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LAST WORD BY SAM NDA-ISAIAH
A former female minister
in the now dead and buried Olusegun Obasanjo administration was
overheard a few days ago complaining that if President Umaru Musa
Yar’Adua continued to harp on his "rule of law" mantra, then he must be
reminded that the greatest act of lawlessness their government committed
was the election that brought him to power. Obasanjo and his co-travellers
had hoped to continue to hold on to power by mercilessly rigging the
elections in favour of Yar’Adua, the PDP candidate who they thought
would be their stooge, and, in that way, they would continue to steal
our money as they had done in the past eight years. A few weeks before
the elections, in fact, former President Obasanjo declared openly and
unashamedly that he would never hand over power to anyone who would not
continue with his programmes.
The female minister need
not waste her breath. The president, and indeed Nigerians and the entire
world would not need to be reminded of the lawlessness and brigandage
that brought Yar’Adua to power. Yar’Adua himself has tacitly admitted to
that by promising an electoral reform even before he was sworn in as
president. The president does not make any bones about it. And I suspect
that it is even a mark of how seriously he takes the issue that he has
inaugurated the electoral reform committee even before the cases in the
courts are concluded. Though some of us have a problem with the headship
of the committee, the plausibility of the president’s thinking cannot be
faulted. Presidential aides have confided in me that the president wants
the electoral reforms to start at once, so that if his own election is
annulled, another election would not be conducted under the duplicitous
rules of the ancien regime. Some people still doubt the
president’s sincerity. They say it is impossible for anyone to fight the
system that produced him. They say the president has been a beneficiary
of the current system for a long time and cannot now turn round to fight
or even hope to defeat it. But what if Yar’Adua has seen an opportunity
to become a hero and write his name permanently in gold in the annals of
the nation and intends to seize it? General Muhammadu Buhari tried to
fight the system that made him head of state. His success or otherwise
is a mixed bag but his integrity remains intact. The current (2007)
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, eighth edition, recently released in
the UK says: "General Buhari is probably the only former Nigerian leader
not to have been suspected of corruption." Biblical Moses fought the
system that nurtured and pampered him and defeated it with an astounding
success.
Yar’Adua may be different
in his own ways, but at least history provides an encouraging guide.
Besides, the president’s actions so far have proved that he will be
ready to fight the fraudulent system that produced him if need be. I
can’t guess what may be running through Obasanjo’s mind right now, but
for someone who had boasted and equated himself with God [when he said
he would never hand over power to anyone who would not continue with his
programmes] it must really be bad times indeed. Here is a man who rigged
into power a Yar’Adua and, who within three months, he had upturned the
sales of the Kaduna and Port Harcourt refineries, cancelled the sale of
unity schools; cancelled most of his contracts, and has virtually
upturned all of Obasanjo’s so-called reforms that have deformed the
majority of Nigerians.
When Yar’Adua talks rule
of law, I want to believe him. I want Yar’Adua to succeed because I am
tired of counting failures. We are going to do everything to encourage
him on the path of the good promises he has given until we can confirm
that he is not sincere. So far, he appears very sincere, very serious
and sometimes very innocent. His innocence even sometimes appears
scandalous. If Obasanjo’s female minister wants to give evidence of the
felonies they committed during the elections to rig him into power,
including the hundreds, if not thousands of people they killed, she
should do that at the tribunals. Some of their mates are doing that
already. The chairman of the OPC in Ondo State has already confessed to
rigging the election in favour of the PDP. Yar’Adua does not look like
anyone that can be blackmailed. Blackmail and hostage-taking has been a
major plank of the Obasanjo statecraft and Obasanjo’s people used it
successfully for eight years on their compromised enemies. But they are
out of power today; besides, blackmail does not work on people who have
come clean, as Yar’Adua has done by directly admitting to a "flawed
election".
We must all support this
president in his current zeal to enforce the rule of law. No society
succeeds without the rule of law. Even cults and the underworld keep
their societies alive by obeying their rules. No government ever took
the kind of liberties that Obasanjo took. Not even military governments.
The military people usually suspend the constitution whenever they take
over governments so as not to be guilty of violating the rules of the
constitution. Whenever they want to take any action, they create laws to
support their actions even if they are anti-people laws. Sometimes, they
even get comical about it by making the laws retroactive, but at least
they are civilised enough to enact the laws and obey their own laws. But
Obasanjo didn’t even bother about these niceties. He held on to the
Lagos State council funds even after the Supreme Court had ruled against
him; he protected Chris Uba from prosecution even after he (Uba) had
masterminded the kidnap of a sitting governor; he got Audu Ogbeh, his
party chairman, to resign with a gun pointed to his temple in a crude
contravention of his party’s due process; and he himself forged the
Electoral Law 2002 until he was caught red-handed. When it is the
president himself that is breaking the laws of the land, then the very
fabric of society is threatened. When it is the president himself that
is bribing legislators with N50 million each to prolong his tenure, how
do you expect the EFCC, ICPC and even the Code of Conduct Bureau to
fight corruption? If the president himself is involved in rigging
elections, how do you tell young children not to cheat in examinations?
If the Supreme Court had given its verdict sacking Andy Uba as governor
of Anambra State before May 29, Bayo Ojo, Obasanjo’s attorney-general,
would have given us his own interpretation of the judgement and Andy
would most likely still be governor today.
Whenever Obasanjo wanted
to "impeach" a governor who was not in his good books, he would simply
arrest the speaker and a few members of the state House of Assembly and
blackmail them into drafting impeachment proceedings against the
governor. He did it to get former Governor Dieprieye Alamieyeseigha of
Bayelsa State, but not to former Governor Peter Odili of Rivers State
whose crimes were probably worse than Alams’.
Yar’Adua was right when,
in making a case for his "rule of law" agenda, he said there was a time
in this country (and many of us knew he was referring to the Obasanjo
regime) when it was even a status symbol to break the laws of the land.
Yar’Adua needs our support and goodwill to be able to stand against the
Obasanjo clique in the PDP who want him to fail. Sometimes, the rule of
law slows down cases, but it is ultimately in society’s best interest.
If a court injunction has slowed down Ibori’s and Odili’s EFCC trials,
then it behoves the EFCC to vacate the injunction as fast as it can. We
may be unhappy today because it is Odili or Ibori but, tomorrow, it
could be a genuine victim that an injunction would seek to protect. Even
the ordinary man on the street knows that Ibori and Odili abused their
offices and it is because of them that there is still so much
restiveness in the Niger Delta. No court can shield them from justice
forever.
By the way, I am also one
of those who think the Nigerian judiciary needs reforms, even as badly
as electoral reforms. And, the earlier the better for us all.
E A R S H O T Did I Hear Andy Uba Well? I hear Andy Uba intends to approach the Supreme Court to ask it to reverse itself and reinstate him as governor of Anambra State. Or is it that he has already approached the court? The only way Andy can ever come back as governor today will be for Obasanjo to come back as president via a coup d’etat. Andy still doesn’t appear to get it: they have lost power.
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