Obasanjo

Obasanjo’s Doublespeak

Jideofor Adibe

I am among those often accused of being fans of Obasanjo. I have never denied that but I need to put a big qualifier to this. Every era has specific leadership qualities that are most needed to get over the challenges of its time. In our peculiar circumstance, among the leadership qualities needed to resolve our underdevelopment crisis are courage, decisiveness and ability to provide needed political cover to one’s appointees who take risks to implement needed political and economic reforms. These are some of the qualities some of us admire very strongly in Obasanjo – despite what one columnist called his ‘lack of grace’.

Like most people, Obasanjo is an embodiment of contradictions. But there is something about the way his contradictions manifest that can be quite frankly off-putting and challenging to his admirers. Take his animus against the Speaker of the House of Representatives (HOR), Aminu Tambuwal and his Deputy, Emeka Ihedioha. Since the emergence of the House leadership on June 5, 2011, Obasanjo has been relentless in his insistence that they should step down in 2013 so that his zone, the South West should take over the Speakership of the House, which the party had zoned to it. The ex-President, who is the Chairman of the party’s Board of Trustees, reportedly said: “Having laid out the positions of the party’s constitution, we should realise that what happened on 5th June 2011 when the House of Representatives set aside the zoning, rotation, and federal character policy and programme of the party and seemingly went against the party policy, programme and decision is a very serious issue that the party cannot sweep under the carpet. Let me repeat that all-inclusive policy and programme of the party have been the vital and critical pillar on which PDP stands since its inception” (The Nation, July 27, 2011).

Just this month, more than three months after the election of the HOR’s leadership, when everyone seemed to have moved on, Obasanjo continued with his one-man crusade. He was reported as saying that “the speakership of the House of Representatives, which the constitution of the party zoned to the South West, is our legitimate right, which must be given back to us…. The injustice done to the South West over the speakership must be corrected…that is the basic thing. The South West needs the Speaker of the House of Representatives; let the PDP at the national level do the necessary adjustment (Nigerian Pilot, September 3, 2011).

Obasanjo’s insistence on the Speakership being zoned to the South West would have been consistent with his famed single minded devotion to a cause – a quality many of us admire in him. The problem here however is that his stance on zoning the Speakership to the South West sharply contradicts with his stance on zoning and power rotations when some Northern members of the PDP also insisted that going by the party’s constitution and power sharing arrangement, the presidency was their ‘turn’ in 2011 and that Jonathan, though constitutionally entitled to contest, was morally unqualified to do so. At that time Obasanjo had initially denied that zoning was in the party’s constitution, and when he discovered that his stance was factually incorrect, he quickly shifted to arguing that the party never entered into a zoning and power rotation arrangement with any section of the country. Again when it was revealed that Obasanjo actually attended an expanded caucus meeting of the party on December 2, 2002 at the Presidential Villa where the issue was put to vote and adopted, Obasanjo once again shifted to a vague, “if you are there, you are there, if you are not there, you are not there”. After Goodluck Jonathan, whose candidacy Obasanjo supported emerged the presidential flag bearer of the PDP, Obasanjo reversed himself and declared that “zoning is alive and kicking’ in the PDP”.

Obasanjo’s critics would often silence those of us seen as his admirers with several of the above instances of shiftiness, inconsistencies and sometimes barefaced lies from him. They would often argue, (sometimes unfairly), that whenever Obasanjo pursues any cause with the sort of single-minded devotion that we admire in him, it is only because there is something in it for him.

I do not see anything wrong in Obasanjo supporting Jonathan’s presidential candidacy (or the candidacy of anyone for that matter), but I feel it would have been more edifying if he had taken the time to articulate the reasons for such support, being mindful of his subsisting position on zoning so that he does not come across as a hypocrite. In the same vein, while I believe that the South West deserves compensation for not getting the Speakership of the HOR as proposed by the party, I do not think Obasanjo is going about it the right way. If the PDP forces the leadership of the HOR to step down so the South West ‘could take what is theirs’, what prevents the North from mounting a similar pressure for Jonathan to step down so they can take ‘what rightly belongs to them’?

It is tempting to speculate on why Obasanjo, part of whose nationalist credentials are arguably premised on his lack of popular support from his Yoruba kinsmen and women, would want to embark at this stage on what some would regard as an irredentist struggle. Is this indicative of his disenchantment and withdrawal from the Nigeria project? Is it an attempt to ingratiate himself to the ordinary people in the South West with a view to re-inventing himself and being loved in the region? Or is it merely a face-saving grandstanding given that part of the reasons given for the loss of the Speakership by the party’s official candidate, Mrs Mulikat Akande-Adeola was that she was thought to be an Obasanjo candidate? Whatever Obasanjo’s true motive in his one-man crusade to oust the leadership of the HOR may be, it is potentially a double edged sword: while there is a slight chance that the ‘crusade’ will resonate well with the ordinary people in Yorubaland and consequently lead to his rehabilitation in the region, there is also the danger that it could diminish his nationalist credentials without accomplishing this objective.

Jonathan’s re-affirmation of a-single term tenure

President Goodluck Jonathan has reportedly said he has no regret for his proposed single term tenure for the President and Governors, which he said was for seven years apiece – and not six years as widely reported. Speaking during the first media chat of his new administration with select journalists at the State House on Monday August 12, 2011, the President reportedly said the proposal was aimed at beating back the tide of unrest and cost associated with frequent elections in Nigeria and the continent.

It seems there is an attempt to re-invent the President as someone who can take tough decisions and stick to his guns. This apparent re-invention is seemingly to counter the popular impression of the President as a humble, easy-going, conflict-avoiding gentleman, who is rather indecisive and changes his position on issues quickly in the face of public criticism. We saw this new tendency to take tough decisions quickly and stick to it, despite public opposition, in the suspension of Justice Salami and the country’s recognition of the rebels in Libya.

While I believe this re-invention is potentially good for the President, I also believe it will be counterproductive in instances where the President’s position appears not to have been well thought-through or where there are justified grounds to suspect his motive. There is simply such an overwhelming popular opposition to the single term proposal that the more the President pushes for it, the more people suspect his motive for pushing it.

This is especially so when the reasons adduced by the President for the proposal are rather unconvincing. For instance the President argued that the “issue of single tenure is to stabilise the polity. A country cannot be stabilised economically without first and foremost stabilising the polity. We must stabilise the political environment before you can talk about the economy” (Vanguard September 13, 2011). The problem here is that the notion of ‘stability’ implied by the President is that of a society without conflicts whereas conflicts are endemic and inevitable in interactions among individuals and groups. This means in essence that contrary to what the President would have us believe, the tenure of a President or Governor – whether four years or twenty years – has little to do with the quantum of conflicts in that polity. In fact one of the several dangers in the proposal for a-single term tenure of seven years is that it could under-develop our marketplace for political ideas and consequently stunt the growth of our democracy.