Mariam Mariam
“Certainly, only the NASS can remove a sitting Vice President. I do not even think there is a lacuna. But you know OBJ is the Executive. And the Legislature. And the Judiciary. And the Party. And the Constitution. If Atiku returns before a court makes a defloration in his favour (a) they will deny him access to official home and office (b) Nuhu will take him in. Definitely! Citing disappearance of immunity. But is the Chie Justice so afraid of Obasanjo that he will swear in a new Vice President, if they go ahead to appoint one? Even if Atiku gets a restraining order and an interim injunction for status quo ante, I fear they may mete out measures (a) and (b) to him. Dambe za end is really happening”. -TEXTMESSAGE
A prominent Nigerian once told me a story, which he attributed to the late Sheikh Abubakar Mahmoud Gumi. According to the story, there are three people whose problem of mental breakdown (or even outright madness) might not be detected in good time, until they l have caused considerable damage to society. These are a very rich man, the highly learned Malam and finally the head of state of a country.
I have recalled this story today, in the context of the events of the past week in Nigeria and what might in fact be a reflection of the mental state of our president; and believe me when I say that I am not just indulging in a penchant for a criticism of President Obasanjo. I think that unbeknownst to the Nigerian political elite, but especially Generals Babangida, Aliyu Gusau and Abubakar Abdusalami, who facilitated Obasanjo’s transition from imprisonment to power, maybe with hindsight now, they did not give themselves the necessary pause for meaningful reflection, before getting Obasanjo to the highest level of Nigeria’s leadership, so soon after a traumatic prison experience. The consequence of that act of political expediency to achieve some personal ends, carefully disguised as national, which led to the imposition of Obasanjo in 1999, has resulted in all the attendant crises of the past seven years.
Obasanjo was absolutely traumatized by his arrest and subsequent imprisonment by General Sani Abacha. The old dictator had carried on as if he possessed an immunity of sorts out of power, and that illusion must have been reinforced by the fact that during the Babangida regime he could devastatingly criticize the government, pour opprobrium on General Babangida, and still expect to receive the deference of the president thereafter. He seemed to be larger than life as he took every opportunity to tear at Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) as lacking in a ‘human face’, or describing the elaborate transition program which culminated in the June 12 debacle, as a fraud. But General Sani Abacha was a different kettle of fish; he did not see Obasanjo’s position as an ex-Head of State, and a one-man riot squad, as license, and before long, he was arrested for being privy to a coup plan, and subsequently jailed in Yola prison. Obasanjo was terrified by his arrest, he was like a rain-soaked, lily-livered chicken at his trial and his imprisonment capped his humiliation. All of these facts have been reflected in various statements and actions that followed his release from imprisonment. He first told Nigerians that he became a ‘born again Christian’ in prison, and had told people like Chief Sunday Awoniyi that his conversion in prison had actually made him a different person, and when he was being taken round the country to be sold as a presidential candidate, had promised that he was not going to be vindictive nor vengeful.
But the truth was that Obasanjo had been damaged beyond repair by the ordeal of his imprisonment. Sometime in 2003, when I wag still Editor of Daily Trust newspaper, a prominent old man visited me at our office. He had brought a write up for publication which had been in praise of Obasanjo. I expressed surprise that despite the loss of popularity of Obasanjo, people like him were still expressing support for him. He agreed that Obasanjo was indeed very unpopular, but in fact he said that even his mental state seemed to be a cause for concern. He then said that he was told that during his imprisonment in Yola, Obasanjo had woken up in the middle of the night and had started to march like a soldier that he was. If the action was not extraordinary, it seemed that the answer he gave when asked why he was marching in the middle of the night revealed the state of his mind. He was marching, Obasanjo was said to have replied, “because I am the Head of State”!
Of course the story might even be apocryphal, but it reflects the damage which imprisonment has wrought on the mental state of the old and typical African dictator. Obasanjo had often been likened to Nelson Mandela by our mentally lazy and historically inept political elite, who stay on the surface of phenomena to make comparisons and draw parallels. When the old dictator was released from imprisonment, pardoned and rigged into power, he was expected to behave like Nelson Mandela: heal the wounds of the nation, provide enlightened leadership, stabilize the polity and supervise an orderly transition from the military era.
But those who imposed Obasanjo did not understand the dynamics of the historical process they were attempting to copy or replicate, in a completely different political and historical setting. Nelson Mandela and his comrades in the ANC had been part of a national movement of resistance to apartheid; they had learnt a disciplined political life within the ambience of the national liberation movement and individually and collectively, Mandela and his comrades were aware of the consequences of their actions, when they volunteered to be members of UMKHONTO WE SIZWE (the armed wing of the national liberation movement) and so it was not a surprise that in court, Mandela proudly and in a dignified manner, told his accusers that he was dedicated to the struggle for liberation and if needs be, he was prepared to give his life for the cause of liberation of the African peoples.
Mandela stayed in prison for 27 years on Robben Island and the Victor Vesteer prison in Cape Town, leading the struggle on a new front amongst his comrades who all turned the harsh conditions of imprisonment into a disciplined environment of self development, political education, university matriculations and human solidarity. This was why transition from imprisonment to power was seemingly easy ‘ for Mandela. Compare that to the coward, Obasanjo, an old bully who became jelly when he faced Abacha’s military tribunal, ironically to be tried with laws that he had used to try and execute coup plotters in 1976.
