abdulraheem
As we enter 2006, Nigerians must also brace up to the fact that we are entering one of the most important years in our recent political history. Conventionally, the year before an election year in democratic politics, sees the picking up of the tempo of political activities; development slows down as, the lame dock, sitting President, takes the back seat, allowing or being forced by the pace of events, new political actors in the centre of national political life. But the situation we are faced either is not the conventional or the usual. Nigerians are going to be locked into one of the fiercest struggles we have ever had to undertake, as the Obasanjo click is likely to pull out all stops in the desperate bid to subvert our constitutional order in the pursuit of the illegal and unacceptable agenda for a third term in office. As the Hausa people say, karfi da yaji, there is nothing that the Obasanjo clique will not throw into the fray because third term has become a matter of life and death, for Obasanjo. The next one year will be tough, bloody and gritty; it is going to prove a major test of the staying power of Nigerian patriots. The main arena of the battle in the next few months will shift boldly to the constitutional ground. Obasanjo will make a very determined bid to engineer a constitutional amendment that will provide the legal basis for illegal broth of a third term (in actual fact, a perpetual stay in power), that he has been cooking over the last two years, or so. The various public hearings on the constitution are likely to become one more ground to subvert the Nigerian people, by the very desperate Obasanjo clique. This is why it makes sense, as some prominent Nigerian patriots have canvassed to ensure that EVERYTHING LEGAL is done to ensure that NO CONSTITUTIONAL AMMENDMENT is achieved between now and 2007. The desperate effort by the Obasanjo clique to engineer the amendment is a clear indication of its importance, not to Nigeria, but to the agenda to stay in
power. It is therefore a basic lack of political understanding to support the constitutional amendment review process currently being undertaking under Obasanjo’s watch. When stripped of subterfuge, what is playing out in contemporary Nigeria, is the divide between our rights as free citizens in a democratizing society, who have entered a social contract with our country’s leadership, on the other hand or whether we are subjects, being ruled by masters in the mould of Olusegun Obasanjo who assumed that he knows what is good for us: decides to do with us and our country as he deems fit and through some of the most wasteful years of our recent history: in respect of the poverty of his leadership; the incompetence of his administration, the unconstitutional content of many of his decisions; his deficiency in almost every realm of societal organization and now the brazing attempt to seal and rig our constitutional order, on the other hand. Nigerians must therefore make a choice, of either standing up to be counted as free citizens in a democratizing society, where governance is premised in our consent and therefore would reject and derail from its track, the illegal third term train; or we shall acquiesce in the subversion of our own constitutional democratic order, by becoming the meek subjects of the absolutely incompetent Obasanjo clique, that is never the less so lost to reason, and cannot treat Nigerian citizens in any other way but as conquered subjects. After all when they massively rigged the 2003 elections our votes did not count; so they are banking on the fact that our disdain for the illegality they want to perpetuate, will also not count. Several statements that they have made in recent months strengthens the conclusion, I have long made on this page, that the Obasanjo clique represent the greatest dander to Nigeria’s democratic process. We shall examine some of these statements later. But let us begin today, with a reminder of some of the basic issues of political evolution. The English civil war of 1642- 1648, was a major event of the evolution of the free citizens of a democratic society. The parliamentarians represented by Oliver Cromwell, had rejected the whole concept of the Divine Right of Kings, and were demanding more power for the people through democratic institutions. Thomas Hobbes, 1588- 1679 had lived and worked against the back drop of these revolutionary events, While not being radical, Hobbes had also begun to see the necessity of a social contract between the rulers and the citizens. This was necessary in order for society to avoid a return to “the state of nature”. The Hobbesian state of nature, where every student of Political Science knows life to be “nasty, brutish and short.” Nevertheless, Hobbes recognised that when all was said and done, the social contract is the most fundamental source of all that is good and that which we depend upon to live well. Again we must remember that his views were profoundly influenced by the background of the English civil war of the seventeenth century. But the John Locke, 1632- 1704, while also using Hobbes device of the state of nature, he came to different end in his argument for the social contract, underlines the right of citizens to revolt against their kings, and these conclusions were to powerfully influence the democratic revolutions that followed, especially the American Revolution of 1776. The background is very important, because one of the major weaknesses of Nigeria’s democratizing process is its close control by a very reactionary elite, which is represented in its worst manifestation by the dictatorial proclivities of President Obasanjo. The main platform of the process underway in Nigeria, perfected the military segment of the elite, is manipulation and the most insolent disrespect for the Nigerian people. In truth, the practice of civil rule has been conducted with a heavy baggage of authoritarianism, wherein the leading elements within the system do not see their position as emanating from a social contract between themselves and the Nigerian people. We are treated as subjects, conquered and occupied by these political elite. This is the context to understand the incredible misbehaviours; the utter disrespect for the Nigerian people, the lack of empathy and the continuous tradition of manipulation of the electoral and party political process. When leading chieftains of the ruling party, such as Chief Tony Anenih boasts that there was no vacancy in Aso