCP, successively. Their control over power appeared invincible in the respective republics and regimes they led. They perfected all strategies of winning through persuasion, coercion and rigging. However, they have been reduced to history.
This returns us to our simile with the Titanic. When its engineer perfected its plan, completed its construction, he marvelled at his work and boasted, saying, "Even God cannot sink this ship." And that is precisely why it sunk, in spite of its meticulous engineering, its giant size, and the calibre of its passengers. Likewise, Obasanjo and other schemers who boast of ingenuity, wealth and power should know that above their force is the superior and inexorable force of the Almighty which He specially reserves for the tyrannical and the boastful. We must learn to depend on Him only for our salvation.
Obasanjo: The sinking Titan
Dr Aliyu Tilde
This is the text of Friday Discourse (130) which we could not publish three weeks ago.
It is three years since this column featured Obasanjo Has Failed, an article that passed a verdict of failure on this regime while it was only 100 days old. We did not call Obasanjo, sat him on the ground, and looked into the future of his administration by reading the sand, as Malam Babba Na Kofar Gabas would do. Neither were we the old woman in the famous song, Qari’atul Funjan, of the late Abdul Halim Hafiz, while sitting with Obasanjo in a café, read his overturned cup and said, "My son, you are doomed, you are doomed..."
Similes
We were neither Babba nor Hafiz. What we did was a rational calculation of the performance of Obasanjo against the background of our expectation as a nation as at May 1999. He is the captain of our ship for four years. Our opinion was high regarding his navigational competence, just as passengers of the Titanic had on their captain. Suddenly, to our utter dismay, we found that he could not read a compass properly. So right from our takeoff, he deflected from the course of his destination. All calls on him to do the right thing fell on deaf ears. He was dumb. Then, the weather became cloudy, the sky dark, and the winds violent. As the tides started to rise and twist the ship in whatever direction they pleased, we started seeing water seeping into some of its cabins. Who would, after seeing the impending disaster, wait for a Hafiz to tell him, "My son, you are doomed, you are doomed..."?
But men are those who even at points of desperation are given more to hope than to despondency. They would rely on necessity to ignite their instinct to escape danger in one way or another. When the instinct fail, some would pray for a miracle; others would subscribe to fortune. However, for Obasanjo, his instinct was too dull to capture the strength of the signals of the impending danger, so the ingenuity to device an escape failed to be ignited. Neither did he qualify for a miracle, of course, for the mountain of misdeed piled by his administration. As for fortune, it knocks only on the doors of the lucky, and Obasanjo was as unlucky as he was dumb and faulty. Who is surprised now that his ship is really sinking?
Obasanjo, we said in that article, came to power under a unique circumstance, when the entire nation believed that only a person like him could successfully lead the Fourth Republic out the mess it would inherit by May 29, 1999. Nigerians were humble in their hopes, which were limited only to national reconciliation, democracy and corruption. All that is needed was the honest intention of the leader and the goodwill of his citizens.
Nigerians were not naïve when they massively supported Obasanjo in 1999. They had valid reasons on which they founded their expectations. As a southerner, we thought Obasanjo was a good choice to quench the fires of hate and ethnic sentiments that were ignited by the crisis of June 12 and its aftermath. As the only military head of state then who handed over power to a civilian administration we thought he was honest enough to be entrusted with a country that had been brutalized for fourteen consecutive years. On corruption, we thought he was prudent enough not to permit the plunder of our resources. However, by his commissions and omissions, he has only helped to compound our problems. Now the Naira is officially at N130 to a dollar, food has tripled its price, and government is so bankrupt that it cannot even pay the salaries of university lecturers and magistrates. The worst part of it is that Obasanjo is not ready to go quietly.
As for the citizens, they have proved their support and loyalty beyond reasonable doubt by voting massively for him, regardless of party, ethnic and regional affiliations. It was left to the leader to sustain that support and nurture it further through performance which, though not expected to be wonderful, would at least start mitigating the suffering and turmoil of the past. Obasanjo deliberately chose to abandon the course of performance and preferred incompetence, condoned corruption, elevated sycophancy and pursued the parochial goals of vendetta and ethnic chauvinism.
We are the least happy regarding this development. We wished in the succeeding months and years Obasanjo were able to prove us wrong regarding what we said about his administration, 100 days into its tenure. Surely, this is our country; it is greater and far more important than the ego of any of us. After all, had he succeeded, we could have simply taken shelter in ascribing the inaccuracy of our prediction to the imprecision that escorts humans whenever they adventure into the wilderness of the future.
Corroboration
It is no longer 100 days now, not a year, not first half of the tenure. It is few months to its end. It is unfortunate that our earlier verdict regarding the performance of Obasanjo has come to typify the opinion of the majority. It is no longer only a North that laments over marginalization, underdevelopment or instigated unrests to divide its people for reasons of political expedience. Today, all zones of the country, except the Southwest, are complaining of neglect and inertia. They have come to appreciate the colossal incapacity of the President to competently administer our politics and economy. Even media houses that were hitherto enthusiastic about supporting him, together with those who used to dine over his table at Aso Rock and rub their palms with the cream of his largesse in return for turning a blind eye on the inadequacies of his administration have started to cry wolf.
