Obasanjo And The Years The Locusts Have Eaten

By

Madaki O. Ameh

madakiameh@hotmail.com

When President Obasanjo assumed the mantle of leadership of Nigeria in May 1999, one of his early promises which still resonates in my mind is that he would, within a short period, restore the years the locusts have eaten.  He had also promised then, that ordinary Nigerians would feel the positive impact of his administration’s policies within the first six months, and that their lives would begin to transform for the better within the first full year in office.

Against the backdrop of all the failed promises and hard times Nigerians had endured under different administrations, it was no wonder that the new administration enjoyed tremendous goodwill, and Nigerians were really hopeful that things would change and the country would finally find a sense of direction.  This feeling was further reinforced by the fact that President Obasanjo had ruled Nigeria before as a military General, voluntarily handed over power to civilians in 1979, and in the twenty years before he came back as civilian President, he had tasted the frustration of being a hard government critic and a prisoner on death row.  Most Nigerians felt that, with such pedigree, it would be impossible for him to run the country as business as usual, and were prepared to give him the full support he required to turn the country around.

In his eagerness to settle into business and get the job done, apparently fuelled by a genuine sense of patriotism and the divine process which brought him from prison to Aso Rock, he made a number of early promises, like ensuring provision of 24 hours uninterrupted power supply by December 31^st 2001, a date which has since come and gone without any meaningful improvement in that sector.  Even though this may be excused as being a promise made without taking full stock of the extent of problems on ground, this was not expected of a President who had prior experience on that job, and for whom there was not supposed to be any extensive learning process.  Nigerians are used to being told to be patient, as their problems cannot be solved in one day, but the endless waiting game really tries their patience, and amounts to their being taken for granted by their leaders.

At the end of the first four years, it was difficult to point to any meaningful achievement of the government, in spite of the praise-singing and media blitz on the anti-corruption crusade, reforms and laying a solid foundation for Nigeria’s future greatness, all of which were not skin deep.  The second term in office however held out better promise, with the injection of some young and brilliant men and women into the administration, some of who have started producing results.  The reforms in Nigeria’s banking sector by Prof. Charles Soludo, the single-minded manner in which Mallam Nasir el-Rufai has pursued the transformation of Abuja, in spite of all the odds stacked against him, and more recently, the debt forgiveness achieved for Nigeria by the doggedness of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala cannot go unnoticed, even by the hardest critics of this administration.  Nigerians who are weary of waiting for positive change really desire for more of such success stories to happen, and quickly too, and whoever poses an obstacle to such achievements should be promptly fished out and handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which has also demonstrated that they have a sense of purpose, and is fast warming itself into the hearts of Nigerians who desire the best for their country.  

By promising to restore the years the locusts have eaten, President Obasanjo has set for himself a daunting task, akin to the divine, and history will judge him based on how effectively he played that role while in office.  This is because Nigeria has suffered from the infestation of a specie of locusts in their public office holders, never before known or seen by most countries in the civilised world.  And that is why, in spite of all the enormous resources available to the country since independence, ordinary Nigerians have never really seen the benefit of their being citizens of this potentially great nation, as most of the wealth is appropriated by a few individuals, who live like kings and princes at our collective expense.  The reality on ground is however still a far cry from uhuru, with allegations of obscene corruption against many public office holders like Tafa Balogun and others, who were given high national honours by the President, even when such allegations were in the public domain, which eminently calls to question the President’s sense of judgement. Even when it became obvious that Tafa Balogun had to be removed from office for corruption, the President tried hard to grant him a soft landing by announcing that he was going on retirement, and sent him a congratulatory letter for his ‘meritorious’ service to his fatherland. Such an effort at covering up is completely unbecoming of a President who wants to be perceived as an anti-corruption crusader.  Also, the fact that no prominent Nigerian has yet been convicted of corruption is a huge shame, and makes a mockery of the entire crusade, elevating it to no more than a huge joke in the eyes of right thinking people.

