2002 : Bad beginning, bad ending?

By

Mohammed Haruna

kudugana@yahoo.com

January was a rather inauspicious start for the year 2002 for both Nigerians and for their president. The 27^th day of that month witnessed perhaps one of the most catastrophic events in the nation’s history, namely, accidental bomb explosions at the Ikeja Military Cantonment, Lagos. The explosions claimed over a thousand lives of panicky Lagos residents, mostly women and children, and left in its wakes the destruction of property running into tens of millions of Naira.

The bomb blasts, heard many kilometers away from Ikeja, started at about 5pm on the fateful day and lasted for nearly three hours. Panicky residents thought a violent overthrow of President Obasanjo’s government was underway. In their attempt to flee from the scene of the blasts, nearby residents poured into an adjacent canal in huge numbers, well beyond the canal’s capacity. In the end over 1,000 of them were crushed to death or drowned in the confusion that ensued.

The blasts were the first test of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s ability for crisis management in the second full year of his second coming. It was a test which he needed to pass against the background of the tragic manner in which the previous year had ended. The tragedy was the cold-blood murder of the nation’s attorney general and minister of justice, Chief Bola Ige, at his Ibadan home, just two days before Christmas.

Because of his stature as arguably the most prominent Yoruba politician since Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and of course, because he was a senior member of Obasanjo’s cabinet, there were high public expectations that the murder would be solved quickly. However, over a month after the murder, the authorities appeared not to have the slightest clue about those behind the murder and those who executed it.

The apparent slow pace in solving Ige’s murder gave added impetus to the need for Obasanjo to get to the bottom of the Ikeja blasts, especially as indications at that time were that the blasts had been caused by serious negligence of the safety regulations for ammunition dumps. Unfortunately for Obasanjo, he failed the test rather badly.

On a visit to the scene of the blasts the day after to commiserate with the victims, the president inexplicably blew his proverbial short fuse. The crowd that had gathered at the entrance of the Cantonment had heckled him with shouts that he should not stop at the gate but should go inside to see for himself the extent of the destruction. This apparently angered him and he shouted back at the crowd to shut up and consider themselves lucky that he could even find time to pay them a sympathy visit.

Public reaction to his angry retort was swift and highly critical. Obasanjo’s behaviour, said several newspapers, commentators and politicians, was insensitive, even heartless. Chief Gani Fawehimi, radical human rights lawyer, for example, described the president’s behaviour as “callousness from the president of the most populous nation in the world”.

The depth of public anger at Obasanjo’s remarks forced his handlers to move quickly to contain the damage. In the process, however, they merely made matters worse. The president’s angry reaction to the heckling crowd at Ikeja, they said, was because he had not known the extent of the deaths and destruvtion at the time of his visit. That sounded rather incredible because 24 hours before the visit, both the international and local media had extensively reported the deaths and destruction caused by the blasts.

If the year 2002 started badly for Nigerians and their president, the rest of it was neither particularly happy for both of them. For most Nigerians the partial or non-implementation of the country’s national budgets for two years running, in a country whose formal sector has come to depend largely on public sector expenditure, meant high unemployment, high inflation and high crime rates. To make matters worse, 92% of the central government’s spending for the period, according to the Minister of Finance, Malam Adamu Ciroma, was recurrent, leaving only 8% for the capital expenditure necessary for promoting economic development and checking mass poverty.

Similarly, the state of the nation’s highways remained terrible inspite of the billions of Naira appropriated for their rehabilitation or reconstruction. Indeed it became a standing national joke that the Minister of Works, Chief Tony Anenih, widely regarded as President Obasanjo’s Mr. Fix-it, was too busy fixing Obasanjo’s enemies, real and imagined, to find time to fix the nation’s messy road network. 

Still on the bad news from the economic front, the much expected improvement in the performance of NEPA was merely marginal. Not only was the utility company unable to meet its target of power generation – 4,000 megawatts by December 2001 – it could not even begin to address the poor state of its transmission and distribution network. The result was that even though it was able to meet nearly 80% of its target in power generation, it was unable to consistently deliver electricity to consumers.