villa or that it is only Obasanjo that will determine who will head the party or choose his successor, we get a clear indication of mindset, not of democrats, but the worst reflection of the lack of respect for us as citizens of a democratizing nation. We are, from that mindset and standpoint, subject people, available for all designs they deem fit and for whom they pretty well can fashion out whatever comes out of their demented minds. Its is this fundamental lack of respect for us, as a people that also triggered the boldness with which the third term agenda was manipulated into the public arena by Greg Mbadiwe and Festus Odimegwu of Nigerian Breweries. This lack of respect went a nudge higher in November, 2005 when Charles Ugwuh of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria joined the third term chorus. On his part, Ugwuh in fact openly canvassed for the violation of the constitution in order that Obasanjo should stay to continue his so- called “good job”. “President Obasanjo as a leader has recorded quite considerable and indeed spectacular achievements” argued Charles Ugwah that, “the on-going debate should also focus and contemplate what Nigeria should do with such experienced, matured human resource in Africa where there are few reputable statesmen with personal discipline and integrity.” Ugwah is not done yet. He then asked Nigerians obviously in a fit of desperate anger “should we perhaps pack him in a box or basket and put him on the shelf of retired leaders and seek out a neophyte with whom we should experiment as dictated by our constitution bequeathed by our military regime?” For Ugwuh, Obasanjo has become so indispensable, that Nigeria might just end, if we allow him to leave the scene at the end of his tenure in May next year. Charles Ugwah, frothing in the mouth in apparent fit of anger at constitutional constraint then asked “so what are we going to do?” The “smart man” that he was did not allow him to leave his question hanging as a rhetoric one. He answered that the private sector was worried about the need “sustainability of current momentum of development (which apparently can continue only under the imperial Obasanjo presidency!)” and the anxiety stems from fears that policy reversal and u- turns can take place in the future. So to stem that possibility, Charles Ugwuh delivered the coup-de-poing. “it is therefore urgent and of prime importance” he warned/ suggested/ observed, as the case might be “that institutions vested with the power and authority to ensure/regulate governance should begin the process and discussions that will guarantee stability of the polity and sustain the direction and momentum of our current economic reforms and national progress. These are issues of concern to the private sector and we are honest and open about it”. This was how Charles Ugwuh concluded his November 15, 2005 speech. We heard the voice of Esau, but Jacob’s invisible hand of the puppeteer was barely hidden. The corpse was buried; unfortunately the leg was sticking out of the ground! So anybody who is in doubt that the different voices speaking from Constitutional review/ amendment or the third term was merely part of an elaborate agenda of fraud, orchestrated by Olusegun Obasanjo can only be deceiving himself. Obasanjo has consistently said that he would not do anything that was not constitutional, because he has set store for the third term agenda through a manipulation of the Nigerian constitution. He tried to steal it at the National Political Reform Conference, though the “mysterious constitution” and he failed so spectacularly despite illegally expending over one billion naira (money he would have to account for after May 2007, Insha Allah); so his last throw of the dice is to steal it through the Mantu committee in the National Assembly. Obasanjo is desperate and in his desperacy, he ahs become impervious to reason, this is largely because the third term agenda is his life line and the horse he hope to ride away from giving account to the Nigerian people for his serial rape of our country’s constitution since he was removed from prison by Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar and co. and manipulated into power in 1999. But why should we reach this sorry past? Again it is because Obasanjo represents a particular tendency, coming from the military segment of the political elite, which does not accept that democratic politics is premised upon a social contract between the people and the political elite. On the contrary, these military chaps consider us as a subject people, available all the time for manipulation, and against whom any kind of crime is permissible. This is the context within which Obasanjo’s incompetence as a leader, his incredible arrogance and lack of sympathy for people, his innate cruelty as a leader and his appetite for illegalities and disrespect for constitutional norms must be properly situated. So incredibly lost in his delusion has Obasanjo become and so utterly contemptuous of the “subject” Nigerian people, is this old military dictator, that he has gone to the public arena of his party’s National Convention of December 10th 2005, that “when the time comes they should accord me, as the leader of the party, the opportunity to interpret our policy and principles of power-shift to suite the occasion”. As it is with the party so it is with our country, the old military dictator carries on like an unguided missile, largely because he believes we don’t matter, we are conquered people. The year 2006 is therefore a very decisive one in our lives; we have the choice to accept that Obasanjo and his clique have truly conquered us, can therefore do whatever suits them, with our lives our country and our destiny. We also have the alternative choice to accent the right of free citizens of a democratizing country, whose sacrifices in the first place, gave us an independent country against colonialism and whose struggles also defeated military dictatorship. I urge that we break the shackles that the Obasanjo clique is preparing to bind Nigeria with, in the desperate effort to achieve the subversion of our nation’s constitutional order. 2006 should be a decisive year of mobilization to defeat Obasanjo and his unpatriotic clique’s agenda to conquer us. We are free citizens of a democratizing country and will never be enslaved by the old military dictator. The Chinese curse says, may you live in interesting times. Those times have arrived In Nigeria. Happy New Year.
