PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

Obasanjo and His Credibility

ndajika@yahoo.com

Come seven pm tonight, the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) will be holding a (presumably) emergency meeting at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa. Emergency, because the notice for the meeting was issued through the unusual route of newspaper adverts on Sunday.

So what could be the reason for the short public notice of tonight’s meeting? Not unexpectedly, the advert did not say. However, at a guess it could be President Goodluck Jonathan’s budget with its truly mind-boggling allocation to “security” - nearly one fifth of the entire budget - and insistence on withdrawing the oil subsidy which many experts say does not really exist. Could be, but it’s very unlikely, even improbable; the self-proclaimed “largest party in Africa” is hardly famous for promoting pro-people policies and programmes.

Whatever it is the party’s BOT, as its conscience, is meeting tonight to discuss, the one item which is guaranteed to be missing on its agenda is the credibility of its chairman, former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. Yet the chairman’s credibility is central to the integrity and the capability of the party itself.

Last month, the former president granted a four page interview to National Mirror (November 29) which was bound to renew questions about his credibility. But the interview wasn’t the only thing to impugn his credibility all over again. In addition there was his denial of a story by The Nation (October 4) that he had written a letter to President Goodluck Jonathan asking him to sack the chief executives of five major agencies of the Federal Government for alleged incompetence and corruption, and replace them with his own nominees.

In his preface to the Mirror interview, its correspondent, Ayodele Ojo, said the former president agreed to speak only on condition that there would be no questions on politics. But trust the man to violate his own rule even without any provocation; a little over half-way through the interview he simply could not resist a dig at those who have always accused him of wanting to rule Nigeria beyond the Constitutional limit of two consecutive terms, if not for life.

“When some people said I wanted  a Third Term,” he said, “there is nobody in Nigeria, dead or alive, that would say that I called him or her and said go and work for a third term for me.”

He could never have wanted to elongate his rule, he said, because when he had the opportunity to do so back in the late seventies when he ruled by military fiat, he did not seize it. His witnesses, he said, included then sit-tight leaders of Zambia (Kenneth Kaunda), Tanzania (Julius Nyerere), Senegal (Leopold Senghor) and Cote d’Voire (Felix Houphouet-Boigny). All four, he said, tried to prevail on him to swap his khaki for mufti and run for the 1979 elections that ushered in the Second Republic.

“I said no, our situation is different,” he said, “and as an officer and gentleman, our word is our bond.”

The problem with this narration was that first, it’s possible, even probable, given his proverbial cunning, that he did not really mean what he said. Second, the narration was selective. One thing he left out was his attempt during the last summit he attended of the defunct Organisation of African Unity (OAU) – now simply African Unity (AU) - in Monrovia, Liberia, in July 1979, to drag the organisation into including a resolution that Nigeria was not ripe for transition to civil rule in its communiqué.

According to an insider account of events behind the scene at the summit, Obasanjo tried to prevail on the host, President William R. Tolbert and a select few, including Guinea’s Sekou Toure, to put the issue on the summit’s agenda. There was a lengthy debate on the issue in a side meeting that went deep into the night but in the end wise counsel prevailed when Tolbert and Co. decided that Nigeria’s transition to civil rule was entirely its own internal affair which the OAU should not be dragged into. 

In any case as Obasanjo himself knew all too well, as military ruler he was not as free to do as he wanted, virtually literally caged in as he was between the trio of his deputy, Major-General Shehu Yar’adua, his powerful army chief, Lt-General T.Y. Danjuma and his police chief, Alhaji M.D. Yusuf; and all three were determined that, come rain or shine, the soldiers must return to their barracks on October 1, 1979. So it was not as if he really had much of a choice in the matter.

However, even if he left of his own volition back in 1979 – which he really didn’t - that was not necessarily sufficient evidence that he never wanted a third term. After all people change. And few things change people like power and wealth. In his second coming in 1999 the man was able to acquire huge amounts of both simply because this time around he did not have to look over his shoulders.

The former president says if he had wanted a third term he would have sent a bill to the National Assembly to that effect and he would have made sure it passed. Actually he did more than just send a bill; as he knew all too well, some of his fixers tried to sneak in a constitutional amendment for consideration by the political conference he summoned in January 2005 which would have allowed him to realize his bid. The gambit failed only because of the vigilance and determination of opposition elements at the conference.

One definitive evidence that the man is simply living in self-denial when he keeps insisting that he never wanted a third term, is a passage in the memoirs of Ms Condoleeza Rice, the first woman to serve as US National Security adviser and the first African-American woman to serve as Secretary of State, both under President George W. Bush.

In that book titled, No Higher Honour: A Memoir of My Years in Washington, Rice said Obasanjo did indeed confide his intention to her boss.

"In 2006, when President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria sidled up to the President and suggested that he might change the Constitution so that he could serve a third term,” she said, “the President told him not to do it. ‘You have served your country well. Now turn over power and become a statesman"' he'd said.

“The crestfallen Obasanjo was initially angry, accusing Jendayi Fraser (a Special Assistant for African Affairs to the US National Security Council under Bush) of undermining him in the press and with his own people. ‘I will never deal with her again’" he (Obasanjo) told the President.

“The President responded, ‘Well, she is a good person. But the main thing is that your country needs you to do the right thing.’ Obasanjo did cede power - to a handpicked successor - but at least he was unsuccessful in changing the Constitution".

It’s very unlikely that Rice made up her story; after all who does not know that Obasanjo, like most Third World leaders, puts a greater store by the opinion of First World leaders than by that of his own people?

All of which brings me to the most conclusive evidence that the man never really wanted to leave power when he did. This evidence is no other than the dictum that action speaks louder than words. And his “studied silence” - to use his own words – on the issue spoke louder than his denial that he did not ask anyone to campaign for him. After all if he did not ask anyone to work for his third term bid, so also did General Sani Abacha never tell anyone to work for his Tazarce.

Yet we all know, don’t we, the fate that befell virtually all those who stood in the way of the success of the attempt by both to sit-tight in power. It also did not take a lot of imagination to guess where the huge funding for their campaigns was coming from.

The simple fact was that if Obasanjo really wanted to leave he would have told the spearheads of the campaign - notably Senators Ibrahim Mantu and Ahmadu Ali and Chief Bode George - that were busy telling the world that it was dangerous to change pilots before an aircraft reaches cruising level, to shut up. He did not. Instead he maintained a “studied silence” when it was obvious that in those circumstances silence was certainly not golden.

As it was with his repeated denial of his Third term bid, so also probably it was with his denial that he never wrote President Jonathan to sack the heads of five major agencies of the Federal Government. Nearly three months after he threatened to sue The Nation for its story the man is yet to do so. And only last week, the Federal Executive Council rose from its meeting with a decision to investigate those same agencies.

It is unlikely that this was mere coincidence.

When we have a ruling party whose conscience does not seem to care about its credibility and integrity, is it any wonder that the country is in such a big mess?