On the positive side, however, for the first time in nearly ten years, Nigerians were able to get petroleum products, petrol, diesel and kerosene especially, without having to spend hours and even days in queues. There were questions as to the long term sustainability of the supply because the products were mostly being imported rather than produced locally, but Nigerians could only be grateful for small mercies.

On the political front, as on the economic, 2002 was hardly better for most Nigerians. First, even though the vast majority of Nigerians regarded the record of their local governments as dismal, they could not exercise their rights to throw them out, because the local governments elections scheduled for February could not hold due to the absence of voters’ register and also due to complications arising from the Supreme Court’s declaration of the National Assembly’s extension of the tenure of the local governments from the original two years to three as unconstitutinal. Again, except for the PDP, party members could not exercise their rights to retain or change their party leaders because of serious internal wranglings which invariably ended up in debilitating court cases or, worse, in violence. Several times the APP and the AD postponed their conventions because the party leaders feared they would lead to disarray.

However, even the ruling PDP which was able to hold its annual convention early in the year, did so amidst internal acrimony about the credibility of the elections. Many of its members and outside observers regarded the process as more of selection rather than election, since the winners with Mr. Audu Ogbe as chairman, emerged from what many saw as contrived consensus rather than through actual voting.

Still on the political front, not only could Nigerians not throw out their local government leaders whom most of them regarded as self-serving rascals, and not only could Nigerians who were members of the three registered political parties not freely and fairly elect their preferred party leaders, when the time came in September for them to register as voters ahead of the next general elections in 2003, they were thwarted in huge numbers by the apparent inadequate preparation of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, for the exercise. Over 60 million Nigerians, apparently enthusiastic to vote in the next general elections, turned out for the voters’ registration exercise, but many of them could not register due to logistical hiccups on INEC’s part, especially its inadequate supply, in good time, of registration forms to the registration centres all over the country.

On the socio-political front, the fortunes of Nigerians were marked by increased violence among ethnic militias in the Middle Belt states of Plateau, Taraba and Nassarawa, ethnic militias that had been warring for several years. There were also serious ethnic clashes between, on the one hand,  the Hausa residents of Lagos, the nation’s commercial capital, especially those in the high density Idi Araba neighbourhood, and, on the other hand, the members of the Odua Peoples Congress, the outlawed Yoruba ethnic militia. Similarly, political violence in the East increased to an extent that it seemed the entire region had become a war zone. The region was not alone in witnessing political violence but apart from Kwara State, in central Nigeria, the region seems to have attracted the highest public concern about the prospects of peaceful elections next year. In Kwara, almost alone among the states in the North, the warring factions within the parties and between parties had resorted to the use of sophisticated weapons and even bombs.

Still on the socio-political front, the Oputa Panel of enquiry into the human rights abuses by various governments since 1966 which had ended its sitting in 2001, issued its report early (?) in 2002. Public expectations that its findings will provide a basis for healing the wounds of past abuses of human rights were not exactly met mainly because political actors like Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, whose governments’ human rights records were under scrutiny, declined the invitation of the panel to testify before it.

If the year 2002 was somewhat bleak for most Nigerians on almost all fronts, it was no more happier for President Obasanjo, himself. As we have seen, the year began rather inauspiciously for him with the January 27 bomb blasts at Ikeja Military Cantonment, just like the year before had ended tragically for him, and for Nigerians as well, with the murder of his minister of justice, Chief Ige. These somewhat personal set backs continued almost right through 2002.

The January 27 disaster was soon followed by a formal declaration of the parting of ways between the president and his Northern sponsors in the 1999 elections. Speaking for the region during the second anniversary celebration of the Arewa Consultative Forum on March 28, Governor Attahiru Bafarawa of Sokoto state, served Obasanjo notice that the region would no longer vote for him as it did in 1999. Bafarawa’s authority to speak for the region was challenged by some leading Northern politicians, including some of his fellow governors like those of Kaduna and Nassarawa, but after Bafarawa’s speech, there was no longer any doubt that the political marriage between the president and his Northern sponsors which had gone sour almost as soon as the president was sworn into office, had broken down irretrievably.