Two examples are enough. Consider the editorial of Thisday which was published three days ago, on Tuesday 6 August 2002, titled, As the Nation Bleeds: Our President Goes to Jamaica Again. It noted that the President has squandered our reputation overseas. His hosts are tired of his ubiquity. During his last visit there he was not received at the airport, but had to drive, according to the editorial, "to State Department, the equivalent of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs to meet with Secretary Powell. This is the same Powell who drove to the airport to meet the president of Equatorial Guinea who was accorded the treatment worthy of a visiting head of state."
The editorial went on to say: "At a time when the country is bleeding from all its pores, when the economy is in a tailspin and the polity is overheating, we expect the president to roll up his sleeves, jump into the trenches and lead the spirited struggle to tease a realistic way out of this muddle. But either out of a myopic understanding of the crisis at hand, or just a plain disdain for the country, our president jumped on another flight of fancy. All we can be reminded of is the unfortunate image of Emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burns."
But the most interesting part of the editorial was in the conclusion: "At a time when dark clouds are gathering all over Nigeria, this trip is a flight in irresponsibility. And to be sure, Nigeria is in dire straits. The economy sinks deeper into coma. The 2002 budget is yet to be implemented even when the year is in the third quarter. Inflation and interest rates are hitting the roof. The exchange rate is on a yo-yo. The Naira is on a cascade. The Federal Government and the state government owe workers’ salaries and will owe more. Unemployment multiplies daily. Poverty chokes the land.
"The same regime of rudder-lessness and uncertainty pervades the political realm. Four days to the date fixed for local government elections, electoral registers are yet to be received. The electoral commission carries itself like an imperial agent, rather than serving as an unbiased umpire. Violence dogs primaries of political parties. Party conventions are meddled with. Gradually, democracy that we all suffered for is slipping out of hand. The system is being needlessly overheated.
"These are the challenging problems that qualify for a national emergency. And that is the more reason why the president should sit at home and shepherd this country through these turbulent times… Unfortunately, Obasanjo surrounds himself with courtiers who deceive him that he is doing a marvellous job… But the ugly truth is that these are fat lies. Nigeria is going down the slope…"
All we can say to Thisday here is, "Good morning."
Consider also the Vanguard columnist Pini Jason who wrote a piece last Tuesday titled, This Government is Wicked. (Wicked? I wish I could be so sure and bold!) He said, in reaction to the pro-Obasanjo sentiments and statements expressed by a columnist in the Guardian, "President Obasanjo has himself and his advisers to blame for his unpopularity among Nigerians. He and his team of Abacha men and anti-democrats have really annoyed Nigerians. They took Nigerians for granted as if they put their lives on the line to fifth Abacha for Obasanjo and the rump of Abacha men can treat them anyhow. Haba! Look at the crises that litter our political landscape. They are all as a result of Obasanjo bullishly heading in the wrong direction, while pretending that he knows it all.
"Those who say that it is too early to expect miracles from Obasanjo miss the point. After three years, certain directions ought to be discernible, not the confusion we have everywhere. It seems we have to wait for Godot!"
That is precisely the point we made three years ago. Directions cannot be discerned because the ship has strayed right from the onset. The "confusion we have everywhere" is precisely because the ship is sinking and the captain has abandoned the wheel, as the editorial cited above has indicated.
Mr. Pini Jason is advising us to wait for the Godot, whatever that means. However, you do not wait at the middle of nowhere. Unless you waive and shout loudly, the rescue team would not know that there is someone alive seeking rescue. Which is the reason why the nation must come together, in unison once more, to chase this administration out of office as it did with others before. We owe that woman a moral obligation to save her from her wicked guardian. We must find her not only a better guardian but also a better husband.
The ground for that consensus is gradually becoming firmer, its voice stronger. Even at this early stage, people like Wole Soyinka have started making obvious comparisons between the regime of Obasanjo and that of Abacha. By the end of this year such comparisons will be odious, as the English would say. The only person that Obasanjo will be compared with then will be himself. He will have no parallel in history. He will take over the trophy of bad governance from whoever is holding it among our past leaders now. He will become not only the champion, but also the symbol and embodiment of maladministration.
Framework
The framework for chasing him out of power is already on ground. We do not need any movement or organization to fight him from overseas, certainly not a NADECO or anything similar. Nigeria is operating a democracy, or at least, that is the benchmark rules of governance to which Obasanjo has sworn to employ as his modus operandi. The constitution has specified a definite time and a definite procedure for his exit. It is not discretionary, not a promise, not a concession, but a duty which he swore to undertake. Anything less would tantamount to courting a trouble of a proportion far more catastrophic than he could imagine.
