Lets Have A ‘Lame Duck’ Presidency, PleaseByOlabisi Olalekanliberalnigeria@yahoo.com
And so the PDP governors now constitute the party’s electoral college who would select and nominate its presidential candidate for the 2007 elections? This, according to the Daily Trust of Thursday 1st June flows from a directive issued by President Olusegun Obasanjo to the 26 PDP governors (now 27 with the defection of governor Saminu Turaki of Jigawa Statre) to meet and nominate from amongst themselves those from among whom the President would finally ‘anoint’ the one to contest on the PDP platform in 2007. Barring any hitches, the PDP governors are set to deliver to Mr President the names of the ‘chosen’, from among whom the ‘anointed’ would emerge.
On the face of it there is absolutely nothing wrong in a President wanting to influence the choice of, rather than determine (as in this case) who succeeds him in office. Indeed this could be the normal thing in all other countries. But unfortunately for Nigeria this current attempt, coming on the heels of the failed attempt at securing a 3rd term, does not look normal, and indeed reeks of being quite abnormal from conception to the expected still birth or even miscarriage that is bound to be its ordained ending.
The point is coming so soon after the 3rd term debacle, this attempt at determining a successor, in spite of all the well-positioned prospective candidates, such as the Vice President Atiku Abubakar and even former President Ibrahim Babangida, might directly backfire on the administration again - that is just as in the case of the botched 3rd term agenda. And why would the attempt at ‘anointing’ a successor fare no better than the ill-fated 3rd term or tenure elongation attempt? It is because of the same reason behind the 3rd term debacle, namely the illegal, illegitimate and immoral circumventing of established procedure, or the much-touted “due process” in the parlance of the administration.
Circumventing procedure in this case is already implied in the nature of the project, since anyone ‘anointed’ by the President must impliedly win the forthcoming elections. And if only to justify and sustain the earlier wrong of installing cronies of the President to man key positions in the PDP Exco without going through proper elections, this current attempt at ‘anointing’ a successor will also have to circumvent and indeed corrupt established procedure.
Besides since they were elected by a stage-managed voice-vote, the party Exco can not be expected to command enough legitimacy and therefore lack the authority through which they can organize and hold proper elections at the party primaries. And just as the PDP constitution, the electoral law and the constitutional Directives Principles of State Policy were circumvented and ignored in the process of installing the PDP Exco members, just so would all these provisions have to be circumvented and contravened for the one ‘anointed’ to emerge and then win the national elections. The point is wrong can only beget wrong as there will then be no defeat that can be gracefully accepted by the ‘anointed’ simply because he has been so ‘anointed’ and (assured?) to win. And others too will not accept their defeat since the rule known to have guided the primaries is not of law or any known rational regulation, but the whims of the powers-that-be. The PDP seems to be in a vicious circle of sorts, and the more firmly President Obasanjo attempts to entrench his control on the party via cronies, the bolder the relief of the contours of that vicious circle become. But this may perhaps be PDP’s, and no one else’s affairs.
At the level of the State however which should be every Nigerian’s affairs, this current attempt at determining and ‘anointing’ a successor to the President is being undertaken when the administration has only 10 months more in office. This alone should have hamstrung or indeed incapacitated President Obasanjo, whose administration ought to by now begin its twilight days in power. The President himself ought to brace up to begin to conduct what is called a Lame-duck Administration – that is an administration which legally holds the reigns of constitutional authority of the State, but which at the same time, increasingly lacks the political power to make any use of that political authority to effectively decide on any major issue for the country. This is barring – may God forbid it – the occurrence of any dire nationwide emergency situation.
Coupled with the unmitigated, certainly devastating defeat of the administration’s attempt at securing a 3rd term by a less than righteous constitutional amendment process, the shortness of its remaining days in office ought to have completely disengaged the mind of the Obasanjo administration from attempting to secure the ‘anointing’ of a successor for the President. Especially so indeed when such an attempt is being done with the sole aim of spiting leading contenders within the PDP such as the Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the former President Ibrahim Babangida.
The events of the last few weeks have demonstrated that the administration may hold the political authority but it has increasingly lost the quantum of political power needed to decisively actualize its every wish in the Nigerian political space through the active use of that authority – at least not through the much touted “due process” of a democratic dispensation which the administration mouths so loudly as a mantra quite so often.
