PEOPLE & POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The Wabara Crisis

kudugana@yahoo.com

Now that the threat to remove Chief Adolphus Wabara as Senate President has at least receded, if not disappeared altogether, it is useful to examine its implications for the health of our fledging democracy.

First, however, what are the facts of the case? About three weeks ago, a group of at first 81, then 86, senators led by Senator David Mark, accused the Senate President of using a dubious formula to share the last quarterly allocation for the administration of the Senate. The Senate President had reportedly allocated 35 million Naira to himself, 27 million to his deputy, a lot less than that to others in the Senate leadership, and only 1.7 million to the remaining 90 or so senators.

This sharing formula was still hanging fire when fresh allegations surfaced of Wabara awarding a 330 million Naira contract over the head of the Senate Services  Committee which has the powers to award such contracts. The combination of these two cases led to a resolution by Senator Mark’s group to impeach Wabara as soon as the Senate resumed sitting from its Easter break.

Naturally Wabara denied the allegations. For example, he told the Simon Kolawole Live column in Thisday of May 1, that “Some of my colleagues are contemplating a change of leadership of the Senate President on very frivolous and spurious grounds… I believe it is a political problem.”

            Kolawole:       Could it be 2007?

            Wabara:          Yes (Emphatically)

            Kolawole:       What about 2007?

            Wabara:          You know that the craze for 2007 has started. So everybody is        

 trying to do one thing or the other to pull the other person down.

In the rest of his interview with the Thisday columnist, Wabara attributed his travail to the belief in certain quarters that he is interested in becoming the next vice-president of the country, hence the attempt to pull him down.

Apparently Wabara is not alone in his belief. Last Monday the Vanguard reported the acting Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the ruling PDP, Chief Tony Anenih, as issuing a warning that the 2007 ambitions of some elected public officers were threatening to wreck the party. “What is most worrisome on this subject (2007 general elections)”, Vanguard quoted Anenih as saying, “is the emerging desperation and combativeness of even some PDP office holders who are aspiring to higher offices or who are concerned about those who would succeed them.”

Further more, said Anenih who seems to have lately taken over the chairmanship of the party from Chief Audu Ogbe, “They (the office holders) rake up imaginary obstacles by way of other party colleagues and assail them as obstacles to be demolished even when they have not completely discharged their currently running mandate.” Anenih was said to have issued this warning at a recent South-South Zonal meeting of the PDP in Uyo.

Anenih did not name names but one may be forgiven the speculation that his fingers were pointed at Vice-President Atiku Abubakar. After-all, the vice-president’s 2007 ambition is probably the worst kept secret in the country. It is also widely believed that Orji Kalu, the Abia State Governor, is Atiku Abubakar’s favourite for the next vice-presidency. And who does not know that between Orji Kalu and Wabara, who is also from Abia, there is no (political) love lost? Or that there is also none between Kalu and Anenih?

Perhaps I am wrong and Anenih’s fingers were pointed elsewhere. Even then President Obasanjo’s fixer-in-chief must have a terribly short memory to complain about anyone letting his 2007 ambitions get in the way of the harmony and peace of the PDP. Nearly three and a half years ago when his boss was barely one and a half years in office, Anenih told a grand reception in honour of Chief Odili, the River State Governor, at Isiokpa, Ikwere Local Government, that he did not “see any vacant seat in the year 2003. A word is enough for the wise.” If it was wise then for President Obasanjo to have started planning to succeed himself even before he had settled down for his first term – and his vehement denial of any deal in1998 with anyone to do a Mandela was sufficient evidence of his wish for self-succession – why is it wrong for Atiku Abubakar, or anyone else for that matter, to now plan for 2007?

However, let us even assume that both Wabara and Anenih are correct that 2007 is the real reason behind the threat to impeach Wabara as Senate President. The question is, does this answer the charges against Wabara?

Obviously it does not. Wabara and Anenih’s assumptions about 2007 merely insinuate about the motives of those against Wabara. The assumptions do not address the facts of the case. Motives are, of course, important as factors in the accuracy or otherwise of any allegation. On their own, however, motives cannot establish such an accuracy since facts can stand or fall regardless of anyone’s motives.

Therefore, if the ruling PDP and President Obasanjo were serious about addressing the charges against Wabara, the proper thing they should have done was to have allowed the Senate to sort itself out in the spirit of the constitutional principle of separation of power, and failing that, to persuade the senate to institute an independent panel of inquiry into the matter.

Both the PDP and the president did not do that. Instead, as they are wont to, they  tried, successfully it seems, to sweep the matter under the carpet.

First, the president went to Wabara’s rescue even before he had seen all the evidence of the allegations against the Senate President. Apparently the president felt strongly enough about keeping Wabara in office that he stopped over in the Presidential wing of Abuja airport on his way to South Africa from France to schedule a meeting with Wabara and Anenih at the airport and speak with Senator Mark on the phone. This was on April 27. According to Vanguard of April 28, the president told Mark that he did not believe Wabara had committed any serious wrong and should therefore not be removed.

Second, even after the president returned on April 29 and must have been fully briefed on the issue he still insisted on Wabara’s innocence. He did call for a full investigation of the allegations during his meeting in the State House with all the parties involved, but the call was more of a lip-service to the principles of accountability and transparency than an attempt at honestly getting to the bottom of the issue. This is evident from the fact that soon after the State House meeting, the issue was simply swept under the carpet with no more than an apology from Wabara and a promise that henceforth he will be more transparent and accountable in his leadership.

And just as Anenih seemed to have forgotten his December 2000 threat that no vacancy existed in the presidency for 2003, the president too seemed to have forgotten his warning at the November 2001 PDP convention in Abuja that the party leadership had no business in interfering with the affairs of the Executive arm of government. “Party officials”, he told the PDP convention on that occasion, “need to be reminded that they are not government officials, appointed or otherwise. Party officials are remunerated from party headquarters and they must stay away  from day-to-day executive decisions of the government once the party manifesto remains the guide for the president.”

Clearly, the president does not believe what is good for the gander is also good for the goose. In other words, he does not believe what is good for the Executive arm of government is also good for the Legislative. Of course, the Wabara leadership crisis was not an everyday affair, but then so also weren’t some of the issues over which the President warned the PDP leadership to keep its distance from the Executive.

Both party and the president, I believe, do have an interest in what goes on in all three arms of government. Separation of power among the arms does not mean each one should run its own government. If it did what we will have is anarchy not democracy.

However, while each of the three arms has an interest in what goes on in the other two, this interest cannot go beyond checking the others from abusing their powers and prerogatives. The role of President Obasanjo and the PDP, through Anenih, in sweeping the allegations against Wabara under the carpet hardly accorded with this.

I believe The Punch in its editorial of May 7 truly said it all. “Again,” it opined, “another scandal in the senate has been handled in a very dishonourable way, which leaves a number of questions begging for answers. How, for instance, does the president’s intervention justify the anti-corruption crusade of his administration or strengthen the principles of separation of powers that is central in a democracy? Has the Senate President’s innocence been proved before a competent body constitutionally empowered to investigate financial impropriety? Should Wabara not have been allowed to openly clear his name?”

Not even Wabara can say that any of these questions has been answered satisfactorily before the threat to impeach him was driven underground last week, probably only to resurface sooner or later, one way or the other. Consequently our democracy is hardly the healthier for the whitewash that, once again, has take place in the Senate.

Note:  This column will be away on a short break.