As if in reaction to Bafarawa’s March declaration, early April, many PDP politicians, including PDP governors, senators, party officials, and even a few non-PDP governors, beat the path to the President’s farm in Ota, Ogun State, where he was on a brief holiday, to plead with him to declare his second term bid. A few weeks later he did so after his long self-advertised consultation with God.

The declaration, however, soon gave the lie to persistent denials by the presidency of any rift between the president and his vice, Atiku Abubakar. The president made his declaration on April 25. Three days later, he gave an interview to the NTA in which he explained why he did not pick Abubakar as his running mate. To have done so, he said, would have been out of order since he was yet to win his party’s presidential ticket. He reversed himself the following day. It turned out that he was forced to do so by reliable intelligent that key supporters of Abubakar had persuaded him to run if his boss would not announce him as his running mate. If the leak was a ploy, Obasanjo was apparently not willing to risk a gamble on it.

As if the notice of the dissolution of his marriage to his Northern sponsors and the rift between him and his deputy were not enough headaches, his erstwhile partner in the fight against military president Babangida’s suspected self-perpetuation agenda back in 1993, former head of state, General Muhammadu Buhari, threw in his gauntlet into the presidential ring. This was on the same day that Obasanjo declared his intention to bid for a second term.

The relationship between the two had actually been sour for years following Buhari’s decision to serve General Sani Abacha, Obasanjo’s worst tormentor, as Chairman of the PTF. Until April, however, Buhari had contented himself with being a critical observer of the political scene and especially of Obasanjo’s record as an elected president. Buhari’s decision to go into the fray was widely regarded as a commentary on how personally he objected to Obasanjo’s second term bid. And because of his popularity at the grassroots in most parts of the North, his getting into the fray, was bound, in the eyes of many political observers, to have a deleterious impact on Obasanjo’s electoral fortune.

Yet another set back for the president was the series of Supreme Court judgements over (1) the National Assembly’s extension of the tenure of local governments, (2) the three year trial of Mohammed, General Abacha’s son, over his alleged complicity in the murder of Alhaja Kudirat Abiola, wife of Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the putative winner of the aborted June 12, 1993 presidential elections, (3) the so-called Resource Control, i.e. the control of revenue for offshore oil to which the oil producing states were claiming 100% control, and (4) party registration by INEC.

The Supreme Court’s decision discharging Mohammed Abacha from any complicity in the murder of Alhaja Kudirat was a direct blow to what looked like Obasanjo’s personal interest in the prosecution of Mohammed. For quite sometimes there had been media speculations that the presidency was interested in the successful prosecution of Mohammed in order to use it as a weapon for persuading the Abacha family to return billions of dollars its members and friends had allegedly stolen and stashed away abroad. This speculation was underscored by a recommendation by the Oputa panel for a money-for-freedom deal between the Abacha family and the government. The Supreme Court decision in favour of Mohammed, obviously removed this weapon from the presidency. It was perhaps a mark of the presidency’s frustration with the judgement that government initially refused to release Mohammed from detention and Obasanjo himself tried to explain the continued detention away on grounds that Mohammed had refused to cooperate with government over the return of the billions of dollars stashed in foreign accounts by his family.

Another Supreme Court decision which looked like a personal set back for the president was the ruling on November 8, that INEC overstepped its constitutional bounds in listing the conditions for registering new political parties. Five of the associations, whose application had been rejected, had gone to court, some of them believing that INEC was merely acting out a script written in the presidency especially since it had never hidden its opposition to the registration of new parties as demonstrated by the controversy that had trailed the questionable insertion of Section 180(1) into Electoral Bill 2001 which has since been repealed. The section had stipulated almost impossible conditions for registration of new parties ahead of the next presidential elections.

