Sovereign National Conference and Others as Solutions to the Crisis of Governance

Sovereign National Conference and Others as Solutions to the Crisis of Governance

Professor Omo Omoruyi mni

In the first essay, I blamed the President for disobeying the God’s word for not allowing the Word of God to be implemented since 1999. He, instead of allowing the Nigerian people to meet and resolve the lingering political problems as God told him in Abacha’s Gulag, arrogated to himself and to the National Assembly the power to solve the problems. It should be obvious that he and the National Assembly failed since 1999.

In the second essay, I called the problem the crisis of governance that arose from the inability of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that controlled the National Assembly and the Presidency to provide stable democratic governance for the Nigerian people. This is the plain truth that the PDP failed to perform its functions since 1999. And now it is inflicting on the country what I call the crisis of governance that could set in motion a chain of events the end we do not know.

In this third and concluding essay, I came to the conclusion that those who are pushing for impeachment might not be aware of its implication for the orderly process of government.

IMPEACHMENT: A CHAIN OF EVENTS THE END WE DO NOT KNOW

Section 143 of the Constitution provides for the removal of the President or the Vice President. It has a CHAIN OF EVENTS and the END is not only unpredictable it is unimaginable. The country did not bargain for this.

What the country is going through today and would be subjected to under the impeachment was avoidable if the President had led the country to do what God asked the country to do since 1998. But he did not. Is it too late to go that route mapped out for him by God while he was in Abacha’s Gulag? I do not think so.

Looking at the said Section 143, the process can begin with the formal notice of the alleged breaches signed by just one-third i.e. at least 156 Senators and House members and served on the President. The PDP caucus can mobilize this fugue and commence the impeachment process. The question is not whether the process could or would lead to the removal of the President or not. The question is the critical stage in the impeachment process in Section 143(5) that says

The Chief Justice of Nigeria shall…appoint a Panel of

seven who in his opinion are of unquestionable integrity …….

to investigate the allegation.

Where are these men of “unquestionable integrity” coming from? In Nigeria or from the moon? Do we know that power to determine that would be the Chief Justice alone?

One should be concerned about the common man who would suffer through out this process. Do the PDP members know what would happen to the common man tied to the fortunes of Abuja? Maybe the PDP just wants to paralyze the governments at all levels (federal, state and local). One could ask some pertinent questions:

1. Is this what the PDP wants to inflict on the country today?

2. Do they know that if the federal government is sick all the 36 states and all the local governments would be sick too?

3. Do they know that once the impeachment process is commenced, the normal governmental process will cease to exist for at least three months?

4. Do they know that this process could spillover to 2003?

5. Is this the purpose of those who want to commence the impeachment in September 2002?

IMPEACMENT HAS IMPLICATION FOR 2003

I hope those who want to commence the impeachment process are aware that the period has many unresolved issues in the pre-Election Day activities. We still do not have a valid Electoral Act. We still do not know how many political parties that would be contesting the 2003 election. We still do not have a valid voters register. We still have caretaker government at the local government level with no plan when there shall be a democratically elected government at the grassroots level.

IMPEACHMENT HAS IMPLICATION FOR NORTH-SOUTH POWER SHIFT

Those who believe that it is the turn of the Yoruba to produce the President would have to wrestle with the question, After Obasanjo before the end of one term who? Do they know that the VP, as the “automatic standby generator” would step in? Would he qualify to run for the 2003 election?

I hope those who are trying to force Obasanjo out through the impeachment process are aware that the impeachment process once it begins, we should forget about the 2003 series of elections and the debate about whose turn to produce the President in 2003. The implication for the north-south relation is better imagined than discussed. The future seems bleak.

Even in the US that has built-in cushion for weathering the uncertainty and storm, the normal process of government virtually came to a halt. What would happen in a country that has no built-in cushion for weathering uncertainty?

I am making FOUR suggestions for resolving the current impasse.

ONE

A SOVEREIGN NATIONAL CONFERENCE IS THE ANSWER FOR THE CRISIS: OBASANJO SHOULD GO BACK TO WHAT GOD TOLD HIM

The solution cannot be found in the activities of the various groups rallying round the President and condemning the PDP caucus in the National Assembly. This is not the time when the Yoruba elders should rally round President Obasanjo because he is not under threat from non-Yorubas in the country.

