Why I Do Not Think President Obasanjo Should Be Impeached
By
Obi Akwani
I was in Abuja at the close of September 2001 as government preparations for the celebrating the October 1 Independence Day reached into high gear. Television and radio promotions for the occasion were incessant in the lead up weeks. It was supposed to be a big occasion. All school children and Abujans in general were advised to put on their proud patriotic outfits and troop down to Eagle Square where the usual celebrations and match pasts before the president would take place.
On the fateful day, as the kids trooped out for the Eagle Square in their fresh crisp uniforms, I hunkered down before the television to watch President Obasanjo on his podium giving the salute to those marching before him. But the great show was nowhere on screen. I flipped through the three or four local stations but all were running their regular programs and none was broadcasting the event. About forty-five minutes later, the children trooped back in and quietly went about their regular routines. "Back so soon," I asked. "There was nobody there," came the disappointed replies. "Nothing is happening. It’s just like any other day."
This nonevent was an unmistakable expression of the mood of Nigerians in late 2001. The 9-11 bombing of New York City’s WTC twin towers and its Nigerian reverberations in communal rioting in Jos and Kano were still fresh in people’s minds. Most Nigerians struggled daily to make ends meet with a Naira currency steadily falling in value. Thus feeling the pinch in a nation racked by corruption and economic rudderlessness, few people in Abuja saw any reason to celebrate Nigeria.
Sitting in my Abuja living room, I imagined what might have happened to the official preparations for celebrating October One. At Aso Rock, the cars in the motorcade would have been polished to a shine and waited to convey the president. I could see Obasanjo getting ready, all dressed up in his silk agbada, putting on his wrist watch and asking one of his aides: "Hope we won't be late. I don’t want to keep the people waiting," and the aide replying, "Your excellency, the latest from the advance scouts is that there is nobody there. No one has come to the party!"
That nonevent should have been the sounding of a warning bell to the Obasanjo government. But if, on that day, the message had sunk in to the president, it never became apparent in any perceptible change in the government’s way of doing things in the succeeding months. Perhaps it is not that the government didn’t care; they just didn’t know what to do. Sadly Nigerians long ago stopped holding their breath in anticipation of delivery on promises of good, competent and efficient leadership from the Obasanjo government.
So here we are a few months to go before fresh elections. President Obasanjo wants another four years. Frustrated Nigerians are asking, ‘To do what?’ What can Obasanjo do for Nigeria in another four years that he could not have done in the first four that he had? We all know this country is a difficult one to govern. But some minimal standards could have been reestablished and maintained. It is not hard to pinpoint these minimals -- basic things Nigerians hoped would be restored but weren’t over the last four years:
The Naira -- people hoped for and government promised to shore up the strength of the Naira against the US dollar. Instead there was no positive change, just small but steady decline in the currency’s value. Industrial growth which would have helped the ailing Naira has been negative.
Nigeria’s industrial output has been on the decline. Exports, apart from crude petroleum, are minimal. The manufacturing industry has been reduced to half what used to be a decade or more ago. A recent government announcement admitted that in the textile manufacturing sector, where there used to be about 150 mills in full production, now less than half that number exist and most are outputting below 60 per cent of their capacity;
NEPA was supposed to get better at production and delivery of electricity. As of today, we are told capacity has improved slightly, but delivery remains shoddy;
The railway system was supposed to be refurbished and fully operational, but despite whatever the government may tell you about that, the system is shutdown. No trains are running, lines and stations are overgrown with grass;
The oil refineries, ran to the ground during the Abacha era, remain idle and Nigeria is a net importer of refined fuel oils. About the only development in this sector were hikes in the price of fuel at the pumps -- a decision that was influenced by and designed to insure profits for foreign-investor firms that were for the first time in Nigerian history being allowed to enter into the domestic oil distribution and retail business;
The Ajeokuta Steel Mill is still not operational, not even near so;
All over Nigeria, the story is one of declining industrial capacity. It is clear that in four years the Obasanjo government was not able to identify the structural anomalies at the root of these problems and so could not really solve the industrial and economic problems facing the country.
The foregoing lays the background for the point I really want to make: Why I do not want to see the president impeached. From it one can see that Chief Obasanjo has lost more than the people’s confidence in his presidency. Even though their true motives may differ radically from that of ordinary Nigerians, his fellow elected politicians in both House and Senate are also tired of him. Even his own PDP House Caucus stands against him. Therefore, I think that he should not remain our president for another four years. But I do not expect President Obasanjo to resign voluntarily, especially now that the House and Senate have made it an ultimatum that he step down.
To follow through with this threat of impeachment, however, is not, in my view, the best way of going about denying Obasanjo another four years in Aso Rock. Impeachment is a crude tool. It is like trying to doing delicate surgery with a blunt ax. That is why, I believe, it is so rarely used by the Americans who invented it. Once you force a president out, the presidency carries the stain of that impeachment for a long time, even if the actual impeachment was not carried out as with Richard Nixon who resigned the US presidency in the early 1970s rather than face impeachment. Following the Nixon scandal, the US presidency remained tainted and reduced in stature. Jimmy Carter gave it back a sense of probity and Ronald Raegan tried to restore the prestige of that institution during the 1980s. Americans were just getting over the Nixon thing when the Republicans in Congress tried to force the resignation of Democrat, President Bill Clinton with the threat of impeachment in the mid 1990s. Mr. Clinton did not resign. He stuck through the trial and was exonerated thus saving himself and the American presidency another loss of face.
Therefore, if Obasanjo resigns or loses an impeachment trial it would be a devastating low against the Nigerian presidency. It would be a bad precedent that the first president in our new democracy is impeached. How stable can the presidency be after that? I dare say not very. Contrary to what impeachment pundits are saying that it improves our democracy, impeaching the president on the kind of charges now leveled against will weaken democracy in Nigeria. And I will explain why.
The real test of a democracy is in the ballot box. It is only through it that normal democratic transitions are effected. To bypass that now and remove the first sitting democratically elected president after 19 years of continuous, and 31 years total, military dictatorship will be like a throwback to dictatorship. Are people afraid that the incumbent will high jack the election? Perhaps, it is so. But I believe it is a fear we should not have. This is a test of our new democracy and we can not give ourselves a passing grade by bypassing the exam. Let us have the election with president Obasanjo included in the mix. The way I see it, he cannot win faced with the right opponent. Throw up the usual suspects, former head of state, a regionalist or tribalist, and you hand the presidency back to Obasanjo. Force Obasanjo out and leave the others, and you cheat Nigerians.