EARSHOT

 

Obasanjo Vs Shagari

 

From what we have witnessed since May 29, 1999, Nigerians would have to apologise to former President Shehu Shagari for all the excoriations he has received over the way he ran the Second Republic. Shagari’s landslide and moonslide which led to the gunslide of December 31, 1983, have become a child’s play compared to Obasanjo’s seminal contributions to statecraft and the development of democracy in Nigeria. After experiencing Obasanjo, I seriously think we should make Shagari the Democracy Man of the Last Millennium. Including this one!

 

 

LAST WORD

 

IWU MUST READ THIS

Will Elections Hold Next Year?

By

Sam Nda-Isaiah

samndaisaiah@yahoo.com

 

I first wrote this piece on December 2, 2002, precisely four years ago in my then Monday Column of Daily Trust. The rest is now history. But Nigeria today appears to be in a worse situation. It appears the piece is even more germane today than ever.

I recommend it to Maurice Iwu, the incumbent INEC chairman. Let him read it and decide on what side of history he wants to be.

 

Holding elections next year is becoming an event about as likely as getting President Olusegun Obasanjo to repudiate his second term bid. Although two weeks ago, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Dr. Abel Guobadia, declared rather flippantly that “elections will hold sometime in April next year”, those who have been concerned about the future of democracy in Nigeria should really not be celebrating. All the structures and indicators that should be on ground to make May 29, 2003, a reality are not in place. And as I write this, INEC is not certain which electoral law will be in use next year. The electoral body is in court challenging the legality of the Electoral Bill 2002 recently signed into law. The 11­-day voters’ registration exercise that was ineffectually handled by INEC in September has still not been displayed for the scrutiny of the public, a requirement of the 1999 Constitution. There is no timetable for the elections next year even though, by the provisions of the constitution, the presidential election must hold by February 28 (I will get to that presently). The local government election has been postponed three times this year and there is yet no official date for its eventual conduct.

 

INEC has absolutely no sense of urgency even though, constitutionally speaking, the elections should be three months away. It would seem as if chaos and confusion are being structured into the 2003 elections. All these and many more make it unreasonable to expect a credible election next year; that is, if there is going to be any at all. But how did we get into this rot?

 

It all started with the ill-fortune of the inauspicious death of Justice Ephraim Akpata, the immediate past chairman of INEC, a man whose integrity and uprightness gave the commission the needed credibility soon after President Obasanjo took over. It was Justice Akpata who conducted the 1999 election that was generally acclaimed to be respectable. It was he also who condemned the convention of the ruling PDP that fraudulently threw up Mr. Barnabas Gemade as chairman of the party against a more popular and perpendicularly superior Chief Sunday Awoniyi – a  convention that literally took place under the superintendence, direction and general oversight of the president. This singular act increased the old man’s public rating as he was seen to be above board and a cut above all those who held the job in the past – virtually all of whom saw themselves as vassals of the president and their office as an extension of the presidency. Justice Akpata told the PDP pointblank that its convention was fraudulent and the results of the elections below civilised standards. It was therefore not acceptable to his INEC. That was when his problems started. He died a few months later.

 

Any electoral commission worth its salt should be an impartial umpire actuated by a sense of justice in its task of renewing democracy and building credibility into the democratic process. It should be democracy’s quality control manager. That exactly was what INEC represented under Justice Akpata’s stewardship. But not so under Guobadia’s. Under him, INEC has become the handmaiden of the Obasanjo presidency. And because Obasanjo’s signature cause is corruption, INEC under Dr. Abel Guobadia has largely been converted into a “corruption services provider” of the government. The electoral body has become our democracy’s Achilles’ heel; it’s the most vulnerable point and the very source of our worry. Regrettably!

 