This is the time when the pro-democracy forces in the country should loudly call on the political class to set in motion the process of resolving the lingering political problems through the Sovereign National Conference.

Should this not be the time when Chief Anthony Enahoro should remind the President to make do his promise to him to consider the issue and convene a National Conference? One hopes Chief Enahoro would and should be able to remind the President that this is the appropriate time.

This also is the time when the Christian organizations should prevail on the President to do what God told him as the mode of resolving the crisis. It should have been obvious by now that what Nigeria is going through is as a result of President Obasanjo’s failure to do what God told him in Abacha’s Gulag. President Obasanjo should have been in the leadership in allowing Nigerians to find a lasting solution to the two nagging or lingering political problems since 1960.

I dwelt on these two issues in various essays especially in Vanguard Independence Essay of October 1, 2001 as,

(a) How the various ethnic nationalities can and want to live together? and

(b) How they want to be governed.

What do we find since May 1999? It is sad that President Obasanjo has been playing games with the future of Nigerian people by pretending that he is Democracy personalized. He gives the country and the international community that without him the country would degenerate into chaos. President Obasanjo should stop pretending that he is an all-knowing super governor that talks down the Nigerian people and surrounds himself with half-baked Nigerians called Ministers.

President Obasanjo should realize that the Nigerian problems are not in Washington or in London but in Nigeria. He, instead of sitting in his office to read briefs about Nigerian problems, he is a jet setter from one suitcase to another and from one capital to another in search of what? How could he arrogate to himself the status of African Statesman who cannot resolve the two nagging problems at home? He will soon realize that the Nigerian problems that are at home and not in Washington or London would overwhelm Nigeria under his administration and Nigeria or he would not be saved from London, or from Washington DC or from other African countries that he had visited many times since 1999.

I hate to liken President Obasanjo to General Abacha who was busy selling Democracy and Peace to other West African countries that elude his people at home. President Obasanjo is too preoccupied with intra-African politics on behalf of the US or the G-8. He is busy trying to put African countries together when Nigeria is in pieces. He once told the Nigerian people that God put so many Black people together in Nigeria for a purpose as if God created Nigeria. What did he do with what he said God put together?

President Obasanjo is too busy selling Democracy and Peace to other parts of Africa. Does he not know that these are value that eludes the Nigerian people under his administration? As the highly reasoned editorial of Herald Tribune titled “Nigeria’s Leader is Failing” put it,

Obasanjo is highly admired in the West as an eloquent

spokesman for African democracy and development;

his record at home is far less impressive.

See Herald Tribune February 25, 2002.

What Nigerians and the world want was that President Obasanjo should use his position since May 1999 to bring Democracy to the Nigerian people. He should have used his power as a means to commence the laying of the democratic foundation as he prophesied to in June 1998. He killed the PDP and adopted the policy of divide and rule and the use of perks to deal with other parties. In the end, we do not have a viable party system today.

The damage President Obasanjo has done to the institution of government under him is enormous. No democratic institution is working. I cannot see one.

My first plea is that President Obasanjo should use the on-going crisis as the basis for going back to what God told him about how to resolve the political crisis that he told the Nigerian people and the world in June 1998. Chief Obasanjo was right then when he prophesied that the lingering political problems could only be resolved through the “get together of patriotic men and women”. What he said in June 1998 has the same meaning and implication as the Sovereign National Conference. Would President Obasanjo have the gut to allow the Nigerian ethnic nationalities and peoples to meet and resolve the two political problems identified above? I once told a group of Nigerians that whether the President liked it or not the resolution of lingering Nigerian political problems through the instrumentality of a Sovereign National Conference would come.

TWO

RETHINK THE “SELF-SUCCESSION PROJECT”

My second plea is that President Obasanjo should not embark on “self-succession” plan in its present form. He should honor the PACT he entered into with those who initiated his emergence in 1998 and financed his election in 1999 by formally calling off his self-succession project. A Kano Senator told the Nigerian people especially in the North not to be worried that power would come back to the north after one term of President Obasanjo. He categorically stated that President Obasanjo definitely told them, (the northern leaders) that he would stay for “one term” and that the northern leaders trusted him as they did in 1976. See Post Express of March 2, 1999. For goodness sake, there was a “one-term pact” between Chief Obasanjo and those that invited him in 1998 and financed his election in 1999. Why did he enter into the pact, if he knew he would not live in accordance with the pact? The crisis has root in the “self-succession” project and the way it was schemed.