Ironically – and this might turn out to be quite tragic also – the attempt at choosing and ‘anointing’ a successor is being undertaken not only with the intention of dashing the Presidential hopes of perceived opponents (meaning those who championed the crushing to death of the 3rd term agenda ala Atiku and IBB), but also as an attempt at re-generating political power for the Obasanjo administration through the instrumentality of the no-less-fast-ebbing authority of the state governors. And this is where the administration may be making another very costly mistake. By asking state governors, who like himself, are holders of a fast fading mandate to choose whom he will ‘anoint’ as a successor, the President may indeed be correctly accused of creating a crooked ploy by which he would use the governors, who are no more politically virile at this material time than the President himself, to re-generate a quantum of political power which has so naturally evaporated from the grasp of his administration as it approaches the last days of its tenure in office.
Presently, not even one of the governors can claim to be a political leader on his own - nor exhibit the ability to decisively influence the course of events beyond a particular state’s borders. As a collective, they are no less varied in their interests as they are in their backgrounds and political personalities. Except they are to anchor themselves in some (hidden again?) agenda from the Presidency, nothing can be more unimaginable than the prospect of a singular collective governors’ choice as the PDP’s next Presidential candidate.
It then follows that the order given to them by the President (obviously proceeding only from his political authority as President of the Federal Republic) to select whom to ‘anoint’ as his successor, is more of a ruse aimed at re-creating not for the governors, but for the President personally, a quantum of political power through only the use of the political authority of the governors, which like the President’s, is fast approaching its terminal end. In Communist and military regimes, this may be the norm, but in a liberal democracy, this is an inversion of values. For Communists and military regimes first use force and crooked guile to snatch political authority for themselves without the consent of the governed; and then only secondly, using more of the force now availed them by state authority and further subterfuge and propaganda, regardless of truth and righteousness, go on to create political power for themselves – using political killings, banishment and intimidation as state policy.
In liberal democracies, political power is in the first instance, generated at the level of society by worthy political leaders through peaceful political activism and the instrumentality of political parties. And only in the second instance does this political power beget political authority at the level of the state – that is after its investiture through popular votes via the conduct of transparent elections. Therefore it is quite abnormal, indeed quite immoral, to use a political authority whose expiry date is so fast approaching, such as that of most of the PDP governors, to re-generate political power for an administration that should by now, naturally progressively lapse into a “lame duck” status. And this abnormality and immorality is not much unlike the one underlying the attempt at snatching a 3rd term or tenure elongation through a fraudulent constitutional amendment.
Indeed further probe into the scheme of using the governors to select a Presidential candidate for the PDP reveals an even more prurient abnormality and immorality. For one the scheme revolves around avenging the humiliation of the utter and unmitigated defeat of the 3rd term agenda. At least from within the PDP – and this is where the opposition to the 3rd term was most ferocious – the arrowheads of that opposition are quite obvious: they are Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former President Ibrahim Babangida. And these two at least for now, are also the main contenders for the Presidency from within the PDP. The quite strident voices and effective political moves of this duo from both inside and outside the PDP octopus ensured the speedy overthrow and quashing of the 3rd term agenda. Incidentally, Vice President Atiku and former President Babangida as is quite well known, were also instrumental to President Obasanjo’s electoral victory in 2003.
It then follows that asking the PDP governors (who are mostly “godsons” and ‘kid-brothers’ to Vice President Atiku and former President Babangida) to select a Presidential candidate from amongst themselves, is both abnormal and immoral as a ploy aimed at poisoning and disrupting the ethical relationship between these governor-wards and their political mentors. This relationship has been nursed, cultivated and entrenched as a result of painstaking political activity at the grassroots level of society over a number of years through the infrastructure of the political parties. The efficacy of the political power thus generated through the relationships has been proven first in the enthronement and legitimizing of the Obasanjo administration (without one may dare say the President ‘anointing’ himself) and secondly, in the defeat of the 3rd term agenda.