While the Supreme Court decision to free Mohammed on allegations of complicity in the murder of Alhaja Kudirat and the court’s decision on INEC’s rejection of the application of all but three association for registration as political parties looked like personal set backs for Obasanjo, the other two were not so direct. The court’s ruling that the National Assembly’s act extending the tenure of the local government from two years to three was unconstitutional, was more of an indictment of the legislators than of Obasanjo and as was widely known, there had not been much love lost between the two. However, it was an open secret that in this particular case there was a convergence of interests between the legislators and the presidency each of whom wanted the tenure of the local governments extended so that it will be possible to reverse the order of the 2003 general elections, starting, not with the local government elections, but with the national elections in order to guarantee both the legislators’ and the president’s election.

As for the Supreme Court’s decision on Resource Control, which gave the federal government control over offshore oil based on Section 162(2) of the constitution, the decision was merely a pyrhic victory for the federal authorities, for while they won their case, they lost the First Charge accounts, which were deductions, amounting to about 7.5% of the revenue collected by the federal government, before the rest were shared among the three levels of government. Not only did the central government lose the First Charge account which the court declared as unconstitutional, the decision generated popular resentment against Obasanjo in the entire Delta region and voters in the region threatened to vote against his second term bid.

However, of all the problems that had confronted Obasanjo during the year 2002, the most obvious was the House of Representatives impeachment threat which it issued in August through a warning that he should either resign in two weeks or face the commencement of his impeachment. The House listed 17 grounds for the impeachment, a list which is later on increased to 32.

The president at first dismissed the ultimatum as “a joke taken too far”. Before long, however, he realized it was not a joke at all, unlike two previous occasions when the Senate had threatened him with impeachment and the threats had quickly fizzled out.

Once he realized it was no joke at all and that it could do irreparable damage to his declared second term bid, the president and his men moved quickly and forcefully to counter the impeachment threat. Soon enough the House of Representatives and the Senate, which eventually endorsed the lower house’s threat, on the one hand, and the presidency, on the other, were trading accusations of bribery, blackmail and all manner of threats against each other over the impeachment.

Meantime, the presidency dragged in the ruling party and two former heads of state, General Yakubu Gowon and Alhaji Shehu Shagari, to intervene to get the legislators to call off their threats. It also tried to drag in some leading traditional rulers from the North, but they reportedly declined respectfully.

While all this was going on, The Committee of Patriots, an association of some leading Nigerians headed by the legal giant, Chief F.R.A. Williams, weighed in on October 15, rather unhelpfully from the point of view of the president’s men, to call on the legislators to halt their impeachment in return for the president renouncing his declared second term bid. This was in the middle of October.

The following day the presidency responded, through Professor Jerry Gana, the minister of information, rejecting The Patriots’ call. Its call, said the minister was unfair and unconstitutional, among other things.

While still dangling the impeachment threat over the president’s head, the National Assembly in October also moved to over-ride the president’s veto of Electoral Bill 2002. The president had vetoed the bill on the grounds that the legislators insistence on holding all legislative and executive elections in one day was unconstitutional, since the choice of the dates of the elections was the constitutional prerogative of the INEC.

With the legislative over-ride, the presidency appeared to have lost the battle over Electoral Law 2002. This loss, however, seemed short lived because INEC moved quickly to challenge the National Assembly on the matter. INEC may yet succeed in reversing the National Assembly’s veto but even if it does, it is unlikely to reverse its low rating among politicians and the public alike who see it as anything but independent of the presidency.

Against the background of the poor performance of the country’s political-economy in 2002, coupled with the acrimony among the three arms of government, especially between the National Assembly and the presidency; given also the acrimony among and within all the political parties; given the disharmony between the central and the state governments over the control of oil resources, and finally given the rising ethnic and sectarian tensions in the country, the country’s prospect for Nigeria for 2003 does not look too good. The country may survive 2003 but for 2002 the country was an obvious exception to the saying that a bad beginning often makes for a good ending.