Weekly Trust Friday, September 6, 2002  

The desire to dominate

We are once more being entertained by the ceaseless drama between the executive and the legislature following the two-week ultimatum given the president to resign or be impeached. It is necessary to look back to appreciate the nature of this "war."

Basically, there are three issues involved. The first was the placid attitude of the legislature when President Obasanjo started gradual moves to dominate and control other organs of the democracy project. The second is his resistance not to transform into a civilian personality and the third is the tradition of African leaders not to allow democracy to flourish on the continent.

Largely speaking, most African leaders practise democracy in the breach, all preferring to practise dictatorship within a democratic environment. President Obasanjo belongs to such leaders.

His is made worse by his military upbringing and his persistent refusal or failure to transform into a civilian personality. This explains why he has been indulging in several constitutional breaches and complete disregard for the rule of law. The truth is that if impeachment proceedings are set against Obasanjo today, not even he himself would get himself out of the web, for his unconstitutional practices have been too glaring even for an untutored child not to have noticed. Unconstitutional practices have been the hallmark of the style of his administration.

But he is not to blame for this.The legislature and indeed we Nigerians allowed this to happen right from the beginning. If it may be recalled, Obasanjo moved the office of the Senate president from the North-West to the South-East.The PDP allowed it without protest. This was the first mistake. The second was when he caused the Senate and the ruling party to ditch Okadigbo as the Senate president.

Again, the party and the legislature succumbed without appreciating the sinister moves and intentions behind his tactics.

From this episode, there was no stopping him from trying to dominate and emasculate the democratic institutions. In collaboration with senators, he reduced the Upper Chamber to a pitiable rubber stamp when he used them to remove Senator Okadigbo, the best man in the circumstance for that job.The Senate consequently lost its bearings and made worse by the house boy status adopted by Senator Anyim who succeeded Okadigbo, in the belief that he would remain in the good books of the president, refusing to learn from the use and dump attitude of the administration. Today he knows better. Godwin Daboh has now put on his heels for his too-late determination to disentangle himself from the dictorial grips of the autocrats in power.

Having dominated the legislature, he clamped down on all the three political parties. First, he reduced the PDP to rubbles by fixing people in position. Solomon Lar was used and dumped; "bad boys" such as the Sardauna kekere, Sunday Awoniyi, who could have given dignity to the party, were schemed out in favour of "yes men," who were later dumped. Consequently, PDP became a parastatal under the direct supervision of the Presidency.

To complete his control of the party structure, he dismantled the AD and cowed the ANPP, which is just reviving now, but still being haunted by Aso Rock using INEC as recently demonstrated.

From conquering the parties, he moved to dominate INEC, another very vital democracy structure. Today, we are agreed that INEC is there not for the PDP, as such but for the president. No reasonable Nigerian has any hope in it as an impartial observer.

Not done with emasculating the legislature, the political parties and INEC, he rushed to control the civil service giving himself the power to discipline erring civil servants when he snatched a provision to this effect from the Civil Service Rules. Today, he is more or less the chairman of the disciplinary committee of the Civil Service Commission.

The judiciary is not left out. First, he warned them against giving interim rulings not favourable to his administration. Worse, he has little respect for their judgements except when they favour his personal dictatorial desires.

Of the security agencies, we are aware how he deployed them to deal with Okadigbo in his official residence and how they attempted to waylay Na’Abba. Today, the SSS is said to have arrested Representative Kumaila for the "offence" of moving a motion to impeach Mr President. There were also reports that he has concluded plans to get the police to arrest Na’Abba and other House leaders and charge them with treason! That would be the final end of democracy.

We are aware how, in a typical military style, he succeeded in caging the Nigerian Labour Congress when its leaders were arrested and detained as a final onslaught on democracy.

The point here is that in his determination to sustain dictatorship under a civilian dispensation, General Obasanjo has succeeded in clubbing virtually all the democracy institutions around except the House of Representatives, and this is the reason for the constant friction between him and the House. The patriotic refusal of the "Na’Abba boys" to succumb to his dictatorial antics, their capacity and determination to see him in the face and say, "no to dictatorship in agbada" is solely responsible for his hatred of the leadership of the House. Members of the Lower Chamber right from day one saw through his deadly plans against democracy, and thank Allah, had the courage and democratic voice to say "no" and their no is no. But for this Chamber today, we don’t know the extent to which the democracy project would have been destroyed by the administration.