We would not like to sound alarmist but no rational mind will rest assured that everything is well with 2003 in view of the obvious things that happened regarding the constitution of independent electoral commission, state independent electoral commissions, local government elections, voters registers, and so on. How sure can we trust a government that would withhold, for two years, funds required to renew voters register, a constitutional pre-requisite for any nationwide election? How reliable is a government that does not believe in fairness but has an insatiable penchant for scheming to gain political advantage for its party or officials while executing every statutory function?
How can we trust electoral commissioners who were appointed to ensure the political survival of their incumbent masters rather than seek to offer equal opportunity to all parties? How competent is a government to conduct free and fair elections if it cannot even contain the violence that has characterized the primaries of its party? How safe are we when the deliberate mistakes that terminated previous republics are eagerly repeated today with a recklessness of the stupid and the impunity of the tyrant?
The answer to all these questions is that Nigerians must learn to stick to their guns, come 2003. If we want an end to tyranny and incompetence we must be ready to terminate the lifespan of this government come 2003, in spite of whatever crude and desperate effort it makes in its dying minute. We must be on the supremacy of the constitution and the democratic process over the ambitions and dictates of Obasanjo.
He has nowhere to hide. Nigerians can see right through him. He has lost the genuine sympathy of his party members. In the past three years he has used excessive resources and influence to get things done his own way only, both in the party and the government. But victory extracted at the instance of undue influence and injustice could only compel hate and command repulsion. Here the dictum of Danfodio must be remembered: An empire can endure with unbelief but never with injustice.
Conclusion
The ruling PDP and the President’s campaign managers are boasting of incumbency and access to insurmountable amounts of resources. Adamu Ciroma, the chief campaign manager of Obasanjo, once asserted that since they could not be defeated when they were yet to ascend power, they couldn’t be defeated now when they are in it. What a tragedy to reason this way!
This quickly reminds us of Pharaoh. He once boasted to his Egyptian subjects saying, "Oh my people! Does not the power of Egypt belong to me and aren’t these rivers flowing beneath me? Do not you see?" Few years later, the Almighty made the rivers to flow over him.
It is déjà vu. We have seen and heard it before in the NPC, NPN, SDP and UNCP, successively. Their control over power appeared invincible in the respective republics and regimes they led. They perfected all strategies of winning through persuasion, coercion and rigging. However, they have been reduced to history.
This returns us to our simile with the Titanic. When its engineer perfected its plan, completed its construction, he marvelled at his work and boasted, saying, "Even God cannot sink this ship." And that is precisely why it sunk, in spite of its meticulous engineering, its giant size, and the calibre of its passengers. Likewise, Obasanjo and other schemers who boast of ingenuity, wealth and power should know that above their force is the superior and inexorable force of the Almighty which He specially reserves for the tyrannical and the boastful. We must learn to depend on Him only for our salvation.
I am the Incumbent, Who Can Defeat Me?
I am the Incumbent. Who Can Defeat Me?
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
Nigerians are getting on my nerves. Right now world leaders like me are meeting in Johannesburg. I cannot be there. This boy Ghali and his group in the House are trying to birdcage me. They are mistaken. They do not know who and what Baba Iyabo is. I am the President. The Commander in Chief. The Oga kpata kpata for Nigeria. Olusegun Mathew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo. I command. Nigerians follow.
I am the one and only who walked straight from Prison to the Presidency. On request. On my own terms. I am free to rule the way I like. Nigerians need me. I can tell them, even as bombs were killing their sons and daughters, that I have no business being with them. My constituency is beyond Nigeria. Beyond. I belong to the international community. Whether I do fine or not, write anything, say anything. Na you sabi. You asked for it. You made a prisoner a President. You got it.
I am here. Aso Rock. I will be here until 2007. And beyond, if I like. No Mandela option. No impeachment. No handing over. All it requires is resources to win election and change the constitution. After all, I am the best thing that has ever happened to this country. If I am not the president, this country will pack up. It will tear apart.
I can do whatever I like. I cannot be asked. Only I can ask. I have constituted a committee to investigate the accounts of the National Assembly and some ministries. The same day, the House moved a motion to impeach me on grounds of contravening constitutional provisions. They cannot question me. If they do, they have committed treason. It is a coup. They should be expelled from the party. They should be arrested. Questions are my exclusive prerogative.
Impeachment. I know the people in the House. They know me. Whenever their pockets are dry, it is then they make a lot of noise. They send me threats. I send them money. They keep quiet. I go on with business as usual. Even now, I will do the same. They have plenty threats to issue. I have plenty money to dish out. The equation is balanced. This threat is small.
2003. I will continue. I was not defeated before. I cannot be defeated now. No one knows the extent of my resources except I. No Nigerian can defeat me, because no Nigerian is incumbent, other than me. That puts me in a special position of advantage. Like other presidents before. Like other African leaders. Winning an election is not about performance or voting. It is resources. After all, I came out of prison koboless and I won election. Now I command over seventy percent of the Nigerian economy. How can I be defeated? Nigerians are ingrates. They have forgotten about the difficult past because of the joyful present. Look at fuel everywhere. Money everywhere. There is no hunger. It is sabotage to claim so.
