LAST WORD
2007 Election: Can We Trust The President?
Sam Nda-Isaiah

President Olusegun Obasanjo is refurbishing Aguda House, in Aso Rock, from where he intends to continue to rule Nigeria in a Yar’Adua presidency. Aguda House, for those who do not know, used to be the home of every Nigerian president until Aso Rock was built. You may say he is daydreaming, but Obasanjo is the president of Nigeria and therefore the one in charge of the process of electing his successor. In this, he has a precedent. He was also the one in charge of the same process four years ago and what he did with that election is already part of our indelible political history. And those who know him well say he is now even more desperate to fiddle with the outcome of the elections this year than he ever was in 2003. There are a few hints on that.
 
The way he conducted the PDP primaries, another election in which he was completely and totally in charge of the process, gave further glimpse into what he will do in the coming weeks. In the primaries, he showed that he wanted to install every senatorial and gubernatorial candidate. He picked those who came last in some states and made them the party candidates against the will of his party men. Ditto for his presidential candidate. If that still does not give sufficient glimpse into the president’s inner recesses, then the EFCC report on "indicted candidates", which was rigged by the president himself to scheme his opponents out of contention, should make the president’s 2007 intentions crystal clear. The message is unmistakable.
 
The last credible election that was held in Nigeria was the one that brought Obasanjo to power and which was supervised by his predecessor, General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Since then, he has rigged every convention and primary within his own PDP (thus depriving his party men of internal democracy), and the general elections in 2003. The only thing that has changed so far is his propensity for electoral fraud, which has become even more egregious. If anyone is still daydreaming that Nigeria will see a fair and free election in the Obasanjo presidency, such a person must be extraordinarily dumb. The president has even said it himself: the coming election is a do-or-die affair. Which means, he should be allowed to "win" the election anyway, or he will die or kill someone if he doesn’t get his way. Considering that Bola Ige and others might have died because they were blocking some people’s ambitions, that should be of concern. The president might have not necessarily meant physical death, but it is clear that there is something he is eternally fearful of. President Obasanjo is scared stiff of his shadows.
 
What has surprised me is the hoopla that the president’s do-or-die statement has generated. For Gani Fawehinmi, the president could in fact be courting the high offence of treason. For me, this is the only truth that the president has told Nigerians since he became president in 1999. It is like coming clean with us and telling us what we have always suspected anyway! President Obasanjo is decidedly desperate, and, a desperate man, as we all know, is a dangerous man. What is more, this same desperate president is armed and dangerous; he does not feel he has anything to lose if the roof comes crashing over us all. He had even hinted in the past that he might actually prefer to die in power.
 
That the president is a desperate man has already become absolutely clear to the world. Only a desperate man would rig the election the way he did it in 2003. Even highway robbers do not ply their trade as wantonly as the elections were conducted in 2003. Only desperation can also push such a man to seek to elongate his tenure with as much as N50 million bribe per legislator at a time there were no refineries and electric power supply had become a national disgrace. As I said, the situation has even become worse since 2003.
 
Four years ago, he was desperate to remain in power so as to retain the power to continue to share oil blocks to his fronts and cronies and do same for public utility companies like NITEL, ALSCON and the steel mills. Today, he is desperate not to go back to "Yola", especially as he has not bothered to renovate one single prison since he left the dungeon in 1998. And nobody should think that the president’s desperation is to make Yar’Adua the PDP candidate. Any discerning observer would have noticed that Yar’Adua is only a fallback position. The truth is that the president wants to sit tight and, from the way INEC is being primed, it does not seem likely that the elections would hold.
 
As we talk, the ballot papers to be used for the elections in less than 50 days are not ready. If you consider the delivery and distribution time across the 120,000 voting units across the country, then you know who is fooling whom. Also consider the obvious lie of using electronic voting machines which require electricity, at least to charge the batteries. My office in Abuja, for instance, survives on generators for an average of 15 hours every day, and that is even in the nation’s capital. Don’t even attempt surviving on electricity in Kano, Kaduna or Lagos. The rural areas where the majority of the people live are a different matter. If you add all these to the orgy of illegalities that INEC has taken the entire system through, waiting now for anyone to go to court to stop the election, you know the outcome already. The process has been planned to fail and the government is always waiting for the auspicious time.
 
So, no matter what direction we move, there are dangers ahead. I have said it several times on this page before – and it deserves repeating: Obasanjo will not leave power without a fight. For the first time, let me hope I would be proved wrong!
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E A R S H O T
He That Has Ears, Let Him Hear...


General T.Y. Danjuma has offered a seminal verdict on the outgoing Obasanjo government. So far, no one that I know has disagreed with the general’s very strong position, and his speech has already become a subject of discussion for the intelligentsia.

 

The message, as usual, was well written and the use of language was first-class to the accompaniment of his signature clarity. The only redeeming step the president can take now to mitigate his place in history is to work towards a free and fair election. But will General Danjuma’s "fake friend" listen?