Obasanjo went to prison as an individual with the bloated ego of an ex-Head of State, who is above the suffocating and authoritarian atmosphere reigning in the country at the time. He was in fact the ‘spiritual father’ of the Abacha regime, by declaring that Chief MKO Abiola, whose election had been annulled, was not the messiah that Nigeria was looking for. He was prepared for the duplicity that he had perfected of criticising the regime of the day, while receiving plaudits and all kinds of support from the regime he is criticising. Abacha cut off the oxygen from his duplicity, threw him into prison and the experience shocked and embittered the ex-dictator, but it damaged his mental state far more than Nigerians have been prepared to examine. It was this damaged individual that Babangida, Gusau and Abubakar and a host of others gave a pardon, released from prison and railroaded into office as president of Nigeria.
The result has been disaster. Obasanjo has ended up to be the worst and most incompetent leader Nigeria has ever had.
But more than that, is that we have a president whose mental state is such that he must foment crises, perpetually flout the nation’s constitutional order and whose state of mind drives the proclivities to megalomania, deepens his authoritarian complex and blackens the darkest recesses of his mind which produce the vindictiveness and wickedness that he is so well known for. But even his much saner moments have driven that criminal acquisitiveness and impunity which we have all been victims of since 1999.
But if there are still those who doubt our coldly rational sociological reading of the Obasanjo persona, the events of the past week should give them the pause. Obasanjo and his PDP satraps woke up this week to launch a new assault on the Nigerian state, by declaring the vice presidency of Nigeria vacant; to underline his commitment to his illegality, he stopped the vice president from using his official aircraft, recalled his security aides and was said to be contemplating the selection of a new vice president. Save for a few mavericks, most lawyers who have expressed an opinion on the latest actions of the despot, Olusegun Obasanjo, say that they fly in the face of legality as underpinned by the 1999 Constitution. The constitution does not give Obasanjo the power to declare a vacancy in the office of the vice president of Nigeria, but in total disrespect of the grundnorm of our national existence, that is what he has just done last week. But it must not be allowed to become a fait accompli nor must it go unchallenged.
The nation’s political elite has acquiesced in a serial rape of the constitution since 1999 by Olusegun Obasanjo, A lot of unacceptable excuses have readily been found to justify the lawlessness of that cowardly despot: at the beginning o f the civilian regime in 1999, people looked the other way because nobody wanted to give the military any excuse to return to power; some elements could not be bothered that we have a lawless president because he belonged to their ethnic group or comes from their side of the country’s regional or religious divide. What these manifestations of disunity did was to embolden Obasanjo in his assault on nearly every sector of our national life. It is this belief that he will always have his way, no matter what, that has made him to go berserk and to take the final decision to trample on the constitution that he took an oath to defend; so in open broad daylight, Obasanjo is stamping on the country’s constitution underfoot, in the politics of his vindictiveness and lawlessness, and in reflection of his tragically flawed character of always seeking vengeance and inflicting wickedness.
The Nigerian political elite must muster the will power to challenge Obasanjo’s latest act of illegality and assault on our constitutional order. He must be defeated decisively in parliament in the effort to get a cover for his illegal declaration of a vacancy in the office of the vice president. He must not be allowed to win a vote in the National Assembly on this issue of Atiku Abubakar’s decision to run for presidency on the ticket of the Action Congress (AC).
It is at this juncture that I now return to the thesis credited to Sheikh Gumi. Was Obasanjo far more damaged by his prison experience than the Nigerian ruling class ever bothered to interrogate in 1999? Are we harvesting actions of a president whose sanity might actually be suspect, or how do we explain the torture that he has pulled us through in the past seven years? Or does the man need to convince us that his actions are those of a troubled soul so that he does not get the punishment he deserves for all his crimes, after 2007, because he can then plead insanity as a mitigating factor? These are points that must be properly pondered in the context of the events of the past few days.
THE NIGERIAN PEOPLE AND THE RIGHT TO STRIKE But for the crazy events on the political scene, the judgment handed down against the right to strike, by Justice Mary Odili of the Court of Appeal, is arguably the most important development of the last one year. In the words of Adams Oshiomhole, the NLC President, the judgment was “a fundamental assault on the rights of the Nigerian people as free citizens to determine the direction of governance by engaging the government on its social and economic policies”.
Comrade Adams went further that “the court has taken a rather unprogressive view that reduces workers to mere workplace tools, without the right and latitude to intervene in policies and governance that have fundamental impact on their lives as citizens and on the lives of their families and society”. This state of affairs is unacceptable, and it is for that reason that the NLC has decided to challenge the reactionary and anti-people judgment at the Supreme Court. That is as it should be. The working people enjoyed the right to strike and demonstrate even under colonialism, and it is therefore incredible that forty-six years after independence such a right is being taken away by a state machinery that has become increasingly anti-people and unpatriotic, beholden to the interests of transnational capitalism.
