Why Hasn’t the President Started Packing His Bags?

By

Sam Nda--Isaiah
ndaisaiah@yahoo.com

By the end of 1978, less than a year to the expected handover of power to an elected civilian administration, the then Lt. General Olusegun Obasanjo, head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, had started speaking the language of an outgoing leader. He had started touring states and giving farewell messages in which he talked about the imperative of sustaining the inchoate democracy that his government was about to reintroduce.

Today, barely 10 months to the expiration of his regime, Obasanjo seems only to be consolidating and not speaking the language of an outgoing president at all. He has been busy digging deeper and appointing loyalists to key positions. INEC is not being spruced up for the elections next year and the mastermind of the third term project has not started grooming a successor. The situation has also been compounded by the rumour mills, which have proved quite reliable these days.

Long before it became obvious to doubting Thomases that Obasanjo was involved in an un-winnable third term mischief, a discerning section of the Nigerian society had warned of a sit-tight agendum. I remember writing a column in September 2003 in which I drew attention to a third term project and even some opposition politicians thought I was being alarmist.

The third term project is dead, long live the third term project! If anyone thinks that because the National Assembly had patriotically killed the third term project and therefore Obasanjo had dropped his greed to hold on to power, then that person should qualify for the most naïve person in Nigeria. Every keen observer of the president should by now know the essence of the man. Obasanjo is a very consistent person. And he has shown this in the dogged consistency and impunity with which he breaks the nation’s laws. He has broken every law and every rule of democracy since 1999.

 He has rigged every election (both national and within his party) as has never been done before, and nothing ontoward has happened to him. He is surprised that, for him, something as harmless as an additional four-year term could be so vehemently rejected. He gets away with everything, so why should this be different? Nobody can impeach him and, unlike past civilian regimes that misbehaved and got booted out by soldiers, there doesn’t appear to be any prospect of that in his own case, no matter how egregious the situation.

He currently controls the police, the SSS, the EFCC, the military, the courts, the ruling party (and even decides who joins it and who doesn’t), the BPE, Transcorp, the ownership of all the nation’s oil wells, and the excess crude funds in addition to the nation’s legitimate Federation Account. He has virtually done whatever he wished in the country to the consternation of everyone, but with absolutely no consequences at all.

Not even an impeachment notice has ever been served him in spite of the occasional staccato noise about impeaching him that we get from time to time in the direction of the National Assembly. The only battle Obasanjo appeared to have lost so far is to make it legal for him to continue in office after May 29, next year. He lost it at the national confab, when he attempted to smuggle in a document through the backdoor, and he also lost it at the National Assembly even after he had bribed the willing members with N50 million each.

But he has not given up. Obasanjo doesn’t give up. He reportedly once threatened the leadership of the National Assembly to pass the third term law because, as a soldier, he never retreats. But that’s the mark of a bad soldier, because a good soldier knows when to do a “tactical withdrawal”. Obasanjo did not withdraw. He was defeated. Crushingly defeated. Because he doesn’t withdraw, he did not think of a need for a fallback position. And that is why Nigerians should never believe anyone who says Obasanjo is planning to leave next year. His body language is loud and clear. He doesn’t want to leave. But he will leave. He has no choice.

Again, as it happened before, journalists, politicians, diplomats and pundits have started discussing Obasanjo’s next sit-tight moves overtly. People are already talking of plans from above to construct confusion and disorder using the Niger Delta imbroglio, MASSOB and a contrived inconclusive presidential election next year as an alibi to abuse Section 135 of the 1999 Constitution to stay beyond 2007. But he will fail again as he failed the two previous times he attempted to elongate his stay. But until Obasanjo is escorted out of Aso Rock, his bags on his shoulders, no one who loves this country should go to sleep. The good news, however, is that if third term could die, any sit-tight stratagem will die. Nigerians are waiting!