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FRIDAY DISCOURSE BY DR. ALIYU TILDE The Ambition is Over, Mr. President The third term ambition of Obasanjo is over. Sure. It has been defeated. There is absolutely no room for doubting this fact. I think referring the matter to God by the President was what facilitated its quick disposal. Within ten days of making the referral, an answer contrary to his prayer was given. The Presidency had even lost hope of presenting the matter before the Senate but the presentation was inevitable, since the Mantu committee was constituted by the Senate, so it had to present whatever were its recommendations to justify the money wasted on it. The day came. It was last Tuesday. After depositing the report before the Senate President, not a single Senator was bold enough to propose its acceptance for future deliberation. There was a long silence for what clearly appeared to be lack of support. Members opposed to the third term agenda started calling for Senator Hamburger (sorry, Hambagda) to come forward, own up and make the proposal. He could not hide. So he did so, tediously, before he was reluctantly supported by another Senator. With this calamity that has visited the third term project, and Mantu struggling to extricate himself from a web of corruption charges on Hajj and other matters, do we wait for better evidence before concluding that the third term is over? Thus, the agenda became a still birth, lifeless, incapable of breathing the air of this world for even a day. In fact, the best is yet to come. We must take note of the unfolding scenario in the National Assembly where members are divided into four groups. The first consists of the Mantis, the Hams, and other supporters of the third term agenda. The second is made up of diehard opponents of the agenda, our heroes, people who will never waver under any circumstance, on this issue at least. The third consists of covert opponents of the project who are afraid of manifesting their opposition for different reasons. Finally, there are those who are sitting on the fence, waiting to see which way the pendulum swings. Now, with the growing improbability of the agenda, both those sitting on the fence and covert opponents of the project will join the mainstream opposition when voting comes. This is due to the high degree of political risk associated with the agenda. The result, to the delight majority of Nigerians, will be a crushing defeat for the President and his foot soldiers. Once more, God will prove to be on our side, the Nigerian people. In fact, before I finished this article, I was shocked to listen to a committed foot soldier of the project, who few months ago was criss-crossing this nation in a presidential jet to market the project, now dissociating himself from it! He has admitted its failure; unfortunately, he cannot disconnect himself from it no matter the effort. Given this development, I am no longer as bothered with the third term project of the President as I am with the consequences of its failure. It is true that a review of the constitution is long overdue. We seriously regret its delay due to the third term ambition of the President. Some people and groups have suggested that the entire issue of constitutional review should be suspended until a new government is sworn into office. The National Assembly may buy this argument for the fear that in trying to separate the chaff from the grain in the Mantu report, the chaff of third term may likely, albeit accidentally, filter through the sieve. Taking this stand will be a setback to us as the constitutional instruments that empowered political office holders to inflict undue suffering on our people will continue to operate. For example, I do not mind going into confederation with Obasanjo to dispossess governors of their immunity, for no single constitutional provision has caused so much suffering in our countryside like the immunity clause which has afforded governors the impropriety of large scale fraud. If we postpone the review now, it will take three years before another is tabled before the Assembly, meaning a prolongation of our suffering. With the great prospect of the failure of third term agenda, the President and the nation should start working for a successful succession. And there is little time left, especially for INEC and the PDP. All presidential aspirants must come forward to publicly express their intention to contest the primaries of their parties. Babangida should come out and declare his intention, for example, if he is at all interested. I wonder why he postponed it two weeks ago. Is he still waiting for permission from Obasanjo? Here, Atiku has impressed me a bit. More declarations now mean more commitments of lawmakers to aspirants other than Obasanjo and, impliedly, more blows to his third term ambition. We will one day look back and amuse ourselves with the final days of our last sit-tight dictator. We will recall how he deceived the nation during his campaign by portraying himself as a born again, a saint and a messiah. No sooner did he assume office that he started to destroy the reputation he built earlier. He resorted to wholesale subscription to micro-nationalistic sentiments. He also destroyed the house that offered him the platform to contest his first elections – the PDP. One after another, he frustrated its leaders until he assumed full control of the party in preparation for a life presidency. However, at the crucial moment, all of a sudden, his edifice crumbled like a pack of cards. We will also recall how he did everything dirty to remain in power. He spent billions on a conference calculated to endorse his third term. He circulated a forged constitution that he prayed would be adopted by the participants at the conference. However, they rejected his prayer and recommended measures that were against his wishes. He then rushed to the Senate, hijacking the constitution review committee and making it prepare two-day kangaroo sittings in zones where selected supporters of his agenda were given opportunity to express support for the agenda. That too failed. Governors who voiced their support were booed, and most speakers rejected the agenda. Some states were hypocritical; they rejected the agenda in public at the zonal hearings to appease their people. They later changed the contents of their presentation before it was submitted at Port Harcourt. In Port Harcourt, money was distributed to members of the committee disposed to the agenda, resulting in a bribery scandal that has vowed to freeze the political career of the committee’s chairman. This guy, it was widely reported, pocketed N10million from the N50million share of each collaborator. Third term was said to be adopted in the skewed hearing. And that was not achieved without the brazen desecration of the law: a bailiff was harassed, molested and locked up by the police until the hearings were over. That was how Mantu evaded the court order ‘advising’ the postponement of the sitting. One day, we will recall the scandalous leakage of how in a big way the Presidency prepared to bribe members of the National Assembly to support the third term agenda during their debates. Usman Bugaje leaked out the plan with unbelievable details. Astonishingly, this was happening during the tenure of the person who deafened our ears with fight against corruption. Yet, despite the money, the beneficiaries, as we pointed earlier, hesitated in proposing a motion accepting the report when it was deposited before the President of the Senate. The chief proponent escaped suspension that week by a whisker. We will also sit to recall how the President was also eager to use coercion. To this end, the new Inspector General is not better than his predecessor. The latter clamped down on opposition members during the 2003 elections and he was later convicted for stealing over N17billion, largely from bribes and extortions. The new IG went as far as preventing open meetings of opponents to the third term. The President did not hesitate to tamper with the editorial rights of government owned newspapers. The editor of the New Nigerian, for example, was promptly fired for impartially reporting how the adoption of the third term by the constitution review committee went about. We will recall, in the future still, how despite all the above, the President wanted us to believe that he was not interested in a third term. What difference, we will wonder then, was there between him and other leaders who attempted to sit tight at Aso Rock? The difference, we would conclude, was that while Babangida and Abacha were innovative in their deceit, Obasanjo, who lacked the political sagacity of the former and the audacity of the latter, merely resorted to plagiarising their plans. Finally, we will recall how amidst our growing poverty during his tenure, vast resources were diverted to supply his inordinate ambition; how those governors, legislators and politicians who sacrificed our confidence and their political future for the vanity of the President depreciated in our hearts and diminished in relevance; how his ambition made his party grow leaner by the day; etc. Returning from the anticipated joy of our recollection, we will emphasise here that Nigerians should begin bracing up for the next elections. If they are interested in free and fair elections they must be ready to fight a more difficult battle ahead. And the time to prepare for that battle is not later than now. Will they allow the PDP to shamelessly rig the next elections and go Scot free or will they plan to protect their votes to the last minute, such that the battle won in Kano during the 2003 elections will be won in other states?
As we prepare for the next elections,
Obasanjo must prepare himself and his associates from the inevitable
that is bitter, his exit from Bauchi 13 April 2003
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