Mariam Mariam
“This election is a do-or-dieaffair for me and the PDP. This coming election is a matter of life and death”-President Obasanjo
The Nigerian people owe our ruler, President Obasanjo a debt of gratitude for the confession he made the open confession I have quoted at the head of this piece. Not that we don’t know for a fact before his unsolicited confession, that there is a desperacy at the heart of everything that Obasanjo does. Week in week out, we have made the effort to deconstruct the man, his mind and actions and what has always struck me is just how predictable Nigeria’s president is.
Now that we have heard from the horses mouth, in a manner of speaking, it would be important to begin to understand some of the main elements of the do-or-die determination of Obasanjo and his satraps in the PDP, and why the desperacy of the President conditions the electoral process in Nigeria. Obasanjo hinges his political life on the need to protect his reform project. He sees the future of the much- hated project as the determinant of his place in Nigeri’s history. Obasanjo is an old fox, full of cunning, and deep down able to guage the truth of the vulnerability of his own position and the reform that he supposedly wants to secure into the future.
When he mouths platitudes about the need to ensure the irreversibility about he needs adequate cover from a probable investigation of the scams which were perpetrated under the guise of reforms: a privatization policy that sold national assets to Obasanjo and his cronies; a massive retrenchment of Nigerian workers; the systematic destruction of our educational system including a trained scheme to privatize unity schools by subterfuge; a dubious oil policy based on one hundred percent importation of fuel by a lobby of importers under the wings of Obasanjo,coupled with the wastage of one billion dollars on ‘repairs’ of refineries, that cannot produce refined products for Nigerians. The list is endless.
It is precisely because Obasanjo and the chaps around him do not want us to see the depth of criminality perpetrated against the Nigerian people, after May 20, 2007, that he needs to threat the coming election as a “matter of life and death”, in his own words. They are pulling all stops to ensure that nothing is left to chance, neither is there a place in the Obasanjo agenda for a free and fair election, nor a respect for the sovereign will of the Nigerian people. For Obasanjo, the Nigerian people can go to hell, Nigeria may burn, what matters is that Obasanjo’s unsightly nakedness, his demystification must never be allowed to happen, no matter what!
The in-built mechanisms of manipulation of the transition process has been repeatedly test-run over the past four years, while Nigerians naively went on the jolly ride of believing the promises of the regime and its operatives. Just pause a moment to appreciate some of the elements of fraud and deception that we are dealing with. In 2003, Obasanjo and the PDP massively rigged the elections, using INEC and the security forces. That combination is still very much in place, and the fact that over the past three or two years, INEC was always at the behest of the PDP regime tells a significant story about is in store when the next generation elections come to hold. How did the DDC machines get to Adedibu’s and Akala’s aides houses? How many such barons of the PDP got the machines around the country? Why was the electoral body always so eager to deal with non-PDP defections, while defections to PDP are almost always ignored? What does that portend for the behaviour of INEC during the coming elections? This is just one set of issues we need to ponder.
Then there is another set of issues not unconnected to the earlier. Why did the EFCC become especially visible and active in the run-up to the next elections? Whose game is the body playing? Why was Obasanjo boasting openly that the EFCC would soon be after the candidate of another party, Olusegun Mimiko of the Labour party, at the rally of his own party? Just a faux pus or an unguarded slip which reflects the true state of affairs about the actual role of the EFCC in Obasanjo’s Nigeria? What are the likely effects on the electoral process in the next two months?
What about the movement to emasculate the political space? Carrots and sticks are dangled before elements within the various political parties to abandon their parties to join the PDP behemoth. The intention is clearly to be atop the heap of the biggest vote-rigging contraption in Nigeria, that is controlled exclusively by Obasanjo. The calculation is that if everybody comes under the umbrella, they would be sufficiently cowed and be unable to complain about the suffocating embrace they will receive from the authoritarian biceps of Obasanjo, and would be available to partake in the rigging of the elections. It is within this context, that Adamu Aliero dropped the maize( ANPP) and ran under the umbrella of Obasanjo’s PDP, for example.
Please re-read Obasanjo’s lips “this election is a do-or-die affair… (it) is a matter of life and death”, Obasanjo wanted to die in Aso Villa, but the Nigerian people did not oblige him, preferring that the presidential villa will not become a funeral parlour; however, the president apparently cannot abandon his eerie imageries of death. He certainly has too much to trouble his soul, arising from the way that he has managed our country’s resources over the past eight years, including turning his presidency into an avenue to become stupendously rich by selling to himself and his cronies, some of the most important assets of the Nigerian people. It is to protect himself after May 29, that he committed the ultimate faux pas of clearly describing what the coming elections represent to him.