This is where the Yoruba Traditional Rulers led by the Oni of Ife should prevail on their son that a Yoruba person should honor the PACT he signed with those who invited him in 1998 and financed his election in 1999.

This is where elders of the PDP and Presidential Advisers (Chiefs Anthony Enahoro and Richard Akinjide) should prevail on the President not to renege on the PACT he signed with those who organized his emergence in 1998 and financed his election in 1999.

This is also where many Christian organizations should prevail on the President to abide by the promise he made to those who invited him to seek the election in 1998 and financed the election in 1999.

President Obasanjo should use the opportunity of the face-off between him and the PDP caucus in the National Assembly to send two powerful messages to the country:

1. President Obasanjo should publicly declare that there is a “Vacancy” at Aso Rock to be filled at the end of his term of office.

2. President Obasanjo should also publicly declare that this same “Vacancy” should be at all levels of government (federal to local) and at the two elective arms of government (executive and legislative).

What is happening today arises from the 2003 self-succession project. If we stop this craze for self-succession plan all over the country, then all the controversies in Abuja and in many States today would stop.

THREE

A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD FOR ALL CONTESTANTS

We need a level playing field for all groups, parties and individuals contesting elections at all levels and arms of government in 2003. The political class should be made to evolve something like the 13^th amendment of the Bangladesh Constitution in the Nigerian Constitution. I earlier argued for this in a three-part essay.

I hope the Nigerian political class and the leaders of the various interest groups; (the Ohaneze, the Arewa, the Afenifere and the Union Niger Delta) would prevail on the political class that the success of the 2003 depends on whether there would be a level playing

The Nigerian political class and the leaders of the various interest groups should appreciate that the paralysis today just makes the need for a level playing field for all desirable.

To those who are agitating for zoning or rotation or power shift without contest or competition, such as the Igbos and the south-south, this is an opportunity for their leaders to agitate for a level playing field for all. All others who are clamoring for the Presidency should see the need for a level playing field as the best hope for the emergence of an Igbo or an Edo person as the President in Nigeria.

In the application of the requirement for a level playing field, there are two principles that would be involved. They are:

(a) That the Government in Power should not be involved in the election; and

(b) That a neutral body should handle the election.

DR. ABEL GUOBADIA/INEC AND GOVERNMENT/PARTY INTERFERENCE

Nigerians know that the INEC is anything but “independent” and the Chairman of INEC, Dr. Abel Guabadia confessed this much recently in his communication with the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice and key political leaders. He cited how Section 78 of the Constitution that gives INEC the sole responsibility over registration of voters and the conduct of elections was flouted daily by the President, his Ministers and the PDP leaders.

One would find Dr. Goubadia’s misgivings about 2003 in this highly worded letter titled, “Towards The 2003 General Elections”, of September 3, 2002 published in This Day of September 9, 2002. I hate to impute motive for writing this letter at this time. It should be obvious that Dr. Guobadia is literally raising alarm about the government interference in violation of Section 78 of the Constitution and of the implications of such interference for a free, fair and credible election in 2003.

Dr. Guobadia cited many visits of Government officials to INEC and many pronouncements by government and ruling party officials on election matters that give the perception that the INEC is working to the plan of government and of the ruling political party.

He complained of the practice of making of pronouncements that have implication for the election by the President and Ministers such as the way the ID card and Voters registration were being handled without reference to the National Assembly that properly should make the laws on the election.

He complained of the lack of a valid Electoral Act. This serious. In his words:

The continued debate on the Electoral Act puts a veil of uncertainty

on the environment in which the Commission must operate.

He went on:

This uncertainty has implications for the Commission’s forward

planning.

He pleaded,

The controversial issues need to be resolved as early as possible

and without prejudice to the Commission’s constitutional mandate.

He complained of lack of funding and the irregular release of budgeted funds by the government on time to cope with the election cycle. He hated the idea of having to go cap in hand begging for the release of budgeted funds that are still lagging behind from 2001.

