Obasanjo to Pick Next President

By

Sam Nda-Isaiah

Sam@nigeriaunlimited.com

Yes, Mr. Tony Anenih, whose petty words are considered the last word within the ruling PDP, graciously told us that recently. The president himself being a little more adept at the deceit game considered the statement a Freudian slip and quickly denied it. But the president needn’t bother. It’s no longer a secret in Nigeria . That is why everyone who wants to be the next president within the PDP has been trying very hard to be in the good books of the president. Obasanjo decides anything and everything and does whatever he likes and nobody even challenges him. He is accountable to no one and nothing in the system checks him. Not even the courts are useful to anyone anymore. If some of those who thought they were cheated in the elections last year had known better, they would have resorted to more effective ways of reclaiming their mandates and not wasting their precious time and money going to the courts.

It is always what Baba wants that happens. And Baba knows how to get things done seamlessly without showing his hand. When he needed to teach his VP a few lessons, he got the election petitions panel to do the job without interference and when it appeared that the VP had been sufficiently humbled and having appointed Afe Babalola, the president’s lawyer to the case, the calibre of panel that would give the kind of judgment that we heard last week was appointed. Is it not the president who picked a Senate President for the country who was not even a candidate for the Senatorial election and the chap is still there parading himself as Senate President? If the president could pick the Senate President the way he did last year and nothing happened, why won’t he pick the next president? Almost all the governors, Senators and all “elected” people of the South South, South East and South West were picked by the president and they didn’t need to go through the rigours of any elections. Anyone who still doesn’t know that surely doesn’t know that the grass is green and that the sun rises from the east.

So for once, Anenih has told the nation the truth and I think his public rating should improve on that score. You may say, yes, we know we are being cheated, but why is the fixer-in-chief rubbing it in. But why not? It has been said that it is what is in the mind when there is no alcohol in it that comes out when there is alcohol. I can’t be certain of the relationship between the wily Benin chief and the bottle, but I know another genre of drunkenness, of a worse form that afflicts the man. This one is called power drunkenness. It is what drove him to declare in 2002 that there was no vacancy in Aso Rock and of course, the way the election was conducted by Obasanjo and Anenih in April last year confirmed indeed that there was no vacancy in Aso Rock. Nobody other than Obasanjo could have “won” the election last year. Chief Obafemi Awolowo would have lost the election in the South West last year to Obasanjo, if he were alive and a candidate. So would have Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, in the North and Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe in the South East. The only way the peoples’ will would have mattered was for them to have declared a fire for fire with the Obasanjo people. But the entire machinery of violence, and of thuggery, in addition to the instruments to steal and the power to cheat, all resided in the president in what was known as incumbency power. Incumbency power in the last five years has actually been transmuted into a magic wand and the system has not challenged it. Obasanjo currently has incumbency power and by 2007, if Nigerians are still pretending that theirs is a democracy, he will still be the only one in the entire country with that magic wand.

Yes, Anenih was right to say that Obasanjo will pick the next president. In fact, there are so many different kinds of reasons why Obasanjo should pick the next president. And that’s being fair to the president. The next president who is not carefully picked could get rude and start dabbling into matters that are not his business. The first place he might look would be the oil sector. He may also be interested in the full disclosure of the serial misappropriation of public funds occasioned by the record five years of non-implementation of national budgets. He might also like to know where all the nation’s money, including the Excess Crude Proceeds has gone. And since ICPC will still be there (but this time without the continually snoozing Mustapha Akanbi) and all its appurtenant laws, the consequences of all these and many more will be too scary for Baba. It will therefore be harebrained not to pick the next president the way the current Senate President, Adolphus Wabara was picked. After all, handpicking Wabara has proved to be such a bright idea. Why abandon a winning formula? In any case, what can Nigerians do? Conquered people have no voting rights. That is why all those jostling to take over from Obasanjo within the PDP should stop wasting their time trading words at one another and just simply concentrate on sucking up to the president and licking his boots. Washing Baba’s clothes occasionally could also help. I heard from someone who should know, that Ibrahim Mantu, who’s one of those hustling to be “picked” by the president even genuflects before him.  Whenever he is with the president, he goes on his knees. Why not? When you are before God, Whom we are told is the giver of all powers and promotion, don’t we bow down in prayers? It only depends on who your God is. For some, Baba is the only God they know.

And I think it is for the same reasons that the agitation regarding which “zone” the next president will come from has been rocking the PDP. Understandably, this is only a PDP problem. And on that matter, the North, which proverbially finds it very difficult to unite even on more straight forward issues affecting its survival, has been talking with one voice, at least within the PDP. Governor Ahmed Makarfi of Kaduna State was the one that fired the first salvo when he declared matter-of-fact, that the North must produce the next president. He was immediately supported by Professor Jerry Gana who has never been known to go against the president as long as the indication exists that the president will continue to remain president. At some stage, even Audu Ogbeh, the party’s chairman declared that the next president must emerge from the North. The main plank of their argument is that there was a gentleman’s agreement within their party that the power must revert to the North after it had resided in the South for eight years. But since when has the president started keeping agreements – gentleman’s or ungentleman’s. If the president did not keep to the agreement he made with his own people, the Afenifere, the only group in Nigeria he fears and occasionally panders to, why should anyone think he will ever keep a promise made to any other group, least of all the North? And what happened to even the well known understanding reached in 1999 between the president and the northern group, led by Chief Sunday Awoniyi and Professor Jibrin Aminu? No, the president will not keep his word on any power arrangement. Only a gentleman keeps a gentleman’s agreement and the president has never kept any agreement made to anyone in his life. And for those who are that close to the president, was there never another gentleman’s sub-agreement that he would serve only one term?