It is therefore a singularly tyrannical act to use the political authority of the Presidency and the governors, both of whose terminal date is fast approaching, in such a cavalierly dishonest manner, to disrupt and cause a disconnect in the elaborate network of alliances by which both the Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former President Babangida operate their political machines to generate political power as potential Presidential candidates of the PDP. And this act of political tyranny looks the more prurient as an abnormality and immorality the more one realizes its motive to be nothing more than getting even with the Vice President especially, for championing the crushing to death of the 3rd term agenda and humiliating its proponents in the process.
It may indeed be too late for President Obasanjo’s administration to destroy Vice President Atiku’s and former President Babangida’s political machines at the same time, and create a new one for its own ‘anointed’ candidate. This is not only a tall order for an administration that is just going into its twilight days and the end of its tenure. It is also an unnecessary diversion away from conducting a clean and tidy handover. For one, it is difficult to fathom so soon after the humiliating defeat of the 3rd term agenda, how President Obasanjo can regenerate and command enough political power to be personally decisive in determining who becomes the next President. Except he enforces his choice by some other means than genuine electoral votes – but that too requires a viable, if not preponderant nation-wide presence at the grassroots level. And the President is not known to be a grass-roots politician, nor command grass-roots loyalty even in his own native Ogun State – certainly not going by the Supreme Court judgment which showed him out as flunking the elections in his own backyard, even after the same judgment, having put both truth and righteousness into abeyance, granted him victory on the alter of political expediency in other parts of the country.
So it looks like a very tall order indeed for the administration, within the small number of days remaining to the next elections, to create a new PDP machinery outside of the entrenched ones belonging to Vice President Atiku especially and to a lesser extent, the former President Babangida to campaign for its own Presidential candidate.
Besides it is an unnecessary diversion to waste resources and man-hours in such a fruitless endeavor. Both Vice President Atiku and IBB have faithfully served to enthrone President Obasanjo. Even against the seemingly more popular sentiments of their immediate constituencies, they stuck to President Obasanjo – even when his home turf refused to support him. And after the massive rigging of the 2003 elections, they still supported President Obasanjo to re-establish and stabilize his government’s authority and second tenure. Putting into abeyance their knowledge of the truth and righteousness, they both lent the considerable strength of their shoulders for the administration to lean upon, to overcome and win over credible legal challenges to its victory in the 2003 elections. Indeed the finest hour of conscientious service to President Obasanjo by the Vice President Atiku Abubakar was recorded recently when, putting himself and everything he had worked for at risk, the VP staunchly and successfully, opposed the 3rd term agenda, and thereby helped to pull back the administration from a certain perdition, that could have consumed both its life and honor.
It is therefore quite an unnecessary diversion for President Obasanjo to now allow himself to be personally instilled by minions with the consuming desire to dash the Presidential aspirations of his deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. It is only to the devil that doing obedience leads to perdition and failure rather than salvation and success. And President Obasanjo is not the devil by any stretch of the imagination. Therefore rather than end up behaving like the devil, who always destroys those that serve and do obedience to him, one would rather urge President Obasanjo to consciously choose to be godly by striving even with effort to be graceful, forgiving and merciful, and in being moral and righteous in conduct.
Righteousness, according to scripture, exalts a nation. In this instance, the right and more moral, more preferable course for the President to follow, is for him to decide to be loyal to the Presidential aspirations of the Vice President, and pay back the moral debt of serving and doing obedience to him as a matter of course. There is honor no doubt in following this alternative. But if by some unfathomable dictate this were not possible, then the next most honorable course is for the President to seek to negate himself henceforth, and be a zero factor as far as governance is concerned and the choices regarding any major issue facing the country concerned for the remaining days of this administration. A ‘lame duck’ Presidency may be the better moral alternative than continuing to fumble and dither as if blinded by the darkness of being too selfish to see the truth. One sure way of demonstrating neutrality in this instance is to maintain the current obvious slide of the Presidency into a ‘lame duck’ administration which would continue to maintain its bare state political authority, but without trying by such less than straight means, to cultivate political power through the instrumentality of state governors, whose authority is no less tenuous and ebbing away at no less than fast a rate as the President’s.
So please lets have a ‘lame duck’ Presidency henceforth, one which barely maintains the running of government and law and order, but without venturing into deciding one way or another in such prominent and vital issues such as seeking to determine who takes over power after May 29th 2007. The Nigerian people are quite capable of making their own choice given a level playing field through any of the existing political parties. |