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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA The Presidential Feud: Now that the Gloves are Off Since we last met on these pages about four weeks ago, so much water, as they say, has flowed under the bridge. Torrent is probably a more appropriate metaphour, considering how earthshaking the events of the intervening period have been. First, there was the predictable outcome of the APGA petition to the election tribunal over the 2003 Anambra governorship election. Most observers, I am sure, were not surprised that the election of Dr. Chris Ngige on the platform of the ruling PDP was annulled. Ngige had been in the black book of President Obasanjo and the president himself had dismissed the Anambra election as a sham, even if only on the say-so of Ngige’s erstwhile godfather, Chief Chris Uba, whose elder brother, Andy, is one of the president’s confidants and senior advisers. Having failed to remove Ngige by hook AND crook since he was first kidnapped in a commando-style raid on Government House, Awka, in 2003, it would not have surprised anyone that the election tribunals, which have proved themselves remarkably pliable to Executive dictates, would easily oblige the wishes of the presidency to see the back of the remarkably stubborn Ngige. The tribunal’s job was made all the more easier by the fact that the 2003 general elections have been widely regarded as probably the most fraudulent in Nigeria’s history. Ngige has since appealed against the annulment but it would be the small miracle if his appeal succeeds. Close on the heels of the annulment of Ngige’s election, came the announcement of yet another increase in the price of petroleum products. Like the annulment of Ngige’s election, this too was not surprising, shocking as it still was. Since the president first came to power through the ballot box in 1999, he has shown himself to value the opinions of his foreign friends, notably the British and the Americans, more than those of Nigerians. One of the early signs of this was his frequent travels abroad as president-elect, travels which came under the severe criticisms from levelheaded politicians like Alhaji Umaru Shinkafi, the Marafan Sokoto. Another early sign was his readiness to hand over our armed forces, lock, stock and barrel, to the Americans without as much as informing the National Assembly and inspite of widespread opposition from the rank and file of the soldiers. However, by far the most clear evidence of his beholdeness to his foreign friends has been his economic policy which is a complete reversal from his economic nationalism as military head of state between 1976 and 1979. The same Obasanjo who, as a private citizen, once denounced military president, Ibrahim Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme, as an economic policy without a human face, adopted the same policy, lock, stock and barrel, as elected president, this time, however, with the face of a rampaging beast. Of course, he chose not to call it SAP but NEEDS and, like Babangida, he pretended it was homegrown. But then a rose by any other name is still a rose. NEEDS or SAP or IMF program or whatever, they all still contained the same elements of privatization, deregulation, public sector retrenchment, lowering of tariffs, removal of subsidies, the lot. It is, therefore, not surprising that since 1999 Obasanjo has increased the price of petroleum products, as a key element in the country’s economy, more than six times and by more than three fold. He has increased the price of petrol, for example, from 20 Naira in 1999 to 65 Naira about a week ago. And the speculations are that he won’t stop until he has reached 100 Naira by December. Ngige and the increase in the price of oil products apart, there is now the mother-of-them-all, namely the outing of the president’s long festering feud with his deputy Atiku Abubakar. Until last month’s edition of the president’s media chat, both men had pretended that their marriage could not have been happier. On one occasion, the president himself told the audience of BBC Hausa Service in his passable Hausa that his marriage with Atiku Abubakar was “auren zobe”, meaning it was, like Catholic marriage, irrevocable. After the president’s August media chat it is now clear that the pretence of a happy marriage is off. It is also equally clear that the gloves are also off. Maverick politician and senator Arthur Nzeribe may be a political jobber but his recent prognosis that the presidential feud is well beyond repair can hardly be faulted. The same, however, cannot be said of his prescription, which, in effect, is that the Vice-President must leave. This prescription reminds me of the case of a childhood friend whose marriage became sour many, many years ago. At that time he lived with the wife in a government quarter allocated to the wife as a public servant. In a mood of bossiness my friend forgot himself and told the wife to leave his house. She had to remind him whose house it was before he realized it was him and not she who had to get out. This is not to say that the president is the one to leave. This marriage is obviously a lot more complicated than my friend’s. Still, like in my friend’s case, the “junior partner” was, initially at least, the foundation upon which the household rested and therefore it is not possible to sack the “junior partner” without bringing down the whole edifice. Like with most “auren zobe”, this one seemed destined to have a very messy end. Both partners do of course, have their share of the blame, but no objective observer of the marriage since its consummation is 1998, would disagree with the conclusion that the greater blame lies with the “senior