The oyinbo said that percentage of Nigerians living under poverty has risen from 45% during Abacha to over 70% now. Nigerians should thank me. If it were someone else as the leader, it would have reached 120%. They should not bother that 70% of Nigerians live on $1 per day; over 90% live on $2 per day. After all, 70% better pass 45%. Mtsss. Oyinbo na Mumu.
My critics do not know God. I sabi God pass dem. Na God tell me say make I contest 2003. At Ota. That is why I arrested Pastor Bakari. He lied against God. Then Nigerians again came and begged me to continue. Lar talk say the whole middle belt, 100%, is behind me. Only Arewa, na dem no gree. But let them know that it is resources, not number, that determines elections in Nigeria. If they are in doubt, they should listen to the following. They are what we call incumbency in Nigeria.
Resources
The presidential race is 100 meters dash. I am already 99 meters ahead of other contestants. They have to start from the scratch. From point zero. Any contestant who has resources cannot contest against me, because I will probe his source of money, seize it, and imprison him. So only contestants without money can risk the foolishness of contesting with me. He will not defeat me because anyone with resources will be afraid to contribute to his campaign. You see?
Let me tell you the extent of my resources. First, If economy is life, I can give it and take it away. I sign every kobo, determine where it goes and for what purpose it will be used. I can withhold it, even if it is police salaries, salaries of magistrates, allocations of the National Assembly, etc. I can change the allocation formula by executive order. I can use dozens of billions on national ID cards and allocate only N3billion to agriculture, though it is the source of income of 70% of the population. I can give contracts at any rate I wish. Look at the contracts documents of extension of the National Assembly complex, the Abuja stadium, the cost of roads rehabilitation, of which we have completed several thousands of kilometres. Compare them with those of PTF. They are only six times more, if what Anenih told the world last year was correct. You will then know that I am an executive president.
So talking about money, you cannot beat me. Thisday has earlier reported that my campaign team has piled N32 billion as at the last year. That is an old figure. Jare. Money is not my problem. I have many well wishers. I have given so many contracts. And the oyinbo say, to whosoever much is given, much is expected. Scratch my back. I scratch yours. Have my opponents got any contract to give? How much do they have in their campaign account, right now? Central Bank governor, watch their accounts closely.
With this huge amount, I can buy any Nigerian. Cash down. Call him: oba, emir, professor, general, wife, husband, kai, everybody. I will pay every polling agent, going officer, returning officer, electoral commissioner, and every one. How much can my opponent afford? Who can they buy?
Law
INEC. I write the electoral law in this country. I dictate the rules. The other time, I tampered with the electoral act. So what? I am the President. You can only shout. You can do nothing. I appoint all members of INEC. Whether you say Goubadia is my in-law or not, I do not care. He must do what I want him to do, when to do it, how to do it. If I like I will give him the money for voters register, after finishing my scheming. If he complains, I sack him. After all, he cannot complain. In the same way, I have appointed resident electoral commissioners. They are all PDP people, or those who have vowed to do business with me.
With this, I can determine the number of registration cards going to each place. Where I have supporters, like Lagos, I can send them over 6million registration cards, making everybody there an eligible voter; Bakassi, more than 100,000; but Bede, only 20,000, instead of 100,000. In any case, these northerners are lazy. Give them short notice for the registration, pair it with ID card, send few registration cards to opposition areas, and ask many questions, including the pictures of their wives. They will abandon the exercise.
Elections. When election comes, every electoral commissioner will report to INEC not less than the figures we require from his state, according to our pre-election computation. The worst my enemies can do is to appeal to the electoral tribunal. Tribunal? No election tribunal can listen to a case against me. They did not succeed in 1999 when I was not in power. How can they succeed today? I will learn from Abdulsalami how he made me president. As a late friend told his disciples, win the election anyhow first. Let the loser go to court, you will remain the winner. Which tribunal judge will decline N1 billion? After all, I make the appointments. I will not be a fool to leave a stone-headed judge on it.
I will determine whether any election takes place or not. The local government election is an example. I do not owe you any explanation as to why it could not hold on 10 August. I cannot be questioned. Therefore, no apology. And if I am not voted for, Nigeria should be ready to pay for the consequences. I am not scared of any coup. The Americans are here. They are my protectors. I can declare state of emergency and postpone the election using one excuse or another. There is no limit to what I can do.
Police. I have the law enforcement agents in my pocket. Remember I did not need to even follow the constitution in the appointment of the Inspector General of police. I am the constitution. I can change the police commissioners just before the elections. They must obey my command or risk losing their jobs. How can I even post my enemies there. All of them, like the electoral commissioners must be mine. 100%.
