The Black Widow's Grip

By

Mahmud Jega

The deadliest love and kiss in the entire animal kingdom is that of the Black Widow spider, known by its Latin name Latrodectus mactans. The female of this spider species is four times bigger than the male. Her’s is the literal kiss of death; soon after sexual intercourse, the female spider grabs the male and eats it.

In the last 7 years, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has been something of the Black Widow of Nigerian politics. Close political interaction with him has often resulted in the political destruction of many a budding political figure. Many a politician who aided Obasanjo’s steep rise from prison to power ended up in the tiger’s belly; it was not unlike having amorous relations with the Black Widow spider. Among the many political allies that he consumed over the years, there was Chief Sunday Afolabi, who first took a PDP membership card to the Ottah farmhouse in late 1998. There were the party’s founding fathers, including Dr. Alex Ekwueme and Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, now cast aside like a bird-flu infected chicken. There was Chief Sunday Awoniyi, who organized the PDP election convention in Jos where Obasanjo was nominated as flag bearer. There was Chief Solomon Lar, who led the party from infancy to smashing victory in the 1999 elections, and who was quickly cast aside soon after victory was achieved. There were the naïve Benue Chiefs, Barnabas Gemade and Audu Ogbeh, both of whom helped Obasanjo to consolidate his grip on the party, only to be repaid with ostracisation and forced resignation. There were all the old partisans of the once-formidable PDM----Atiku Abubakar, Dapo Sarumi, Lawal Kaita, Yomi Edu, Ango Abdullahi, Chuba Okadigbo, Patrick Dele Cole etc------who provided a political platform to elect Obasanjo in 1999. They were promptly rewarded with a systematic killing of their organization, thrown away with the Yar’adua myth. And then there was General Ibrahim Babangida, who authored the whole sordid script of the prison-to-power fairy tale, and there was General Aliyu Mohamed Gusau, who did the art work and screenplay. Both men ended up on the wrong end of the former Marine Commando commander’s baton. Obasanjo has also emasculated and depopulated the party that got him elected to power. He arm-twisted two state assemblies to impeach their governors, forced the PDP to eject two more governors that he did not like, used the EFCC to harass many PDP governors, and instigated the American FBI against his own Vice President.

The wonder of this political epoch is that anyone in Nigeria will seek Obasanjo’s endorsement in a campaign for next year’s presidential elections. There are at least ten reasons why courting Obasanjo’s political kiss and hug is no safer than mating with the Black Widow spider.
For one, there is as yet no solid evidence to suggest that the President has really given up on his self-succession idea. At the PDP NEC meeting soon after the National Assembly threw out the 3T [for “third term” bill] and again in his May 29 address, Obasanjo did not admit to his role in the plot, did not say a mistake was made, did not condemn it, did not regret it, did not apologise for it and did not explicitly renounce his 3T bid. This was not because Chief Obasanjo, who traveled to all corners of the globe within 4 short years, did not know how to make himself very clear, if he wants to. For example, he must have known what the American President Lyndon Johnson did when anti-Vietnam War protesters greeted him at every turn as he prepared to launch his re-election campaign in early 1968. He therefore went on television and firmly said, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president”. Everyone then knew that the matter was closed.

The President has not yet apologized for subverting the high ideals behind setting up ICPC and EFCC, or for sending his political agents ferrying Ghana Must Go bags even while he prosecuted an “anti-corruption war”. He has not apologized to Senator Adolphus Wabara and Professor Fabian Osuji for making a televised nation-wide address to “expose” their allegedly giving and receiving a N50 million. That “bribe” money now looks laughable compared to the N70 million per senator offered by the 3T men. In any case, Osuji’s alleged motive for offering the bribe, to get the National Assembly to hike the Education budget, looks saintly compared to the desire to get tenure elongation.

Thirdly, Obasanjo has not yet given up on the idea that he is the Messiah, the psychiatric state that gave birth to the tenure elongation plot in the first place. At the aforementioned PDP NEC meeting, party chieftains Ahmadu Ali, Abdullahi Adamu, Emanuel Iwuanyanwu and Jibril Aminu fell over themselves to praise Obasanjo as, in effect, the Messiah. All the while, he sat there enjoying, believing and relishing every moment of it. Compare that to what happened at Arusha in mid-1983, soon after Julius Nyerere served notice that he was retiring from the presidency of Tanzania. All 250 members of the Central Committee of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, led by then president of Zanzibar and Vice President of Tanzania Ali Hassan Mwinyi, went to Arusha to convince Nyerere to withdraw his retirement notice. Delegation leader Mwinyi rose to speak and said, “You must not retire, Mwalimu.

Tanzania needs you. We have no other person who could fill your shoes”. At that, Mwalimu got up, said Mwinyi’s claim was not true and warned him never to repeat it. He then ordered the entire group to leave his house immediately and to go, discuss and elect a new leader. That very day, they elected Ali Hassan Mwinyi, who went on to serve as President of Tanzania for 10 years. Chief Obasanjo showed no such Nyererian wisdom.

Instead, he launched a “reconciliation process” in the PDP and in the country that is anything but that. No attempt has been made to reconcile with the Vice President, with National Assembly members who were made to go through so much trauma, with the party’s founders who were all shoved out, with humiliated former and current governors, with Yakubu Gowon, T.Y. Danjuma, Wole Soyinka and other titans. In fact, the “reconciliation teams” are headed by die-hard 3T men who command no respect within or outside the party.

Next, like a true spider, Obasanjo spinned a political gadar zare, a bridge made of thread, as the old timers say. He restricted the choice of a presidential successor to the PDP governors, and then asked the party’s 27-or-so governors to produce a candidate from among themselves and submit it to him for approval. This was more power than Joseph Stalin ever arrogated to himself in the old Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Never mind the restricted field of choice when the PDP has a vice president, a senate president, a speaker, many former and serving ministers and several eminent statesmen as well. How can the governors be expected to peacefully choose one of them to rise to the presidency, when a precedent has been well set in the last 7 years that the President is a black widow spider who consumes all that had a hand in his steep rise to total power? Anyway, it is only fair to warn the “chosen one” as to what is likely to happen at the end of this curious anointment process. He should expect to be actively undermined and pulled down by his former gubernatorial colleagues. He should expect powerful ministers, senators and other party big guns that were excluded from the selection process to fret and to undermine the ticket. He should expect widespread public incredulity, skepticism and cynicism. He should expect to be required by the Obasanjo cabal to publicly pledge to continue with the “reform agenda”, which is a kiss of electoral death. He should expect the current party leaders, who see the PDP as an army garrison, to foot drag, to demand unquestioning loyalty to the garrison commander, and to pour sand in his anointed gari. He should expect no financial aid, because this one is no 3T and Obasanjo is only thinking of his library, his chicken and his post-2007 security. He should not expect Chief Obasanjo to play the willing role of a kingmaker, because he knows how he devoured all previous kingmakers. He should expect further disintegration of the party, as many governors and ministers seek the tickets of other political parties. He should expect many leaks of EFCC “findings” against him. Finally, he should expect the April 2007 election date to be a booby-trap constructed with al-Zarqawian skill.