But it would be expecting too much to anticipate otherwise. The circumstances of Guobadia’s appointment should have put paid to any expectation of competence from the electoral body. In this column of April 28, 2002, entitled “Should we trust Guobadia?” I made clear that the influences on his appointment and the reality of what he comprehends his job to be (which is to kowtow to the Obasanjo presidency) make any hope for a successful 2003 a forlorn one. The story has it that, immediately after Justice Akpata’s death, the president informed Alhaji Shehu Musa, Makaman Nupe and longstanding friend of the president who was then acting as the chairman, that he (the president) was going to appoint him the substantive chairman. That was before Chief Tony Anenih (whom Obasanjo has surrendered his life to) warned him against any such thoughtlessness. Shehu Musa may be Obasanjo’s buddy, but trusting him with the job of INEC chairman would be friendship carried too far. He advised Obasanjo to be wise. Chief Anenih then brought Dr. Guobadia as the wise replacement. That was how the INEC boss was appointed. And for that reason, he has since remained beholden to both Chief Anenih and the president. Even though the Makama has since denied this story in a rejoinder a few months ago, how does that matter? In spite of the rebuttal, the kernel of the story is still true. To compound matters, his (Guobadia’s) exemplar with whom he has been in constant touch is Justice Ovie Whisky, the chairman of FEDECO (the electoral body as it was then called) who conducted the 1983 infamous election that sounded the death knell of the Second Republic. He also speaks approvingly of the last Zimbabwean election as an archetype that should be emulated, an election many respectable Nigerians who were observers (Guobadia also observed the elections probably to pick up a few tricks) have described as “fair but not free”. During the president’s last visit to Ogun State, his home state, Dr. Abel Guobadia, the chairman of INEC who is expected to be neutral in the discharge of his assignment, was one of those in the entourage in a visit that was to all intents and purposes an electioneering campaign. Remember, that was the visit during which the president endorsed Governor Osoba for a second term by raising his hands. We have always known that the INEC chairman is shamelessly in bed with the president in an incestuous relationship but must he rub it in? Why do they treat us this disrespectfully?

 

The National Assembly has overturned the veto on the new Electoral Law in which President Obasanjo designed the 2003 elections to be “staggered” starting with the presidential election. The idea is that if elections start with the presidential and he (Obasanjo) manages to rig his way through, then there would be a “bandwagon effect” with the subsequent elections leading to a landslide, the kind that was witnessed in 1983. It sometimes beats me how bird-brained our leaders can be. Or are they too dumb to remember the “gunslide” that followed the bandwagon, landslide and moonslide of 1983? When they make such devious plans for 2003, they should also build in this inexorable Factor X of the Nigerian politics, which has remained a constant, and of a general application since independence. The history of this country informs us that whenever a government (military or civilian) decides to perpetuate itself in power, there’s always a power failure. This one won’t be different. But that is by the way. President Obasanjo fought the upturning of his veto on this matter as if his life depended on it. It probably does. He deployed Ghana-must-go to the National Assembly but that did not work this time. After the president’s veto was annulled, Guobadia rushed to court to challenge the legality of the law on two grounds. One, that the constitution already gives INEC the power to order elections and, second, it would be impossible (at least by his own INEC) to conduct all the elections on a single day. The court is yet to give its verdict.

 

The last voters’ registration exercise should give a foretaste of how the 2003 elections will be. If Guobadia cannot conduct an ordinary voters’ registration exercise acceptably, how do we expect him to conduct elections respectably? The voters’ registration exercise exposed the stuff of which the INEC boss is made. More than 50% of those eligible to vote were disenfranchised and yet the rumour mills are agog with the news that Lagos State alone might have recorded more than 12 million voters. If it took six hours for Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, a former head of state, to register, then it is almost certain that the majority of ordinary eligible voters couldn’t register at all. I can say this confidently because none of my family members (absolutely none) in both Kaduna and Minna were able to register. As for our vast rural areas, what happened can only be imagined. Even the voter’s card INEC issued is a temporary one that is open to forgery. Its most important feature is that it is rigging-friendly. Local government elections have been postponed three times this year and there is still no date for it. Dr. Guobadia has been shifty and acts unilaterally without even respecting the views of other commissioners, many of whom are more experienced technocrats. He takes decisions as if he is a sole administrator and on the very few occasions decisions are taken collectively, they get broken the moment he visits Aso Rock or his patron, Chief Tony Anenih. INEC’s role in the last Abuja botched APP convention is still fresh in our minds. On the strength of some nebulous court injunctions filed by certain anonymous persons, INEC ordered the convention stopped. Though it eventually apologised, there is no way this kind of INEC would be trusted to be an impartial arbiter next year. Dr. Guobadia has turned his organisation into an INEC of “the more you see, the less you understand”.

 

Dr. Guobadia’s assertion that elections will hold “sometime in April next year” is not only worrisome, it is scandalous. How can the head of an organisation that the nation depends on so much for the reinforcement of its democracy speak in such an equivocal and indeterminate language? Only a garage boy should be excused for talking about such a very important event like this. Besides, the INEC chairman needs to be told that holding the elections in April 2003 is unconstitutional as the constitution allows for a minimum of three months between elections and the swearing in date of May 29, 2003, to allow sufficient time for petitions that may arise from the conduct of the elections. If the 1999 Constitution is still our democracy’s grund norm, then  presidential election must hold on or before February 28, 2003. Anything outside this should be considered an illegality.

 

The INEC boss also complains of lack of funding from government. He said if the issue of funding is not addressed as soon as possible, INEC would lose its independence. Nonsense! What independence is he talking about? INEC lost its independence the day he (Guobadia) was appointed chairman. Howbeit, it is still a paradox that Dr. Guobadia, a lackey of Tony Anenih who is on special assignment for the presidency should be grumbling about poor funding. It is still difficult to understand why a presidency that withdraws at least $500million monthly from the nation’s foreign reserves (mostly without authority from the National Assembly) can starve such an important institution as INEC like this. Is there something the rest of us don’t know? This is the same presidency that has enough money to fund the robust corruption of its government through the ubiquitous Ghana-must-go (have you been listening to the free-of-charge entertainment Senator Arthur Nzeribe has been giving us lately?).

 

The Weekly Trust in its cover story of last weekend asked: “Can INEC be trusted?” The straight answer to that, I am afraid, is “No”. There is no way INEC can be trusted as long as Guobadia continues to operate as its chairman. The man does not even know the correct spelling of the word “TRUST” and he doesn’t want to know. What is more, his mien is against him. It does not inspire confidence. After the November 8, 2002, judgement in which the Supreme Court opened up the political space by its liberalisation of political party registration against the wishes of his masters, people expected him to straightaway start implementing the judgement. Instead, he declared that he needed time to implement it. What that meant (reading his lips) was that he was still awaiting further instructions from his masters in Aso Rock. He didn’t have to wait too long. The attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice, Mr. Kanu Agabi, who will go down in history as one of the bad boys of the Fourth Republic has just recently given him a clue. The judgement does not compel lNEC to register new parties, he said (whatever that means). And expectedly, our own Guobadia is holding on to that. But that is not all. A few days ago, the Supreme Court in a letter signed by J.O. Okosun (Ref No. SC228/2002/808) has asked Gani Fawehinmi (SAN), counsel to the political parties, for a meeting to explain a “clerical error” in the judgement. I am still searching for someone to explain what that means in English. I just hope this is not a variant of Obasanjo’s “printer’s devil” Electoral-Act-Gate.

 

It is obvious that the president in sync with his agents is doing all he can to scuttle 2003. But Nigerians should not allow him. They should be ready to walk through fire to defend this democracy. Meanwhile, I recommend the following.

 

•     In spite of the fact that the future of democracy is still bleak, all the parties should go ahead and conduct their primaries as soon as possible in readiness for the main contest next year. The political parties should be wary of a provision in the current Electoral Act, which says that candidates’ list must be submitted to INEC at least 90 days before election.

 

•   The National Assembly must never accede to any war in Cameroun or any such thing for that matter, which could be used as an alibi to extend the life of this government. It will help to always remember that Obasanjo’s desperation for a second term will lead him to do anything.

 

•     If Dr. Guobadia loses his ongoing case regarding the Electoral Law 2002 as it affects the ordering of elections, then he should resign at once since he himself has confessed that he would not be able to work with the Electoral Law in its present form.

But the sure-fire bet of ensuring that 2003 is a reality is for Guobadia to be fired with “immediate effect” and be replaced with a homotype of the late Justice Ephraim Akpata. But I don’t expect any such logic to cut much ice with the president.

 

•   If by May 29, 2003, elections have not been held, the life of this government should be deemed to have lapsed. Our four-­year contract with President Olusegun Obasanjo ends on that day, unless of course he wins his re-election bid through a “free and fair” contest, a prospect that is increasingly becoming improbable by the day. But with the way things are structured currently, it is possible that a new term would not have begun by that date. If that happens, an interim government should be cobbled and put in place forthwith to organise an election. The composition of the interim government should be based on the exigencies on ground at the time. But we should not expect the president to let go easily. His greed for power is obviously inordinate. He will kick and scream but he would have lost the moral suasion, even authority to continue to be president over us after that date. Nobody has any right to be president over any people in a democracy without their consent. This is the only way our democracy would be given a facelift. If Chief Olusegun Obasanjo does not renew his mandate by May 29, 2003, he is on his own!