He has turned the campaign to his personal road show, and his hand-picked candidates, Umar Yar’ Adua and Good luck Jonathan, darg along around the country like very exhausted packed mules. They have not been able to escape the long shadow of a desperate president, whose ambitions seem to drive him like a vehicle without a barke. He must be the one at the centre of the political process, even when he is ordinarily supposed to have taken the back-stage, allowing the Nigerian people to get a full measure of the candidate that the ruling party has put forward. Obasanjo is the issue, his reform program is the agenda, his future is at the heart of the manoueverings and candidate Umar’ Yar’Adua is being made a footnote and an after-thought. This is the meaning of “do-or-die” and a “matter of life and death”.
In the context of the mindset, there is no place for scrutiny or the interrogation of policies, neither is a margin left to get a full measure of the psychological make up, the physical shape or the mental acumen of what has been offered to the Nigerian people as a probable ruler over the next four or eight years.Obasanjo’s own background of very little formal education, superstitious upbringing, authoritarian acculturation within the colonial and post colonial regimental system, all make for a terrifying mix that produced the “do-or-die” and “a matter of life death” mindset. It is this mix which is leading Nigeria towards what might end up to become the worst elections in our national life, because Obasanjo cannot fathom, will not allow and cnnot accept that any other candidate but his party’s candidate, Umar Yar’ Adua becomes president in may 2007. It is a “do-or-die…election…a matter of life and death”!
It is either that Obasanjo does or dies, or Nigeria makes a choice he odes not accept, and in that case, he is prepared to ensure that Nigeria dies. Louis XIV I think it was who said I’etat c’est moi! But for Obasanjo, it is even a much garndr level of delusion: it is Obasanjo first, Obasanjo last, Obasanjo forever! If his will is not done, then this land will not and must not know paece. He reminded Nigeria over a year ago at the public outing which marked his complete conquest of the PDP, that Nigeria came to beg him to become President because ha alone has credibility in the land. That is why Obasanjo did not see a messiah in any other Nigerian, because he alone qualifies to be the one. He lives at a rarified level, where he sees what nobody else can see, he is the law giver, the law interpreter and the only one who really deserves to be in power, even when out of power. He is the only thief catcher that there ever can be in this land, even if the biggest thief there ever was. It is all in the context of the mindset that produced the statement “do-or-die”, a matter of life and death”.
Obasanjo has thrown down the gauntlet for the umpteenth time to the Nigerian people, that our will does not matter; neither can our choice make a difference. He and members of his clique alone would determine what must happen to our country. Those who were wondering why the electoral process has been so tightly controlled now know why. It is a “do-or-die and “a matter of life and death” for the ‘leader, father and founder’, president Olusegun Obasanjo. It should become a NATIONAL PATRIOTIC DUTY for the Nigerian people to be ride of this “do-or-die” and “a matter of life and death” mentality and baggage. We must defeat Obasanjo and his clique to be able to show that Nigeria is not a playground for his delusions that he is a special leader, who can continue to manipulate power, even after his tenure.
Or have you forgotten that Obasanjo is the most incompetent ruler Nigeria has ever had? Over the past eight years, for more people have died from all kinds of cises under his watch than at any other time, since the Nigerian Civil War. Obasanjo has presided over the worst petroleum products regime in the history of our country; he spent over one billion dollars to allegedly repair refineries so that they would not work, and his cronies have been importing one hundred percent of the petroleum products we use, and this is Africa’s biggest oil producing country. The accounts of the oil department have directly been under his control, they have not been open to public scrutiny and juicy oil blocks handed over to all manners of cronies in the past eight years.
It is under Obasanjo that a national public utility, NITEL, was DELIBERATELY mismanaged to reduce its valu and without due process or transparency sold to acontroversial company owned by Obasanjo and his cronies. Privitization became a vehicle for monumental theft and fraud. They appropriated billions of naira for roads, yet our roads are worse off today; Obasanjo’s regime of no water, no electricity, no security, of the fraudulent privatization of unity schools under the watch of one of the most reactionary and rigt wing minister Nigeria ever had; it is a government built on a massively rigged elections that does not have legitimacy and has operated in the past eight years like a one-eyed bandit, to deprive the Nigerian people of happiness and well being.
Obasanjo knows that this is the true balanced sheet of the eight years of his regime. His heart felt desire was not to leave the seat of power; he did everything to manipulate the constitutin, so that he could achieve his heart’s desire of dying in Aso Villa as the grand old dictator of Nigeria. He was decisively defeated and thus was obliged to shop for a President he hopes to be the face of his ambition to rule for ever. That is why he made it clear, that it is “do-or-die” and “a matter of life and death”. Let us choose life by defeating the Obasanjo clique in the coming elections; we should embrace DOING by doing the right thing of ridding ourselves of this unpatriotic contraption.
After their defeat in the next elections, it will be up to Mister President to choose the “death” of his vow. We will choose to live to be able to re-build our country.
May God save us from a do-or-die president, a president who sees power as a matter of life and death.