So whichever way you look at it, I am the law. I determine what it will be, who will use it, who will enforce it, and who will adjudicate on disputes regarding it. They must submit to my will, come 2003. But that is not the full measure of my strength.
Influence
Money and law aside. Who has a quarter of my influence as President and Commander-in-Chief with over 100 personal assistants and advisers who are ready to carry out my command. I am free to recruit them to do any of my campaign jobs. I do not have to fend for them. The government, by virtue of their position, does it. I have my loyal Vice-President who also has another battalion of assistants and advisers. He does not pay them salaries from his pocket, buy or fuel their cars. The government does so.
Imagine my over 40 ministers and their personal assistants. Each minister is controlling a budget of billions that must be carefully expended in ways that will further my re-election bid. There are hundreds of permanents secretaries, director-generals and directors, each praying for the day he will be invited for a dinner at Aso Rock, to receive my instructions and carry them out with the promptness of Big Ben.
Examples are my ministers of finance and of works and housing. They are my campaign managers. You see. Do I need to appoint a different campaign manager, putting him on a salary, housing him in Abuja, buying a jeep for him and so on? Ciroma is there, as well as Mr. Fix it. They can fix whatever I want with the abundant resources in their control. I am yet to sign a single check on my campaign and things are moving well. One of them awards all the billion-naira contracts in his ministry; the other finances them. Why should the funding of my campaign be a problem then?
And remember that in terms of strategy I have the best brains. It is by no coincidence that I chose Ciroma as the national coordinator of my campaign. He was among the topmost four in NPN during the Second Republic. He can still remember what it took to win a moonslide victory in 1983. Mr. Fix it is there also to fix any knotty officer or stubborn judge.
I also have the security agents with me. The other time they quizzed Ghali Na-Abba for at least two hours. It is his fault. How can he destabilize Nigeria by threatening to impeach the president? From this logic, you might as well ask why should anyone attempt to destabilize Nigeria by defeating me at the polls? If any influential figure tries to support my opponent, they will intimidate him with his past record, and he will yield. Every conversation of my opponents can be recorded and passed to me or to my campaign team. My opponent does not control a single security agent; he has no NITEL; and can never tap a single sentence from our conversations. I can block every move of his. Even if he wants to rent an office, I can find a way of frustrating his effort by offering three times the amount settled, or intimidate the landlord by blocking his contract payments and so on.
Every presidential candidate needs support in the states. I have the governors behind me, out of fear or persuasion. I have a file on each of them. All their cuwa-cuwa is here. In fact, I can smell corruption in their offices, as I sit here in Aso Rock. The anti-corruption tribunal is there. All of them, except one or two I think, are afraid of being arraigned before it. I determined the powers and composition of the tribunal, finance it and, therefore, I am free to dictate who appears before it, when and on what charge. They must therefore support my candidature at the convention, with all their commissioners, assistants and advisers, and chairmen of boards.
Right now, I did not pay for the billboards and other expenses for my campaign in the states. Why should I? All of them are coming here seeking for my support, and pleading that I do not field any opponent against them. I said agreed. But they must go back and prove that their states are behind me. That is why they are competing in inviting me to their states to witness that they have delivered their states. Kwankwaso invited Atiku. I was there too. Kano is a good town, except that they have stubborn children. Dem sabi stones o. Abi dem train for Palestine?
And my power, through the governors, has reached the local government level. They have appointed caretaker committees to run the councils. Aha. Again, each chairman, who must have proved to be a loyalist, has been briefed on his assignment and he is already doing his best to ensure that his governor and Obasanjo sun zarce. My opponents do not control over a single governor or a single local government chairman. How can they defeat me?
The Press. Finally. What about them? I know them. Brown envelopes kawai. I have many of them, including green, yellow and red ones. It depends on the type of journalist. That is why they have been silent about my inadequacies. Moreover, most of them are my tribesmen. Those from other places cannot afford to print anything against me. They live in Lagos. OPC can takul them.
Government press is already singing my praises and blocking my opponents. They must. Tune to network news, on FRCN and NTA. All the news must be filtered, such that nothing, no matter how factual, is said against me. In fact, it must all be about me, where I went, what I said or what my government has achieved. And the achievements of my government are many! (Garri is N100 per measure. Maize is over N3,500 a sac. There is no hunger. No poverty. The dollar is N140. Everybody is getting paid on time. All old roads have been rehabilitated and thousands of kilometres of new ones have been constructed. The economy has never been better. The morale in the army is very high. Etc.) My opponents are denied airtime. Ask Rimi. He thinks N12 million is enough to overcome my power at FRCN Kaduna. Leave him. He does not know the power of the incumbent. Before I knew it, Jerry Gana, or Ghana, has already fixed him.
As the NPN did in 1982 and 1983, I am establishing dozens of FM stations all over the federation. Do you think I do not know that the four FRCN stations can reach everywhere in the country or that the states do not have their local stations? I do. What you fail to understand is that no chances should be taken. After all, would not the contract of establishing them serve as another avenue to enrich some of my political associates? Like the controversial supply of equipment done by the NTA Director-General. Why should I probe him? It is better to create a friend than an enemy. What can Yusuf Mamman do? Nigeria is not Kenya, after all. They have their price; we have ours, even if the manufacturer is the same. They are poor; we are rich.