In addition to the above, the recent launching of the Obasanjo Presidential Library Project, where all the prominent businesses in Nigeria and state governments were summoned and virtually coerced to contribute obscene sums of money towards a purely private project of a serving President, raises such huge ethical questions that have become an albatross to any form of anti-corruption posturing of this administration. The sage, Professor Wole Soyinka has aptly described it as ‘executive extortion’. The fact that the President, in the suit filed by the indefatigable Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN, challenging the legality of the launching and requesting that the amounts realised be forfeited to the Federal Government, is pleading immunity from prosecution, a constitutional provision which he has openly reviled in his public posturing, also calls to question the depth of his ethical standards.  One wonders where the difference lies between him and Chief Joshua Dariye of Plateau State, who he has almost crucified in similar circumstances.  Even as one hopes that there will be a judicial pronouncement on this national embarrassment during what is left of President Obasanjo’s tenure, it is not unlikely that the snail pace of Nigeria’s judicial process and the tendency of Nigerians to move on to other more important things, will again sweep this matter into oblivion, and the President will simply walk away with his loot.

Finally, there has been a lot of euphoria about the debt forgiveness achieved by Nigeria recently with the Paris Club which needs to be put in its proper perspective.  Even though it is a positive development for Nigeria to be free of debt, in the hope that a new beginning will arise for the people, we must never lose sight of how we got to this situation in the first place.  In all the public commentaries I have read in connection with the debt forgiveness and how Nigeria’s debt stock was accumulated, accusing fingers have continuously been pointed at imaginary past bad leaders who took loans irresponsibly without ensuring that its terms were favourable to Nigeria.  In the euphoria, no one seems to emphasise that throughout the period of Nigeria’s unfortunate and costly civil war when there was no easy oil money, Nigeria did not borrow a dime from anywhere, and that the first jumbo loan of $3 billion taken by Nigeria was taken by President Obasanjo when he was military Head of State.  Up till this moment, we have not been told what that loan was taken for, and given the penchant of people to copy bad habits, all the other loans taken by subsequent administrations were merely borrowing a leaf from a bad precedent that had already been set.  If President Obasanjo, as Head of State had sustained the strict discipline of not taking foreign loans by the earlier administration of General Yakubu Gowon, which he could easily have done, given the fact that there was a huge oil boom in the country at the time, the subsequent civilian administration would have been wary of perfecting what he started. The amorphous nature of computation of interests and penalties on foreign loans clearly indicates, even to the uninformed, that $3 billion in 1978/79, poorly managed, would far outstrip the current national debt stock.  It therefore appears that the origin of the locusts in Nigeria’s body politic is becoming apparent, and that rather than dancing in the streets for forgiveness of accrued interests and penalties on a dubious debt, we should actually be thanking God that He gave President Obasanjo the chance to clear up his mess in the first place.  And he is doing this with hard earned excess crude oil revenue, which should have been better applied to provide much needed infrastructure for Nigerians.

President Obasanjo has less than two years more to fully restore the years the locusts have eaten, as he promised at the inception of his administration six years ago, the annoying speculation of extension of the tenure of his administration notwithstanding.  Nigerians will not just accept dubious statistics this time around but would like to see measurable improvements in their lives when the epitaph of this administration is written.  But the ever present threat of increase in prices of petroleum products, as if Nigeria buys crude oil from the international market, or that the citizens are to blame for the shame of not being able to refine the product locally, the rising unemployment rate, crisis in Nigeria’s educational and health system, extra-judicial murders by the Police, and worsening standards of living of Nigerians by the day, are glaring indications that the locusts are still very much around, and that the current species may even be more resistant to pesticides.  Even as we pray for things to improve, we must all accept that God has been exceedingly good to Nigeria, and that our problems cannot just be solved by prayers, but a dogged determination on the part of the citizenry to hold those who have put themselves incharge of our affairs to account.

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**Madaki O. Ameh, a lawyer, is currently a Chevening Scholar in Energy Law and Policy at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK.