PEOPLE & POLITICS

The Patriot’s Gospel as a recipe for a bananas democracy

Mohammed Haruna

The reader is probably very familiar with the phrase “banana republic”, meaning a country, usually small, with an unstable government – typically a military dictatorship – which is economically dependent on the export of one commodity or on the largesse of rich foreign nations. The Nigerian government is no doubt dependent on one commodity, oil, for its revenue but because Nigeria itself is not mainly dependent on oil and again because it is not small, the country is not exactly your typical banana republic.

The reader is also probably familiar with the phrase “gone bananas”. In case you are not, it is an American phrase for gone crazy. Last week’s controversial suggestion by The Patriots – a loose federation of the leading elements of some ethnic associations led by the legal colossus, Chief F.R.A. Williams – that we should, in effect, extend President Obasanjo’s tenure by one year and limit him to one term as a solution to the impeachment threat hanging fire over the nation, seems to me a perfect recipe for turning Nigeria into a bananas democracy – and eventually back into your not-so-typical banana republic that it was for the greater part of its existence since independence in 1960.

Last week, most newspapers led their mid-week editions with a statement issued by The Patriots which its leader, Chief Williams, himself, has described as the “Gospel according to The Patriots”. The Patriots, as I have just said, is a group of the leading elements of some ethnic associations in the country, namely the Afenifere, the Ohaneze, the Union of Niger Delta People, the Southern-South Forum and The Middle Belt Forum. Conspicuously absent from the group is the Arewa Consultative Forum.

The essential elements of the “gospel” that the group issued last week were two. First, that the tenure of the elected governments at the centre and in the states should be extended to five years, instead of four, and that all their heads should then be limited to one term. Second, that the presidency should then rotate among the six geo-political zones of North-Central, North-East, North-West, South-East, South-West and South-South, beginning with one of those that have not exercised the privilege of ruling this country since independence.

There is no doubt that The Patriots mean well for this country. The members are all leading Nigerians who, as well as doing well for themselves, have also given Nigeria their best and still have faith in the country’s future. In issuing their gospel, they made it clear that they have been worried by the possibility that the impeachment of President Obasanjo by the National Assembly may lead to chaos, if not to the country’s dismemberment.

The National Assembly, said the group, is certainly within its constitutional right to seek to impeach the president if its members think he has violated the constitution, quite contrary to the popular press opinion that the members have been acting selfishly and irresponsibly. “We see no reason,” the group said, “why the National Assembly should be faulted solely on the ground that it is discharging its constitutional responsibility.”

However, because of the political tension that the impeachment threat has created in the country, the group believed the National Assembly “ought, in the public interest, to take a political decision not to pursue the proceedings to the end.”

In return, suggested The Patriots, the president should “reconsider his decision” to ask for a second term, even though the group is aware that “no one can question his constitutional right to seek a second term”.

The Patriots then proceeded beyond this formula for resolving the face-off between the president and the National Assembly to advocate what it believes is the permanent solution to the perennial crises of power sharing in this country. “We ought”, said the group, “to develop a convention of ensuring that the top and most important political office in this nation goes round in a way that manifest our conviction that no particular ethnic, cultural or linguistic group is accorded preferential treatment over others.” Consequently, said the group, it would like to see the constitution amended to include “the principle of rotation of the presidency among each of the geo-political zones of the country, every five years.” Ditto for the governorship of the states.

A five-year single term rotational presidency, the group apparently believes, would (1) end the feeling of ethnic alienation that pervades the country, (2) end our perennial electoral crises and (3) promote political stability which is essential for economic and political development.

Predictably, the presidency has been quick to shoot down The Patriots’ formula for resolving the impeachment crisis, at the same time that it was ambivalent about the suggestion on rotational presidency. Speaking through the irrepressible Minister of Information, Professor Jerry Gana, the presidency described The Patriots’ gospel, at least the aspect pleading with Obasanjo to be content with a single term of 5 years, as “unnecessary, uncalled for, unconstitutional and hasty.”