Conclusion
That is it. Too bad for my opponents. Nigeria has to wait until I agree to change the constitution to warrant only one 5-year tenure for the presidency. Then the problem of incumbency can be mitigated.
That is why all northern political leaders contacted to contest against me refused to be persuaded to do so, including all their long distance presidential aspirants. Rimi has been playing with fire. I will defeat him at the primaries. I will takul Na-Abba after the impeachment problem. My men will sponsor a motion to sack him as leader of the House.
Don’t mind this stubborn Buhari. He is new in politics. He will not reach anywhere. In fact we do not even consider as a variable in our political equation. He will be defeated at the primaries of the APP. I have my people working there. He must know that this is a Third World country where incumbency means using state resources to win election. He thinks that he can snatch power from me. He thinks he can be an Awolowo for the North. I am not intimidated. Politics is not for new comers. From where has he learnt politics? What are his resources? Where is his network and structure? After all, he has no police, no security, no radio, no money, no ministers, no assistants, no senators, no judges, no INEC, no CBN, no international community. Nothing. I have all these, and, above all, the law and the money. Who can defeat me? I am the incumbent.
By
Dr. Aliyu Tilde
aliyutilde@yahoo.com
Nigerians are getting on my nerves. Right now world leaders like me are meeting in Johannesburg. I cannot be there. This boy Ghali and his group in the House are trying to birdcage me. They are mistaken. They do not know who and what Baba Iyabo is. I am the President. The Commander in Chief. The Oga kpata kpata for Nigeria. Olusegun Mathew Okikiola Aremu Obasanjo. I command. Nigerians follow.
I am the one and only who walked straight from Prison to the Presidency. On request. On my own terms. I am free to rule the way I like. Nigerians need me. I can tell them, even as bombs were killing their sons and daughters, that I have no business being with them. My constituency is beyond Nigeria. Beyond. I belong to the international community. Whether I do fine or not, write anything, say anything. Na you sabi. You asked for it. You made a prisoner a President. You got it.
I am here. Aso Rock. I will be here until 2007. And beyond, if I like. No Mandela option. No impeachment. No handing over. All it requires is resources to win election and change the constitution. After all, I am the best thing that has ever happened to this country. If I am not the president, this country will pack up. It will tear apart.
I can do whatever I like. I cannot be asked. Only I can ask. I have constituted a committee to investigate the accounts of the National Assembly and some ministries. The same day, the House moved a motion to impeach me on grounds of contravening constitutional provisions. They cannot question me. If they do, they have committed treason. It is a coup. They should be expelled from the party. They should be arrested. Questions are my exclusive prerogative.
Impeachment. I know the people in the House. They know me. Whenever their pockets are dry, it is then they make a lot of noise. They send me threats. I send them money. They keep quiet. I go on with business as usual. Even now, I will do the same. They have plenty threats to issue. I have plenty money to dish out. The equation is balanced. This threat is small.
2003. I will continue. I was not defeated before. I cannot be defeated now. No one knows the extent of my resources except I. No Nigerian can defeat me, because no Nigerian is incumbent, other than me. That puts me in a special position of advantage. Like other presidents before. Like other African leaders. Winning an election is not about performance or voting. It is resources. After all, I came out of prison koboless and I won election. Now I command over seventy percent of the Nigerian economy. How can I be defeated? Nigerians are ingrates. They have forgotten about the difficult past because of the joyful present. Look at fuel everywhere. Money everywhere. There is no hunger. It is sabotage to claim so.
The oyinbo said that percentage of Nigerians living under poverty has risen from 45% during Abacha to over 70% now. Nigerians should thank me. If it were someone else as the leader, it would have reached 120%. They should not bother that 70% of Nigerians live on $1 per day; over 90% live on $2 per day. After all, 70% better pass 45%. Mtsss. Oyinbo na Mumu.
My critics do not know God. I sabi God pass dem. Na God tell me say make I contest 2003. At Ota. That is why I arrested Pastor Bakari. He lied against God. Then Nigerians again came and begged me to continue. Lar talk say the whole middle belt, 100%, is behind me. Only Arewa, na dem no gree. But let them know that it is resources, not number, that determines elections in Nigeria. If they are in doubt, they should listen to the following. They are what we call incumbency in Nigeria.
Resources
The presidential race is 100 meters dash. I am already 99 meters ahead of other contestants. They have to start from the scratch. From point zero. Any contestant who has resources cannot contest against me, because I will probe his source of money, seize it, and imprison him. So only contestants without money can risk the foolishness of contesting with me. He will not defeat me because anyone with resources will be afraid to contribute to his campaign. You see?