There are so much loose talks that impeaching Mr President means scuttling the project. If I may ask, why was a provision made for it in the constitution? Why haven’t we been saying that what President Obasanjo has been doing, in terms of violating the constitution, does not add up to scuttling the democracy project? The truth today is that no single individual has been trying to kill democracy more than Mr President has been doing. He has either been undermining virtually all the institutions of democracy or violating the constitution and disrespecting the law. The other truth is that we are deceiving ourselves by believing that we have been practising democracy. The democracy project has since been killed by the president. What democracy are we talking about when he has taken over the power to legislate laws for us contrary to the constitution? What democracy still remains when court orders are dumped as useless? Our refusal because of base sentiments to appreciate the dangerous unconstitutional moves of the president is one of the reasons why we have arrived at this stage, the stage of uncertainty. Those saying that the action of the House to impeach Mr President will derail the democracy project have never said that the actions of the president have been worse in attempts to kill the project. It amounts to dishonesty, bias, and discriminatory conduct to see the constitutional action of the House as an attempt to derail democracy while the unconstitutional actions of the president are not. The truth must be frankly told that General Obasanjo is the greatest danger the democracy project faces today and this we must say so openly without fear or favour.

We must have the courage not to be sycophants in telling the president the truth. More so that this project is our collective enterprise and not his personal estate to be administrated only by him and a few cronies. To reduce democracy to only Obasanjo and his re-election bid is the most callous thing we can do to the project.

Twice we removed our number three citizen, and once, the number four citizens. Today, Obasanjo is plotting to have Anyim, the former good boy, and Na’abba, the persistent bad boy, removed. Nobody is saying that this would derail the democracy project. Or are they not part of the game? We painfully have been hailing Obasanjo for engaging in such dubious undemocratic practices without realizing that by reducing the National Assembly to a rubber stamp, he is invariably reducing democracy to rubbles. Now if it is good to remove Okadigbo through the antics of Mr President, and excellent to attempt to impeach Anyim and Na’Abba, also through his several plots, why should the same not apply to him who, in fact, has been engaging in several constitutional violations more than any officer of the democracy project? Why is it right to impeach others and wrong to impeach Obasanjo once it has been established that he has indeed committed impeachable offences, and indeed he has? Obasanjo knows that he cannot withstand the rigours of impeachment. Nemesis is catching up with Mr President, as Allah doesn’t tolerate dubious intentions.

This is not supporting the rightful attempt to impeach him but rather to state that if Obasanjo has been violating the rules with impunity, and indeed he has, we never elected him to practise dictatorship while in power and so he deserves to be impeached to the extent that this is what the constitution says. Those who don’t want Obasanjo to be impeached should do well to advise him not to engage in undemocratic practices and if they can’t, they better shut up.

The same characters are now keeping silent in the face of the plot to arrest the leadership of the House and charge them for treason, their only offence being adherence to constitutional provisions. In their blind desire for a second term, they don’t even see the danger in this as their intention is to cause confusion so as to justify the postponement of elections so that they would get six months extension. Some of our leaders could go to any length to cause injury to the system long as this would satisfy their desire for crude power. How can we justify the alleged arrest of Rep. Kumaila whose only offence is that he tabled a motion for the impeachment of Mr President? If his captors know that impeachment is a crime, why haven’t they arrested those behind the impeachment of Okadigbo and now plotting to impeach Anyim and Na’Abba? If impeachment is a treasonable offence, why haven’t we charged those attempting to impeach Anyim and Na’Abba with treason?

We are so biased in our assessment of issues. We hail others for the same crime we condemn the others. We see our favoured ones as victims of the plots of others and not the victims of their own inner failings. So now we are being told that the House was induced to threaten Obasanjo with impeachment without appreciating that it is his total failure to respect constitutionalism that induced the House to take the appropriate action. Simply put, Obasanjo is solely responsible for the action of the House against him. When has America become an enemy of the president with all that we have on the interest? When have they become so with all the literature around?

What the Americans are saying about him today is what they were saying about Abacha yesterday and we all hailed them as fighters for democracy. We clapped for them as friends of Nigeria. Today, because it is Obasanjo that is involved, the Americans have come to the conclusion that the man we have in Aso Rock is perhaps worse than Abacha.

If people like Wole Soyinka could come out to say that Abacha is by far better than Obasanjo, the very Abacha he had been glorifying, what happened to him? Then we should know that things have gone that bad. Or is Soyinka a friend of Abacha and enemy of Obasanjo? In the past three years, Alhaji Balarabe Musa has been telling off those who have been criticising Obasanjo. He has all these years been his fan, so to speak. Today, he has seen the "realities." He has come to the inevitable conclusion that the man is indeed what the majority has been saying about him. Even the South-West has said that they are going to field a presidential candidate to fight it out with Obasanjo. Who are the better friends left except those who want to retain their jobs? General Obasanjo has allowed himself to be distanced from the greater majority of the people including ardent friends and tribal brothers.

They have seen that four more years for him would spell disaster for this country. I don’t care if another Yoruba man takes over from Obasanjo but the truth is that the man has failed. He has failed to deliver democracy from the grip of dictatorship. He has failed to deliver dividends. He has failed to improve the economy and has failed in all other enterprises except in auctioning Nigeria.

It is instructive that the motion threatening to impeach him was unanimously supported. It tells a lot. And don’t forget, this motion was carried perhaps after legislators listened to the views of their constituencies. It tells a lot. They are the voice of the people.