partner”. This much seems pretty obvious from a recent interview with the Voice of America Hausa Service by Malam Adamu Ciroma, Obasanjo’s minister of finance during his first term and the coordinator of his campaigns for the 2003 presidential election. According to Malam Adamu the root of the problem goes back to 2003 when Obasanjo tried to drop Atiku Abubakar as his running mate. The speculations then were that the vice-president had, in his boss’s reckoning, become too rapacious. If that were the case, the president was clearly involved in double standards, especially in so far as no one but himself, and perhaps a small clique, knew what went on at the ministry of petroleum, which was far and away the single biggest source of public revenue. To date the president has retained the oil portfolio. As if to prove that the vice-president’s crime was really not his alleged rapacity, the same president who tried to drop him from his ticket, quickly reversed himself when the vice-president gave his boss the choice between retaining the same ticket or facing his formidable challenge for the very ticket. That president chose to reverse himself, showed clearly that what was at stake was not principles, but raw, naked power. By reversing himself the president showed that he would do anything to retain it. Over three years ago, my good friend and former Editor of Sunday Times and one of its most popular columnists in the seventies, Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, gave what I believe is perhaps the best insight into the Obasanjo persona which I think is the main source of his feud with his deputy. Writing in The Comet of January 12, 2002, under the headline “A new theory about Obasanjo”, Ogunsanwo described the president as “The Apesin of Nigeria” The Apesin, Ogunsanwo explained, is, in Yoruba, someone “destined to have people perpetually serve him”. Abiodun Adekunle, the son of Brigadier-General Benjamin Adekunle, whose command Obasanjo took over in the twilight of our civil war, put it somewhat more crudely in his book, The Nigeria-Biafra War Letters – A Soldier Story (Volume 1). “Over the length of his carrier, from the very start until the present”, said Adenkule Jnr., General Obasanjo seems to have displayed an uncanny ability of reaping where others have toiled”. The problem with Obasanjo, I believe, is that he truly believes he is in deed the messianic Apesin of Nigeria, thanks in no small measure to the reversal of his fortune from that of an inmate of the country’s prison’s death row straight to that of the occupier of the presidency of Africa’s most populous nation and potentially its wealthiest. Atiku Abubakar’s first cardinal sin was to have apparently believed that Obasanjo would be content with being served for only two terms, possibly even one. As the Apesin of Nigeria, the president clearly believes he should rule Nigeria for much longer than the country’s two-term limit, if not forever, his denials and those of many of his aides notwithstanding. The president apparently thinks he is doing a wonderful job on both the domestic and foreign front. If most Nigerians do not share the president’s belief, his foreign friends certainly do and, as I have said, he cares more about their opinions than those of Nigerians. That his foreign friends think he is doing a wonderful job is obvious from his recent nomination for the Chatham House Prize, which according to the Chatham House is “to be awarded to the individual who has made the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year”. Chatham House, for those who may not know, is the British equivalent of our own Nigerian Institute of International Affairs. It is called Chatham House after its address in London which was once home to some of Britain’s Prime Ministers. Chatham House nominated Obasanjo for the award along with Roma Khalaf Hanaidi, a Jordanian stateswoman, Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, Gunter Herheugen, the former European Union Commissioner for Enlargement and Victor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian President. According to Chatham House, the first recipient ever for the award will receive his prize on October 19, 2005 from Queen Elizabeth herself in the company of her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in London, at a paid-for-invitation only dinner to be hosted by the Queen. Obasanjo may or may not win the prize in the end but it is obvious from his nomination alone that his foreign friends apparently believe he is also doing a good job at home. After all, international relations does not exist in isolation from domestic politics. As one wise chap once said, all politics is, after all, in the end local. Obasanjo said in his August media chat that he does not swear, never mind his admission in the same breadth that he brought out a Bible and a Qur’an and said both of them should swear that they have been loyal to each other, something which his deputy as a sensible Muslim, declined. His own word, Obasanjo said, is always enough and you either believe him or you don’t. If many Nigerians, including his deputy, choose not to believe him any time he says he will leave in 2007, he has only himself to blame because on no less than two important occasions in the past, once in 19998 and then in 2002, he gave his word over a political deal – and broke it. Ask the Arewa Consultative Forum and ask the Afenifere. With the gloves now off between the president and his deputy in a marriage which, at least in retrospect, seemed to have been consummated in bad faith, Nigerians are more likely than not to witness a very messy affair in the run up to the 2007 general elections.
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