A careful reading of Dr. Guobadia’s letter copied to all the leaders of the National Assembly during the period of the impeachment is like putting the political class on notice that he was not confident with an election in which “office holders are at the same time candidates”. Everything in that letter was like a rehash of my three-part essay, “Neither a Candidate nor an Office Holder be” that formed the basis of my lecture at Vienna, Austria under the auspices of the National Association of Nigerian Communities of Austria (NANCA) on August 15, 2002.

OBASANJO CAN STILL RUN UNDER CERTAIN CONDITIONS

Where there is a level playing field, President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku would be free to seek nomination of their party . They would be doing this not as President or Vice President, but as other aspirants such as Senators Ike Nwachukwu and Chuba Okadigbo and Alhaji Mohammed Abubakar Rimi in the PDP.

The non-office holders as candidates should agitate that for anyone who wants to contest should be able to do so NOT as office holders but as candidates as all other candidates.

President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku should be free to run as a ticket or separately, if they decide to seek a second term.

The PDP as a political party would be free to declare a level playing field for all candidates including the President or his Vice and others who would want the office.

Let me give a special advice to Chief Audu Ogbeh, the National Chairman of the PDP and other party Chiefs. This is an opportunity for you, Chief Ogbeh and other Party Chiefs to reclaim the leadership of the Party. A level playing field would enable party chiefs to make sure that all interest groups within their parties are allowed to compete.

What happens to the President also applies to the members of the National Assembly. They too would have nothing to do with the 2003 election in which they are candidates.

The Electoral Commission should be reconstituted especially when it is well known that all the members of the Commission were either members of the ruling party, the PDP or were recommended to the President by the PDP Chief in the States. The practice in the US where the Federal Electoral Commission is made up of equal number of the two parties should be applied to Nigeria. INEC should be composed of equal number from all the parties.

The use of internal and external monitors and observers to cover all the entire process of the election is one way to ensure a level playing field for all concerned.

The Federal and State Government mass media organs would be placed under the independent agencies most preferably in hand of multi-party governing bodies.

The Security organs, such as the Police would be put under multi-party management bodies. That is to guarantee equal protection by the Police during the period of electioneering campaign.

FOUR

PDP CAUCUS SHOULD RESOLVE OBASANJO’S BREACHES POLITICALLY

All the breaches alleged to have been committed by President Obasanjo enumerated by the PDP caucus of the House of Representatives should be an issue in the party nomination and in the election. They are not impeachable issues.

If President Obasanjo committed all these “misconduct” or crimes as alleged by his party members in both Chambers of the National Assembly, they should resolve the matter within their party. They should take the matter to the nomination Convention of the PDP. That is what and where they should be aiming at now and the unknown terrain of impeachment.

If President Obasanjo, despite the charges gains the nomination, the same party members still have another opportunity. They should appeal to the Nigerian voters who would have to decide his fate in the general election in 2003.

All these of course are under the principle of a level playing field. All political parties and interest groups expressing their apprehension about the 2003 election as to whether it would be free and fair should support this proposal.

FINAL CONCLUSION

The purpose of three-part essay is to sensitize Nigerians as to the genesis of the crisis that it has root in President Obasanjo’s decision to disobey God. If he had allowed himself to be governed by what he told the Baptist Church on June 20, 1998 Nigeria would have been different today.

The second issue is the President’s decision to follow those who invited him in 1998 to be President and allowed them to finance his election in 1999. He made a tactical blunder after agreeing to a one term then decided to scheme a “self-succession” project. I recall since 1999, that I kept asking, what did he promise the north and what did he promise others especially people of the south-south. President Obasanjo never responded to this question. Now that the north through the PDP caucus is asking him to honor the pact, Nigerians are being made to suffer from what was not known to them.

The third is that the removal of the President through the impeachment is ominous. We can still avert this if the President would adopt the four suggestions proffered above.

The Yoruba Traditional Rulers and Christian leaders who rallying round the President were not party to the deals he reached with his sponsors. Yes Abiola was not the messiah, he as the messiah thought he would be an answer to the issues in the annulment. But he ignored the issues in the annulment since 1999 and even failed to recognize the winner of that election.

The solution to the crisis will be found in President. It cannot be through the many visits to the Villa and the House of Representatives. It certainly cannot be through the threat by some interest groups that heaven would fall if he were made to leave the Villa through the process of impeachment. There is a solution. That solution lies in whether the President agrees that he made blunders and that he would want to pay the price by taking himself out of contention.