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MONDAY DISCOURSE Sad Term By
We are hooked to the ambition of Mr. President and his cronies. Armed with money, deceit and impunity, their train of achieving a third, sorry sad term is moving with a crushing momentum, sweeping anything on its path, without any regard to due process and the future of this country. We assure them that though we are unable to presently stop them from the dictates of their minds, nobody in the history of this country ever got away with a perfidy like this. Many others did so before them. And regret was their only reward.
I have observed over the past seven years how the present federal government does things with impunity. It has never sided with the law nor respected it except when it is to its advantage. There is total disregard to all institutions that are meant to check its excesses. It regards as nullity any resolution of the legislature, any order of the court and even any etiquette of civilisation that will not serve its interest.
I say this with deep sorrow for I was among those whom Obasanjo deceived in 1999. The mere mention of his name filled our hearts with relief. “Aha”, we exclaimed, “here comes the man that will restore law and order and treat everyone fairly.” Today, for seven years, we realised that there is totally nothing in his mind or hand that is better than that of his worst predecessor. He has returned our state of mind to the sadness of 1985 to 1999 when riches were squandered in pursuit of desires; when societal institutions were pulled down with pride; when ethics are ignored, when deceit is the principle and corruption is the practice; when both law and truth are targeted and treated as enemies, and when citizens are treated with contempt – deserving only hunger, disease, illiteracy and unrest.
In those days, Nigerians used to see truth only in the opposite of what the presidency would say. To them the leadership was nothing but a gang of cheats, thie ves and tyrannically insensitive lot who have reduced the ambition of the nation to that of their dwarf statue and narrow minds. The end of their rule was our daily prayer before God, with the hope that a better person will inherit their position. Our prayer from all indications was half answered. They left the scene but the chain of deceit and corruption was never broken.
Today, deceit is still the principle and corruption the practice. Put the daily theft of billions aside for the moment and concentrate on the methodology of Obasanjo’s sad term ambition. The intention was clear to the outside world before we realised it. Remember Paul Wolfowitz, the Director of World Bank, when he publicly asked the President whether he will quit power in 2007? Today, as a Nigerian, I am ashamed that it took more than a year to see wha t the World Bank Director saw. I was blinded by the remnants of trust that I had for Mr. President.
Also, let us not forget how he initially shunned the national assembly and followed a shorter route to realising his ambition. Not sure of the support of the National Assembly, he concocted a national political conference consisting of a carefully selected majority that was anticipated to endorse the sad term, despite the billions wasted on the delegates and the circulation of a fake constitution among them. Having failed to endorse his ambition, their report was dumped in one of the dustbins of the Presidential Palace.
In the interim, as Mantu, the Chairman of the Constitution Review Committee of the National Assembly, was preparing to stone the She-Camel, various groups were gathered to suggest the sad term. Two prominent ones deserve mention here: the South was cajoled by various promises and united by anti-North sentiments at its meeting in Enugu late last year to call for a constitutional review. Then governors, most of who have corrupt charges lying dormant in the case files of ICPC and EFCC – and who, in any case, stand to benefit from the enterprise – were gathered to project the ambition of the President. The twenty-three traitors among them endorsed it and seven bold ones rejected it.
Finally, Mantu rolled out the bulldoz er. Zonal hearings were conducted, where only a handful of people, as anticipated, spoke in favour of a sad term. No voting or any means of quantifying the balance of opinion was used. This gave Mantu the insolence to forge the contrary: he was reported saying that he never realised how Nigerians are so interested in a third term until the zonal hearings were conducted.
The constitutional review committee then planned to meet in Port Harcourt. There also, the script was followed to the letter. Nothing must stop the bulldozer. When a court order was issued before the sitting started, it was ignored by the committee and, cunningly, Mantu said he was not personally served the order, though it was duly served to his office at the National Assembly. An effort was made to serve him personally at Port Harcourt but he blocked it using brute force: the bailiff was harassed, molested and locked up by the police until the committee finished its sitting. Then Mantu told the world that he only saw a copy of the order in the hands of a colleague at a restaurant, and it was only an advice, not an order of restraint. What an insult on our conscience.
It is now common knowledge that at the meeting of the committee, only five people spoke – three for and two against the sad term – before Mantu shouted down opposing members and announced his decision that the committee too is in favour of a third term! How could it be against it, though? Well, the matter now moves to the floor of the National Assembly proper.
Meanwhile, despite these happenings, foot soldiers of the President are asking us to trust him. The truth, they say, is in his silence. We agree: The truth is always in what he did not say. This whole sad term agenda is a clear testimony that this country is still managed using deceit and corruption, regardless of what the President and his supporters might or might not say. I often ask God whether a country that worships Him most truly deserves this discredited fate. And how many times have we prayed in silence that He comes to our rescue! Certainly, He did, but only partially and the reasons are obvious.
Nations like us, with whom we took off in the late 1950s and early 1960s are well ahead of us in aspect of development. We recently witnessed Ghana celebrate its ten years of uninterrupted supply of electricity while we remain stuck in perpetual outages, in spite of the billions that are annually spent on ‘power’ since 1999. Today, many of our elite are sending their children to study in Ghana. What a shame for a country that attracted and drained a good proportion of Ghanaian academics in the 1970s and early 1980s!
Where are we compared to India, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia? Unfortunately, in the twisted logic of sad term crusaders, as asserted by Mr. Fanny-Kayode, we need a father like the Obasanjo to nurture our country, as Mahathir Muhammad did to Malaysia. This funny propagandist even drew a similarity between the Obasanjo and Churchill, Thatcher, Washington and Roosevelt. Wearing his suffocating attire on the national television, he forgot to mention that Mandela did not require a sad term to develop South Africa. He also forgot to tell us the sad stories of Somalia, Zaire, Sudan and many other African countries that collapsed as a result o f their egocentric notion of their leaders who suppressed freedom and desecrated the institutions of democracy. The result is disintegration and war.
Regarding Malaysia, this funny guy needs to tell the truth that Mahathir is unlike Baba in every respect. He did not extort billions to build a presidential library; his inspector general or in-law did not steal billions; and his brain is not as hard as coconut, impervious to advice. He respects knowledge and law. He went to school and passed through the university, not through the mammy market. With this intellectual refinement he tirelessly worked for his country, not as a lackey of the West, until he placed it on the enviable pedestal of development. He never yielded to Western pressure o f any kind. I must say here that while people in power can abuse the constitution and our resources, they must not think that Nigerians are a bunch of mumus whose intellect can be taken for granted with this degree of dishonesty.
Do we deserve this sad state? That is the recurring question in our minds. If yes – and it is obviously yes – then when will it end? Certainly, a sad term will only aggravate it. But it will definitely end whenever our elite decide to side with the truth, and endure it, anytime, anywhere.
Bauchi 14 March 2004
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