PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA  

Nas: The Man Who Stayed Loyal

kudugana@yahoo.com

It is one of those supreme ironies of life that a man once condemned by the Nigerian mass media and pro-democracy organisations as the Goebels of Abacha is in his death being celebrated today as one of the greatest and most credible critics of Olusegun Obasanjo’s Imperial Presidency, with a capital I. Paul Joseph Goebels, as we all know, was Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda who once famously remarked that a lie repeated many times becomes accepted as truth. At the height of General Sani Abacha’s venal and brutal dictatorship, Alhaji Wada Nas, first as minister of state for education and then as minister of special duties, became its propaganda chief. In this rather self-appointed job, Nas formed a one-man squad that returned fire for every fire from the opposition mass media and the pro-democracy groups whose umbrella organisation was NADECO, the National Democratic Coalition.

It all started in August 1993 when General Ibrahim Babangida was forced to “step aside” -- his own words – as military president after canceling the June 12, 1993 presidential elections on June 23, an election which Chief M.K.O. Abiola seemed set to win. To many peoples’ surprise, Babangida left Abacha behind as minister of defense after retiring all the other military chiefs. Abacha was left behind presumably to secure the military front for the interim government Babangida had appointed on stepping aside. This was under Chief Ernest Shonekan, himself, like Chief M.K.O. Abiola, from Abeokuta , Ogun State .

Instead of securing the military for Shonekan, Abacha apparently decided to use it to oust the chief from power. First, he convinced the pro-democracy groups and Chief Abiola himself, that he will reinstated June 12. In their naivety, they encouraged him to throw out Chief Shonekan, which he promptly did in November 1993. However, instead of reinstating June 12, he played on the political ambitions and greed of the political class to secure himself in power. Too late, the pro-democracy groups tried to wrestle back power by getting Abiola to declare himself president. He did so by his Epetedo Declaration of June 23, 1994 , the first anniversary of the cancellation of the June 12 elections. Predictably, Abacha threw him into jail. Abiola never regained his freedom until he died in July 1998, several weeks after Abacha’s sudden and mysterious death.

In between August 1994 when he set up a Constituent Assembly (CA) to give the country a new constitution and his death in June 1998, Abacha consolidated himself in power by squaring or squashing all opposition to his rule. First, he got the CA to change its decision about when he should hand over power to an elected government: the same Chief Tony Anenih who, a few weeks earlier, had moved a motion in the CA for a January 1, 1996 deadline for the handover also moved a reverse motion asking Abacha to take his time. The general did so and decided on October 1, 1998 .

Soon, former Chief of Staff, Shehu Musa Yar’adua, the man behind the original motion and Anenih’s erstwhile political master, and General Obasanjo were charged, along with other lesser military officers like Col. Lawal Gwadabe, Abacha’s Principal Staff Officer, with plotting to overthrow the regime. Some editors and reporters of The News, Tell, TSM and Classique, along with the human rights activist, Dr. Beko Ransome Kuti, were also charged as accessories after the fact and sentenced to various terms. The two generals were sentenced to death but later commutted to life. All this was early in 1995. Ken Saro Wiwa, the Ogoni rights activist who had become a thorn in the side of the government, was no so lucky; he was executed in November 1995 for the murder of four prominent pro-government Ogonis.

Meanwhile the NLC and ASUU had been banned. About the same time several opposition newspapers and magazines were either banned, their premises torched, or had their publications seized. Then bombs started exploding all over Lagos for which Chief Olu Falae, a NADECO chieftain, was arrested. In June 1996, Kudirat, Abiola’s activist wife, was murdered on the streets of Lagos . Chiefs Abraham Adesanya, Ayo Adebanjo, Solanke Onasanya and Ganiyu Dawodu, all Afenifere chieftains, were accused and briefly detained for the murder. About that time, Chief Alfred Rewane, a financier of pro-democracy groups was also murdered in his Warri home. Many others like Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Chief Anthony Enahoro and Senator Bola Tinubu, fearing assassination, fled into exile.

On the political front, Abacha proceeded to register five political parties in September 1996, after the Constituent Assembly had given him a free hand to decide when to leave. One by one the five parties all declared him their presidential candidate. This was after his Chief Press Secretary, Chief David Attah, had pleaded with Nigerians in a Radio Nigeria interview to put pressure on a presumably reluctant Abacha to succeed himself as civilian president. Many prominent politicians soon fell over themselves to answer Attah’s plea. This was climaxed with a two-million-man-march in Abuja ostensibly organised by Youths Earnestly Ask for Abacha, YEAA, under one Daniel Kanu, a U.S-based political upstart, which told Abacha he had no choice in the matter of succeeding himself. YEAA was not alone in this matter of persuading the general to replace his khaki with a mufti. Others included the National Persuasion and Mobilization Committee, led by Chief Godwin Dabo.

The role of Alhaji Wada Nas in all this was to defend Abacha and his administration from attacks by the opposition media and the pro-democracy groups at home and abroad and to also disrupt any moves against Abacha’s self-succession.

Nas, who died on January 3, made such an excellent job of it that he was soon dubbed by the opposition as the Minister of NADECO Affairs.

And then Abacha died suddenly and mysteriously. Just as suddenly but not so mysteriously the Tony Anenihs, the Daniel Kanus, the Godwin Dabos and other prominent members of the political class who had told the general that Nigeria will collapse without his leadership, turned tail on him. Virtually alone of all those who would hear, see or speak no evil of Abacha, Nas stood by the general in death as he did in life. The only other well-known Abacha faithful to do so was (and is) Professor Sam Aluko, the chairman of the National Economic Intelligence Committee, NEIC, and an economic adviser of sorts to Abacha. Aluko, however, was no politician and he never joined the Abacha tazarce bandwagon.

Under normal circumstances Abacha’s death and the ushering in of democracy in 1999 should have ended Nas’s public life having decided to remain loyal to the military dictator. Instead in the last five years of Obasanjo’s administration, Nas has become, ironically, one of its most respected critics. As a columnist with the Weekly Trust and as an active politician with roots in the radical Northern Elements Progressive Union, NEPU, of Malam Aminu Kano, Nas’s caustic, though measured, criticisms of Obasanjo, had become so respected that his words were often quoted with approval by the very opposition media that had, once upon a time, condemned him as Abacha’s Goebels.

That Nas was able to remain relevant as a politician and as a political pundit by remaining loyal to his dead political master, is a sad, very sad, commentary on the record of Obasanjo’s administration in the last five years.

It is today a fact that in-spite of the venality and the brutality of the Abacha regime as I have sketched above, many Nigerians today compare it favourably to Obasanjo’s government. They see Obasanjo’s government as worse not just because, as human beings our collective memory tends to be short, but also because Obasanjo held so much promise after the dark days of military rule that go back much further than Abacha.

In the last five years, Obasanjo’s record on almost all fronts – security, economics, politics, human rights, the lot – has been so dismal that Nas could whitewash the dark days of the Abacha regime as he often did in his columns and political statements and still have most Nigerians nodding in agreement.

Abacha’s Goebel’s or no, Nas showed the world clearly that he was no fair- weather friend. He showed the world that he is the kind of person who will stand by his friends when they needed him most. That is, when they are dead and can no longer defend themselves from the criticisms of their traducers.

May his soul rest in peace.