PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

Papa’s Despotic Party

kudugana@yahoo.com

 

 

In a two-part article in the Daily Trust (September 2 and 9) on Nigeria’s apparent descent into tyranny titled “The Republic: Is it Banana or Plantain,” the humorist, Adamu Adamu, alluded to the widespread reference to the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) as “Papa’s Democratic Party,” Papa meaning, of course, President Olusegun Obasanjo whose nickname among his palace courtiers is Baba. After last Friday’s meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC), it would obviously be far more accurate to call the PDP, “Papa’s Despotic Party.” For, following its NEC’s decision to have what the party’s Secretary-General, Chief Ojo Maduekwe, called “affirmatory” congresses ahead of the 2007 general elections, it should be clear now to even the blind that there is no longer anything democratic about the party. It should also be clear that the party is now the sole property of President Obasanjo, alias Papa, alias Baba.

   

Nigeria’s political class, in khakhi or mufti, have a knack for inventing very odd political theories. Less than a decade ago, it was General Sani Abacha and his clique who invented the theory of consensus candidacy. This is where all of a country’s political parties adopt only one person - the incumbent himself of course - as their presidential flagbearer. Now, President Obasanjo, who barely 11 odd years ago had terrible things to say about Abacha’s political theory and practice, seems determined to go one better than the dictator himself. Over the weekend, Maduekwe, the handpicked secretary of the party, regaled Nigerians with his oddball “affirmatory democracy,” which obviously had the president’s imprimatur.

           

According to Secretary-General, the PDP decided on “affirmatory” congresses as a common ground between those who wanted election of party officials at all levels and those who did not. The party’s decision, he said, was necessitated by its zoning arrangement.

           

With such an arrangement, he said, electing delegates and party officials ahead of the presidential and governorship primaries for the next general elections in 2007 was like putting the cart before the horse. The incongruity of handpicked  party officials and delegates deciding who should be the candidates for the highest elective offices in the land was apparently completely lost on Maduekwe, who, as a lawyer and a PhD, is as brainy as they come.

           

The bigger incongruity, or should we say, irony, however, lies elsewhere. Eleven years ago, more specifically on February 2, 1994, General Obasanjo gave the keynote address at a two-day workshop on “The State of the Nation and the way Forward”, organised by the Arewa House, Kaduna. This was over one year into Abacha’s regime when, contrary to what he had promised when he sized power in November 1993, it had become obvious that the general intended his stay in power to be anything but “brief.”

           

In that keynote address, Obasanjo said just about the nastiest things anyone could say of someone else. He had nasty things to say not only of Abacha, but also of military president General Ibrahim Babangida, whom he described as Abacha’s “tutor”. He also made very unkind remarks about the political class in general. They were, he said, a most opportunistic lot.

           

Eleven years on, that speech stands out as a classic study in preaching one thing and doing the exact opposite. In today’s circumstance, it is a speech that the editor of each and every newspaper and magazine in this country should reproduce as a reminder to the president of how far removed he has been from the virtues he preached 11 years ago.

           

General Obasanjo started his keynote address by repeating the refrain about the lesson of forgetting the past. “Those who forget the past,” he said, “are doomed to repeat it.” He then went on to catalogue those lessons of the past that Abacha and his “tutor” in particular, and the political class in general, seemed to have forgotten.

           

Among these, he said, was Abacha’s arbitrary conduct in public affairs. “Inconsistency and regular shifting of the goal post,” he said, “constituted the hallmark of the Babangida administration. The able student has imbibed the same practice and strategy, changing statements and policies like the weathercock.”

           

Dangerous as this was, however, it was not, he said, the greatest danger. “The greatest danger,” he said, “lies in the failure of the military to break the vicious cycle of succeeding itself. Unless Nigerians stand up against this trend, it may continue indefinitely.

 

Among his other criticisms of the Abacha regime and the political class in general was what he called the poverty of leadership. “If those who manage our politics and hence our economy,” he said, “impoverish us in the process, we cannot blame our inadequacy on material poverty, but on the poverty of leadership.”

           

The general concluded his speech with a clarion call to send Abacha’s regime packing. “We must” he said, “demand that any government should deal honesty with us and level wish us. We must have accountability and transparency that we are not getting now. IF ANY ADMINISTRATION IS TURNING EVIL, WE SHOULD SPARE NO EFFORTS AND NO SACRIFICE TO REMOVE IT. (Emphasis mine).

           

Today, eleven years after this speech, it can be argued with good reason that everything Obasanjo said of Abacha is true also of his own government. Indeed, if Abacha’s regime was evil, there are many who would argue, with good reason, that it was a lesser evil than the one Obasanjo has headed in the last six years. Certainly his government has been no more accountable and transparent than the worst regime this country has ever seen. For six years since 1999 it has, for example, never faithfully implemented any budget, not even the ones that the president himself had signed.