“The legal right and the constitutional right of every Nigerian to present himself or herself before the electorate,” said Gana (The Guardian, October 17), “should not be violated and I believe that we should, as it were, work towards a free and fair election. Allow the people who are the repository of political power to decide. Why are people afraid of elections?… If the constitution is changed, we, as government will abide by the constitution. But you cannot backdate it (the amendment).”

Speaking even more forcefully and more graphically than Gana, Justice Adewale Thompson, the septuagenarian Secretary-General of the Yoruba Council of Elders, very much a creature of the presidency whose remit has been to counter the Afenifere in Yorubaland, said The Patriots’ gospel was “unacceptable and ultra-vires.” The suggestion, he went on, was “equivalent to the ridiculous exercise of amending the rules of a football match after the game had started in order to placate warring soccer hooligans who ought to be arrested and detained.”

So far the press has not started pontificating on The Patriots’ gospel, but it will be mightily surprising if, like Gana and Thompson, its overwhelming majority of the papers do not shoot it down; in the last three years the president seems to have done little or no wrong in their eyes. Even The Patriots, as an essentially Southern group, has had to complain about the misrepresentation of its intervention in the impeachment saga, in so far as the group has been perceived as one whose loyalty to Obasanjo has suddenly become questionable. “Some sections of the media”, complained The Patriots, “have displayed undue partisanship and even scant regard for truth in their treatment of the controversy.” The group did not name names but it was pretty obvious which section of the media it had in mind.

I do not share Gana’s ambivalence about rotational presidency – I am dead against it – nor do I believe in term limits. I do not also subscribe to Thompson’s insinuations that members of the National Assembly and others opposed to Obasanjo are hooligans who should be arrested and detained; just as Obasanjo has the constitutional right to seek for a second term, so also does the National Assembly have the constitutional right, even duty, to impeach a president that, in its opinion, is in breach of the constitution, so long as the National Assembly adheres strictly to due process. What, after all, is good for the gander, should be good for the goose.

However, even though I do not share Gana’s ambivalence about rotational presidency and I do not also share Thompson’s negative opinion of those opposed to Obasanjo, they are right to insist that the rules of the game should not be changed midway through the game. The problem with their insistence, however, is that it is not based on principles. Once upon a time, Thompson, if not Gana, was in the forefront of the advocates of power-shift. Time has changed since then, but “The Gospel according to The Patriots” is nothing but a warmed up version of the cry for power-shift. If Thompson – and Gana – find the gospel disagreeable now, it is obviously because the chickens could soon come home to roast.

This, is one good reason why the principle of rotational presidency should not be entrenched in the constitution. The fact is that every group believes in rotational presidency so long as it thinks it is its turn and not the turn of others. This fact makes rotational presidency a constitutional booby-trap which is a greater danger than the electoral crises we have faced to date. This is apart from the fact that rotational presidency, by limiting the choice of voters to one tribe or zone or whatever, at a time, distorts democracy by promoting ethnic xenophobia. Democracy is all about trust, but xenophobia breeds distrust. It also breeds mediocrity in leadership since all that anyone who wants to lead Nigeria needs to do to qualify is to struggle to be seen as the champion of his ethnic group.

As for the five-year single term limit, it is mistaken to think it is necessary, and even sufficient, to end ethnic or sectional ethnic recriminations. It is also mistaken to think that it will end our perennial electoral crises. Such thinking assumes that the tazarce (self-perpetuation) phenomenon, as possibly the biggest source of these recriminations and electoral crises, can be checked by constitutional provisions. They cannot. Dictatorship, whether by men in uniform or by men in mufti, is only one of the many forms of bad governance and it can only be checked by popular resistance and not merely by provisions written on papers. Such provisions are only meaningful and useful if they are rooted in the force of habit. Otherwise they are only worth the paper they are written on.

I agree with The Patriots that if President Obasanjo today forswears his second term bid, the political tension in the country will abate, if not disappear completely. But it should be by his own volition not through any constitutional amendment. Such an amendment would, in any case, be an immaculate misconception since the principle of retroaction is, by definition, totally unconstitutional. In the end it is really up to President Obasanjo to decide whether his second term is more important than the political stability and unity of this country which has been under threat from his apparent determination to win a second term whatever the cost