Let me tell you the extent of my resources. First, If economy is life, I can give it and take it away. I sign every kobo, determine where it goes and for what purpose it will be used. I can withhold it, even if it is police salaries, salaries of magistrates, allocations of the National Assembly, etc. I can change the allocation formula by executive order. I can use dozens of billions on national ID cards and allocate only N3billion to agriculture, though it is the source of income of 70% of the population. I can give contracts at any rate I wish. Look at the contracts documents of extension of the National Assembly complex, the Abuja stadium, the cost of roads rehabilitation, of which we have completed several thousands of kilometres. Compare them with those of PTF. They are only six times more, if what Anenih told the world last year was correct. You will then know that I am an executive president.
So talking about money, you cannot beat me. Thisday has earlier reported that my campaign team has piled N32 billion as at the last year. That is an old figure. Jare. Money is not my problem. I have many well wishers. I have given so many contracts. And the oyinbo say, to whosoever much is given, much is expected. Scratch my back. I scratch yours. Have my opponents got any contract to give? How much do they have in their campaign account, right now? Central Bank governor, watch their accounts closely.
With this huge amount, I can buy any Nigerian. Cash down. Call him: oba, emir, professor, general, wife, husband, kai, everybody. I will pay every polling agent, going officer, returning officer, electoral commissioner, and every one. How much can my opponent afford? Who can they buy?
Law
INEC. I write the electoral law in this country. I dictate the rules. The other time, I tampered with the electoral act. So what? I am the President. You can only shout. You can do nothing. I appoint all members of INEC. Whether you say Goubadia is my in-law or not, I do not care. He must do what I want him to do, when to do it, how to do it. If I like I will give him the money for voters register, after finishing my scheming. If he complains, I sack him. After all, he cannot complain. In the same way, I have appointed resident electoral commissioners. They are all PDP people, or those who have vowed to do business with me.
With this, I can determine the number of registration cards going to each place. Where I have supporters, like Lagos, I can send them over 6million registration cards, making everybody there an eligible voter; Bakassi, more than 100,000; but Bede, only 20,000, instead of 100,000. In any case, these northerners are lazy. Give them short notice for the registration, pair it with ID card, send few registration cards to opposition areas, and ask many questions, including the pictures of their wives. They will abandon the exercise.
Elections. When election comes, every electoral commissioner will report to INEC not less than the figures we require from his state, according to our pre-election computation. The worst my enemies can do is to appeal to the electoral tribunal. Tribunal? No election tribunal can listen to a case against me. They did not succeed in 1999 when I was not in power. How can they succeed today? I will learn from Abdulsalami how he made me president. As a late friend told his disciples, win the election anyhow first. Let the loser go to court, you will remain the winner. Which tribunal judge will decline N1 billion? After all, I make the appointments. I will not be a fool to leave a stone-headed judge on it.
I will determine whether any election takes place or not. The local government election is an example. I do not owe you any explanation as to why it could not hold on 10 August. I cannot be questioned. Therefore, no apology. And if I am not voted for, Nigeria should be ready to pay for the consequences. I am not scared of any coup. The Americans are here. They are my protectors. I can declare state of emergency and postpone the election using one excuse or another. There is no limit to what I can do.
Police. I have the law enforcement agents in my pocket. Remember I did not need to even follow the constitution in the appointment of the Inspector General of police. I am the constitution. I can change the police commissioners just before the elections. They must obey my command or risk losing their jobs. How can I even post my enemies there. All of them, like the electoral commissioners must be mine. 100%.
So whichever way you look at it, I am the law. I determine what it will be, who will use it, who will enforce it, and who will adjudicate on disputes regarding it. They must submit to my will, come 2003. But that is not the full measure of my strength.
Influence
Money and law aside. Who has a quarter of my influence as President and Commander-in-Chief with over 100 personal assistants and advisers who are ready to carry out my command. I am free to recruit them to do any of my campaign jobs. I do not have to fend for them. The government, by virtue of their position, does it. I have my loyal Vice-President who also has another battalion of assistants and advisers. He does not pay them salaries from his pocket, buy or fuel their cars. The government does so.
Imagine my over 40 ministers and their personal assistants. Each minister is controlling a budget of billions that must be carefully expended in ways that will further my re-election bid. There are hundreds of permanents secretaries, director-generals and directors, each praying for the day he will be invited for a dinner at Aso Rock, to receive my instructions and carry them out with the promptness of Big Ben.
Examples are my ministers of finance and of works and housing. They are my campaign managers. You see. Do I need to appoint a different campaign manager, putting him on a salary, housing him in Abuja, buying a jeep for him and so on? Ciroma is there, as well as Mr. Fix it. They can fix whatever I want with the abundant resources in their control. I am yet to sign a single check on my campaign and things are moving well. One of them awards all the billion-naira contracts in his ministry; the other finances them. Why should the funding of my campaign be a problem then?