           

The stock response of Obasanjo’s apologists is that it takes a longwhile to correct the ills in any society and the ones he inherited from previous regimes are many and well-entrenched. This is of course true. The problem is that what we see is retrogression from where we were in 1999 rather than an end to the rot, never mind any signs that things have began to turn around.

           

To quote Alhaji Lateef Jakande, former Lagos State governor and undisputedly one of the most virtuous politicians in the country, all we hear are reforms and reforms, but we see little or nothing of their results on the ground. “I have heard of (reforms),” he said, in a recent press interview, “but I have not seen it… Is it in education? Is it health? Is it social welfare? Even in roads, I have not seen it. Anywhere I turn to, I have not seen these reforms, except in writing.”

           

The fact is that the Obasanjo regime, whatever its many apologists may say, has not, to paraphrase his own words eleven years ago, dealt with Nigerians honestly. Neither has he levelled with them. This is particularly so on the issue of his self-perpetuation in office.

           

Last Sunday his new minister of information, Mr. Nweke Jnr said in an interview with the BBC Hausa Service, that the president has done nothing and said nothing to show he wants to perpetuate himself in office. Perhaps Nweke has been living in a world of make-belief. Otherwise, he would have known that the president has said enough and done enough things to make people suspicious about all the denials that he plans to succeed himself in 2007. It was, afterall, the president himself who said, not too long ago in far away Germany, that he was under tremendous pressure to continue beyond 2007. He, at the same time, equivocated about whether or not he would submit to the pressure.

           

Before his revelation in Germany about all those pressures on him to carry on beyond 2007, he had provoked heated debate about the PDP’s zoning arrangement, whereby power was expected to shift back to the North in 2007. Nothing of such, he said, was ever agreed upon. His denial, however, prompted even some of those in his Amen corner to suggest that their boss was suffering from a convenient amnesia.

           

While all this was going on, several of his right hand men have said and done enough things to deepen suspicions about his commitment to leave in May 2007. Only the other day, for example, Chief Tony Anenih, his Man Friday, told the world that only the president and no one else, not even the PDP, will determine who occupies the presidential villa in 2007. Then followed the botched attempt by some members of his kitchen cabinet to smuggle a dubious draft constitution into the National Assembly, a draft constitution meant to pave the way for an extension of the president’s tenure.

           

Then here is his rejection of his deputy’s claim that he swore to him to leave in May 2007. He never swore, he said, because he abhorred swearing, and, in any case, he had no cause to do so. Yet he said in the same breath that he brought out the Bible and the Qur’an, and asked that each of them swear his loyalty to the other. This obvious contradiction is bound to make people ask why they should believe the president and not his deputy.

           

Above all, last weekend, the party, under the intimidatory presence of the president, decided to reject the election of its delegates and officials ahead of the party’s convention for the 2007 elections. Clearly, the president has finally succeeded in re-creating the PDP in his own despotic image. It would therefore not be far fetched to now call the PDP, Papa’s Despotic Party.

           

As if to show how despotic it has truly become, its appointed secretary-general, Maduekwe, had the impertinence to tell the world that the party’s National Executive Council, which is stuffed almost entirely with the president’s men, would intervene in “states where there is need to make changes to ensure a level playing field, since as you know, some governors have shut out their opponents and we have a moral duty to intervene in such situations.” (Thisday, September 11). Not surprisingly it never crossed Maduekwe’s mind to ask who would intervene to save those who disagree with the president from the injustice and the impunity of his “affirmatory” democracy.

           

Over a quarter of a century ago, when General Obasanjo handed over power to President Shehu Shagari, there were speculations that it was not so voluntary. One story that made the diplomatic rounds was that at his last OAU summit in Monrovia, Liberia, in 1979, he tried to get the summit to issue a declaration that he should not hand over to a civilian administration to ensure stability in Nigeria. He reportedly told his colleagues that if he took the decision himself, it would be unpopular with Nigerians.

           

A caucus including the host, William Tolbert, Guinea Conakry’s Sekou Toure, and Mali’s Musa Traore, reportedly met informally well into the small hours of the day to discuss the idea before taking it to the summit. In the end the idea was scuttled by Toure who said it would not be right for the OAU to interfere in Nigeria’s purely internal affair.

           

For a long time I have been skeptical about the veracity of this story. The way Obasanjo has attempted to square or squash each and every opposition to his ways and objectives, one is forced to wonder how truly voluntary was his 1979 handover to the civilians.