Another person who should understand this compulsive penchant for breaking agreements is Governor Abdulkadir Kure of Niger State . During the primaries of the PDP in 1999, Kure met the then presidential candidate Olusegun Obasanjo and made only one request in exchange for the support of Niger people. Kure wanted the establishment of HYPADEC (just like OMPADEC for the oil producing states) for the people of his state whose land has been devastated as a result of hydroelectric activities. The request was not personal. Obasanjo knew Kure ’s support then was vital to him as the governorship candidate was totally in charge of the delegates from Niger State . The presidential candidate wasted no time in accepting the proposal. Kure was glad and thought he had achieved something. Obasanjo won the election in Niger as if he had no opponent. Remember Niger State was the only state that was 100% PDP. There was no APP and no AD. And when it was time for the new president to keep his own side of the deal, he simply looked at Kure straight in the eye, with a straight face and told him to farm rice instead. And since the ordinary people of the affected areas of Niger State together with other agitators in Kebbi, Kwara and Kogi States are not given to the art of agitation by violence, the only language the government understands – see how successful violence has been for the Niger Delta people considering OMPADEC, NDDC, resource control etc – HYPADEC will never take off as long as Obasanjo remains in power. Never mind both the Senate and House of Representatives in the last dispensation were favourably disposed to the idea. For those who didn’t know, that was the source of acrimony between Kure and Obasanjo throughout their first terms.

Back to my point. In this column on November 10, 2003 , in a piece entitled: “The baloney about 2007”, I pointed out the futility of talking about 2007 if the lie of 2003 was not resolved. It will be dishonest for anyone to think that there will ever be any election again in this country under the current order if the president is allowed to get away with the crimes of the 2003 elections. The president himself who has had cause to rebuke the 2007 campaigners in the past declared last week in far away Addis Ababa , that 2007 will be peaceful. To him, those in the courts now challenging his 2003 election, which has now been accepted by the whole world – including those currently dining with him – as a fraud, are merely wasting their time. He did not even see his statement as contemptuous of the court. The president has never been bothered about the overwhelming evidence that keeps pouring into the courts against his election. To him, all these don’t matter, he knows exactly what to do at the right time.

But I think the president will eventually conclude that he will not need to pick anyone for 2007. For his wonderful reforms to continue, including NEEDS, SEEDS and the continuing deregulation of the oil industry and every other sector, he will have to continue in power himself. The president has always said that continuity helps democracy. A third term will be much easier to get than even the second term. This time around, you don’t have a Ghali Na’Abba, who occasionally took small jokes too far or a T.Y. Danjuma or Adamu Ciroma for whatever moderating influences they provide. And if he can be there himself, why will he need to pick someone else? Why be a kingmaker when you can continue to remain king? Kings don’t vacate their thrones. They are either dethroned or they die in power, whichever one comes first.

And even if someone like Governor Makarfi appears serious about the agreements reached, he will be surprised that when the chips come down and the president decides against the North – as he the president is already talking about “which zones” and not whether the arrangement was between the North and South – most of his fellow northerners siding him now will not be there for him. The core values that gave the North superiority in the politics of this country have changed. Northerners did most of the rigging that was done for Obasanjo last year. The chief INEC electoral officers in all the 11 states of the South South and South East where there were no elections at all, but for which Obasanjo and his gang were declared winners were northerners. These run antithetical to the values that gave the North, its political suzerainty in the past. And the moment the North comes together again and stops the current foolish and mutually destructive internecine wars (especially the religious strife), nobody will need to engage in such talks as “it is the turn of the North”. All the time in the past, when the North controlled and decided power, including dispensing it to candidates like MKO Abiola and Olusegun Obasanjo when it felt like, did anybody need to declare who controlled the levers?

And by the way, as I have always declared on these pages, I think it is time to abandon this funny contraption called power shift. If we want democracy qua democracy, then lets have democracy. If Abiola, a South Westerner, won overwhelmingly in 1993, including trouncing his opponent, Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa in his native Kano , then let’s forget this undemocracy called power shift. Obasanjo would still have won in 1999 convincingly even without power shift.

So, Ohanaeze and the South South should produce their best candidates and start reaching out and engaging other interest groups like Abiola did so successfully instead of being obstreperous about the presidency being their turn. The North too should stop talking and begging for power. Its leaders should only be working hard at unity among their people. Democracy is a majoritarian concept and a united majority has never been known to beg for power. Not even Baba can alter that fact, except of course he changes the demographic structure of the country next year through the 2005 census – something that is not beyond him in any case. He proved a point with the election last year. Next year’s census will be the coup de grace. I hear Babalola Borishade is poised for the mother of all rigging. My only hope is that Nigeria is not caught napping again.

But the minimum requirement must still remain the best man for the job wherever he comes from. That’s the only way we can join the rest of the world already in the 21^st century.

Sam Nda-Isaiah is the publisher of Leadership Confident