The Coming Shape of 2007

The Coming Shape of 2007

Sam Nda-Isaiah

Professor Wole Soyinka sure knew what he was talking about when he asserted that there was a nest of killers within the ruling PDP. He said so during an angry exchange of correspondences with the president over the cavalier manner with which his government was handling the murder case of his friend, the late Bola Ige. In fact during the funeral ceremony of Ige in Ibadan in 2002, he declared in the presence of the president that the killers of the fallen attorney general were there with them at the ceremony. Till date, the killers of the serving minister of justice are yet to be apprehended and as if eager to confirm Soyinka’s statement, all suspects have been freed and the case closed.

Nigerians have their suspicions, but that has to wait. The assassins are now freely roaming Nigerian streets incognito, probably still plying their trade, confident that they will never be caught. They are right. They will never be brought to book. Before May 29, next year, that is. People like Funso Williams who get killed this way are most probably victims of political rivals who see them as obstacles to their ambition. The man who sponsored the murder probably thinks only the murdered gubernatorial aspirant stood between him and the Lagos State government house. Former Gov. Bisi Akande of Osun State once opined that to have an idea of those who killed Bola Ige, we should simply look through the list of those who benefited from his death at the 2003 elections.

Some people within the PDP must have convinced themselves that their capture of the Lagos government house is given and whoever runs away with the PDP ticket would automatically become the next governor of Lagos State. They will not make the mistake of 2003. No matter what happens in 2007, the PDP governorship candidate will be declared the winner of the election. In the 2003 gubernatorial election they tried it, like they did other states in the south west. INEC, working together with the Obasanjo people had even gone as far as announcing on its Website that the PDP’s Funso Williams had won. Of-course he didn’t win, but like the other South West states, it was only a prelude to a planned rigged announcement by INEC. But Bola Tinubu, the AD governor had let it be known that there would be dire and grave consequences if he was rigged out. The security agents who knew his capabilities, believed him and warned Obasanjo against rigging the governor out as he had successfully done to Segun Osoba of Ogun, Bisi Akande of Osun, Lam Adesina of Oyo, Adebayo Adefarati of Ondo and Niyi Adebayo of Ekiti . That is why Tinubu is the only AD governor standing today.

But we have always known that Obasanjo has never forgiven Tinubu (or himself) for his inability to achieve a clean sweep in the south west. Nigerians know that he craves to prove to the world and himself that he is indeed the world’s greatest election rigger. His people in Lagos know that he cannot wait to prove that feat in 2007, and that whoever gets the PDP ticket among them will most likely be the next governor of Lagos state. This may not come to pass but at least that is what they believe .That is why this bloody struggle to get the ticket has begun in earnest and it will get messier as the party inches towards its primary elections. Already Lagosians are pointing fingers of suspicion at suspects and none of those fingers have so far been directed towards members of the opposition parties.

To unravel this wanton murder, the governor of Lagos state, who is the constitutional chief security officer of the state, must set up his own parallel investigation machinery. Another opportunity has opened up for Tinubu to prove to the world that he can beat the Obasanjo machinery on yet another turf. Nobody expects the security agencies, who, for all intents and purposes take instructions from Obasanjo to make any headway in this murder case, just as they have proved derelict in the other politically motivated assassinations of Bola Ige, Marshall Harry, Aminasoari Dikibo and several others. So Tinubu must beat Obasanjo again on this one and prove to the world that he is made of sterner stuff. In any case, it would be in the enlightened interest of the Lagos state governor to get to the bottom of this matter, or else, the killers will move their business to his own (Tinubu’s) camp after their principal gets his party’s ticket. I have a friend who used to say that if you see fire burning your neighbour’s house, you should quickly start pouring water on your own house; another way of saying that a stitch in time saves nine.

The prognosis for the 2007 elections is bad. Obasanjo’s conduct of the 2003 elections and the ensuing irresponsibility of the judiciary in giving a stamp of legality to the crimes committed by Obasanjo and his INEC have firmly ensured that. Ahmadu Ali, the PDP commander and Ojo Maduekwe, the protean and intellectually dishonest scribe of the party have hinted that the PDP will win even more states and more national assembly seats in 2007 and will again, win the Presidency no matter how the people feel. Nigerians have come to believe that only the Kano and Lagos formula will entrench democracy in their country and the different aspirants are developing the capability for that. I know of an aspirant in Kaduna State who intends to rent Lagos area boys and import them into Kaduna to watch over his votes during the election and I suspect there are a lot of others who are investing in good quality munitions.

I have not met any single aspirant who intends to go to court if rigged out. The next election will be a war that will be fought and finished on the field. It will be, in a manner of speaking, a war to be fought on land, air and sea and anyone who loses will have himself (or his private army) to blame. The 2007 elections threaten to make Iraq child’s play. If the INEC chairman, Professor Maurice Iwu is planning a free and fair election, then he should have no worry, but no one believes he harbours any such motive. This is not exactly his fault because anyone Obasanjo picks to do his kind of job cannot be trusted anyway. Only the hair-brained would trust a president who conducted the 2003 elections the way he did. He disenfranchised a large section of his party members because he doesn’t like their faces, and bribed National Assembly members with N50million each to illegally extend his tenure. Today, anyone associated with Obasanjo is considered a leper that every decent human being should avoid.

The worry of most Nigerians today is that if the INEC chairman is planning a free and fair election, why then should he buy a bullet proof official car for himself? Why are his commissioners desperately procuring bullet proof vests for themselves? And indeed, why is the police high command attempting to acquire armoured tanks, when it has not shown such zeal in combating assassins and armed robbers in the last seven years?

But the greatest concern came in the direction of Lt. General Owoye Azazi. His first public statement after his deserved appointment as chief of army staff was not a promise to build a world class professional army. “The Nigerian Army”, he said, “is ready for the 2007 elections”. Considering the way the Obasanjo-led government used (or misused) the army in the 2003 elections, this is indeed quite worrying!