Democracy Under Siege: Is Obasanjo the Man to Trust?
By
Abdullahi Bego
[IRAN]
Those of us who felt and
argued that the impeachment clause should not be invoked against President
Obasanjo, as the House of Representatives has threatened to do, despite a body
of reasons and evidences to do so, are being proved wrong once again. Against
our argument for Obasanjo to continue in office in support of the survival of
democracy and national stability, the President has proved impervious, once
again, to the provisions of the Nigerian constitution and the deft political
skills needed by a man seeking re-election.
For the impeachment skeptics, like myself, evidence that the Obasanjo-led federal government was flouting the laws of the land came again on Thursday September 19, 2002 at the premises of the Abuja High Court. There over a thousand armed policemen with ‘orders from above’ re-arrested Mohammed Abacha, son of the former military dictator Gen. Sani Abacha, without an arrest warrant despite explicit court injunctions for the federal government not to carry such re-arrest.
In what will go down in history as a flagrant travesty of the rule of law in a democracy, a commissioner of police Alhaji Abubakar Audu was reported to have told the Speaker of the House of Representatives Ghali Umar Na’abba and other members of the National Assembly who had gone to Police Command Headquarters to seek for Abacha’s release that the re-arrest of the late General’s son was based on an instruction and that nothing could be done because he was awaiting further directives from his superiors.
It is instructive to note
that on Monday, September 12th 2002 a Federal High Court led by
Justice Binta Murtala Nyako had ruled that the federal government couldn’t
re-arrest Abacha after he was released. In her judgment, Justice Nyako said
“that the applicant’s right to freedom from discrimination, arbitrary arrest
and detention as guaranteed and enshrined in the provisions of Section 42(1) a
and b and (2) 1999 constitution is hereby enforced”. By this order of the
Federal High Court, Mohammed Abacha was supposed to have been allowed to return
to Kano after the Abuja High Court led by Justice Dahiru Saleh confirmed bail
granted him on July 24th, 2002 on charges of financial crimes upon
which he met a ten million naira bail condition.
That Federal High Court Order not to re-arrest Mohammed Abacha, sources said, had been served the State Security Service, the Federal Ministry of Justice and the office of the National Security Adviser.
Given this vast array of legal grounds giving Mohammed Abacha some respite from detention, why is the federal government unwilling to let him go?
The other time President Obasanjo was on record as saying Abacha was re-arrested after a court granted him bail, following his acquittal on murder charges by the Supreme Court, because the State Security Service and the police wanted him for investigation. Two months after, what were the results of the investigation? With the courts now saying let him go again, why is the President being so intransigent?
The argument put forward by
Abacha supporters that President Obasanjo was simply being vindictive of the Abacha
family is therefore difficult to dismiss. True, Obasanjo had suffered in the
hands of the late General Abacha after he was accused of planning to overthrow
his government. But having become a ‘born-again’ Christian at the Yola
prisons, Obasanjo, after being released by General Abdulsalami Abubakar, had
said he had forgiven everyone as a mark of thanksgiving to the Lord who had
spared his life.
Now this claim is being
challenged. It appears Obasanjo has not forgiven Abacha after all. Despite the
wonders God had done to his life, despite the status he has attained as a
statesman and despite the provisions of the Nigerian constitution, which he
swore to uphold as an elected president, Obasanjo was saying, by the re-arrest
of Mohammed Abacha, that he was still yet to exact his own pound of flesh for
the ‘wrongs’ done him.
It could be that by
allowing the re-arrest of Mohammed Abacha, the President was to trying to cover
for the failures and inadequacies associated with the 2002 budget. In depending
himself against the charge of slashing some percentage of the budget approved by
the National Assembly, the President was reported to have harped on dwindling
revenues and government’s inability to recover the Abacha loot. Nigerians also
believed him when he said a deal had been struck between the federal government
and the Abacha family that the family would return some money to the government
in return for freedom from prosecution. Now Mohammed Abacha had denied of any
such deal with the government and challenged the President to prove to Nigerians
the deal was indeed struck.
As far as financial fraud and corruption are concerned, the President, I think, has enough to occupy his attention within his own administration that has made the fight against these vices a focal point of its thrust for the Nigerian people. Recently, Transparency International, that democracy watchdog of which Obasanjo was a founding member, had given Nigeria under the current administration the red card as far as corruption was concerned. Worst still most of what can be described as corrupt practices take place right at the Presidency where Obasanjo was ordinarily supposed to be paying close attention vis-à-vis his anti-corruption drive.
Yet even with this unenviable record and the fact that very soon the President will begin to appear before Nigerians to campaign for re-election, he seems to be carrying along with doing some of what the House of Representatives had accused him of in the list of 17 impeachable offences.
Whatever was pushing the President to do these things, it is time he takes a serious look at what is happening to Nigeria. There is still so much mistrust and disaffection. Rather than allaying some of these through pacific exertions and commitment to the rule of law, the Obasanjo administration was in fact making them worse. It is certainly not enough to kampe as the President jokingly said he was doing sometime ago.
The President has earned a place in Nigeria’s history. At a time, like Professor Mike Ikhariale argued, when African leaders were saying sit-tight-ism was the order of the day in Africa, Obasanjo, then a military dictator, decided to show civility by handing over power to an elected democratic government. That single act of statesmanship catapulted Obasanjo to international acclaim. This honour earned by his avowed commitment to democracy and the rule of law should not be dissipated by the desire to take revenge or by the promptings of some of those with affinity to the President who, in reality, have only meeting their selfish ends as their main preoccupation. Otherwise as 2003 inches closer, many people in Nigeria will doubt if Obasanjo is the man to trust again as they did in 1999.
Abdullahi Bego writes from Tehran, I R Iran (email abego5@yahoo.com)