And remember that in terms of strategy I have the best brains. It is by no coincidence that I chose Ciroma as the national coordinator of my campaign. He was among the topmost four in NPN during the Second Republic. He can still remember what it took to win a moonslide victory in 1983. Mr. Fix it is there also to fix any knotty officer or stubborn judge.
I also have the security agents with me. The other time they quizzed Ghali Na-Abba for at least two hours. It is his fault. How can he destabilize Nigeria by threatening to impeach the president? From this logic, you might as well ask why should anyone attempt to destabilize Nigeria by defeating me at the polls? If any influential figure tries to support my opponent, they will intimidate him with his past record, and he will yield. Every conversation of my opponents can be recorded and passed to me or to my campaign team. My opponent does not control a single security agent; he has no NITEL; and can never tap a single sentence from our conversations. I can block every move of his. Even if he wants to rent an office, I can find a way of frustrating his effort by offering three times the amount settled, or intimidate the landlord by blocking his contract payments and so on.
Every presidential candidate needs support in the states. I have the governors behind me, out of fear or persuasion. I have a file on each of them. All their cuwa-cuwa is here. In fact, I can smell corruption in their offices, as I sit here in Aso Rock. The anti-corruption tribunal is there. All of them, except one or two I think, are afraid of being arraigned before it. I determined the powers and composition of the tribunal, finance it and, therefore, I am free to dictate who appears before it, when and on what charge. They must therefore support my candidature at the convention, with all their commissioners, assistants and advisers, and chairmen of boards.
Right now, I did not pay for the billboards and other expenses for my campaign in the states. Why should I? All of them are coming here seeking for my support, and pleading that I do not field any opponent against them. I said agreed. But they must go back and prove that their states are behind me. That is why they are competing in inviting me to their states to witness that they have delivered their states. Kwankwaso invited Atiku. I was there too. Kano is a good town, except that they have stubborn children. Dem sabi stones o. Abi dem train for Palestine?
And my power, through the governors, has reached the local government level. They have appointed caretaker committees to run the councils. Aha. Again, each chairman, who must have proved to be a loyalist, has been briefed on his assignment and he is already doing his best to ensure that his governor and Obasanjo sun zarce. My opponents do not control over a single governor or a single local government chairman. How can they defeat me?
The Press. Finally. What about them? I know them. Brown envelopes kawai. I have many of them, including green, yellow and red ones. It depends on the type of journalist. That is why they have been silent about my inadequacies. Moreover, most of them are my tribesmen. Those from other places cannot afford to print anything against me. They live in Lagos. OPC can takul them.
Government press is already singing my praises and blocking my opponents. They must. Tune to network news, on FRCN and NTA. All the news must be filtered, such that nothing, no matter how factual, is said against me. In fact, it must all be about me, where I went, what I said or what my government has achieved. And the achievements of my government are many! (Garri is N100 per measure. Maize is over N3,500 a sac. There is no hunger. No poverty. The dollar is N140. Everybody is getting paid on time. All old roads have been rehabilitated and thousands of kilometres of new ones have been constructed. The economy has never been better. The morale in the army is very high. Etc.) My opponents are denied airtime. Ask Rimi. He thinks N12 million is enough to overcome my power at FRCN Kaduna. Leave him. He does not know the power of the incumbent. Before I knew it, Jerry Gana, or Ghana, has already fixed him.
As the NPN did in 1982 and 1983, I am establishing dozens of FM stations all over the federation. Do you think I do not know that the four FRCN stations can reach everywhere in the country or that the states do not have their local stations? I do. What you fail to understand is that no chances should be taken. After all, would not the contract of establishing them serve as another avenue to enrich some of my political associates? Like the controversial supply of equipment done by the NTA Director-General. Why should I probe him? It is better to create a friend than an enemy. What can Yusuf Mamman do? Nigeria is not Kenya, after all. They have their price; we have ours, even if the manufacturer is the same. They are poor; we are rich.
Conclusion
That is it. Too bad for my opponents. Nigeria has to wait until I agree to change the constitution to warrant only one 5-year tenure for the presidency. Then the problem of incumbency can be mitigated.
That is why all northern political leaders contacted to contest against me refused to be persuaded to do so, including all their long distance presidential aspirants. Rimi has been playing with fire. I will defeat him at the primaries. I will takul Na-Abba after the impeachment problem. My men will sponsor a motion to sack him as leader of the House.
Don’t mind this stubborn Buhari. He is new in politics. He will not reach anywhere. In fact we do not even consider as a variable in our political equation. He will be defeated at the primaries of the APP. I have my people working there. He must know that this is a Third World country where incumbency means using state resources to win election. He thinks that he can snatch power from me. He thinks he can be an Awolowo for the North. I am not intimidated. Politics is not for new comers. From where has he learnt politics? What are his resources? Where is his network and structure? After all, he has no police, no security, no radio, no money, no ministers, no assistants, no senators, no judges, no INEC, no CBN, no international community. Nothing. I have all these, and, above all, the law and the money. Who can defeat me? I am the incumbent.
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