abdulraheem
Two weeks can be an awfully long time in the politics of Nigeria. In the past two weeks, I have been away in the People’s Republic of China. Apart from the fact that it was one of the longest trips I have undertaken in recent times, it offered the unique opportunity to behold the stresses and strains associated with the construction of socialism with a Chinese characteristic; the pains and gains of a transitional relationship between socialist planning and market mechanisms in the economy. But that is a topic for another day, I think next week, when I should offer a more comprehensive account of my visit to China. Today, I am all so soaked up on the developments in Nigeria; the truly astounding unfolding of the political process, as President Obasanjo tightens his grip on the machinery of the ruling PDP. The most dramatic expression of this fact, was the re-registration process; abinitio, it was a typical flanking maneuver (pardon the military speak), that was meant to serve a number of objectives. Among these are the total isolation of vice president Atiku Abubakar and other opposition elements within the party. The Obasanjo machinery was revved into the maximum to inflict a major body flow to the enemies of the president, all in the effort to ensure the complete takeover of the PDP. This takeover as has become very clear now, is to ensure the tightening of the authoritarian screw at the heart of the nation’s political process, in order to ease the transition towards the elongation of the stay in power of the maximum dictator, President Olusegun Obasanjo. Along with other commentators and patriots, I have argued here severally in the past, that the Obasanjo project of total take over of the ruling party, together with the agenda to manipulate the nation’s constitutional order to stay in power beyond 2007, represents the greatest danger to the effort to deepen the democratic process in Nigeria. It is therefore the reason why all patriots must combine to defeat the Obasanjo agenda. This bull must be eased out of our nation’s china ware shop by 2007, otherwise we will all be in trouble. It is therefore heartening to see the new move emanating from Kano, the historical heartland of progressive politics, to create a new political movement, tagged the people’s PDP. It is a very important political riposte to Obasanjo, because it represents an appreciation of the need to move away from mere grumblings about how Obasanjo has sidelined everybody. It is a political fight which must be fought on the terrain of political education and mass mobilisation. The opposition must build a new platform of struggle to save Nigeria from the dictatorship which the Obasanjo clique is foisting on the country. The need to build alliances to stop the monster is elementary politics, but one which seems to be beyond the understanding of some of the members of the opposition, particularly elements within the Buhari Organisation (TBO). They seem to be fixated within the sureties of their angst against Atiku Abubakar, believing the vice president was getting his comeuppance for his political crimes of the past on the side of Obasanjo, especially the fraud that was the 2003 elections. Their anger is understandable, but the field of politics cannot be trod only with righteous anger. A tactical imperative to build alliances, once the strategic focus is not lost sight of, is a useful tool of political advancement. In the current setting in Nigeria, the greatest danger that faces democracy, is the no-longer-hidden-agenda of Obasanjo to stay in power beyond 2007. If Atiku Abubakar opposes that, it means we have found an extra ally in the fight. But this is not the way that Ya’u Shehu Darazo, a leading member of TBO, understands it. Writing on the back page of DAILYTRUST of Monday, October 3, 2005, he chose to interpret the content of Atiku’s opposition to Obasanjo’s post 2007 agenda rather cynically. “Obviously” Ya’u argued “Atiku’s battle is hardly the people’s fight, neither is it for the promotion of democracy. He is undoubtly (sic) consumed by a blind ambition and must have read the mind of his boss that in the journey of the third term train, Aremu might pick a new ‘hand bag”. Ya’u went further to add that “if Atiku is dead sure of a fair deal, chances are that, he will support the project. . . .It will be a surprise to see Atiku as having high moral grounds in the fight with Obasanjo. The fight between the two is akin to the fight between Ngige and Chris Uba.” Obviously Darazo is enjoying the bind that Atiku Abubakar is caught within politically, because he finally outlines the three sources of the problem: “First nemesis of 2003 election fraud, secondly, membership ofthe hostage club and thirdly, blind ambition”. What then is the way forward? Ya’u answers that “only God knows”. I have absolutely no problem with this cynical attitude, which understandably comes from the residual anger arising from the events around the 2003 election fraud. However, isn’t it also time, to analyse the new challenges posed by life, draw new lessons and work out new strategies to fight? Let me give an example. In the years before the Second World War, parties of the left and the centre were permanently opposed to each other in many countries of Europe. In the same way that the Western capitalist countries were opposed to the Soviet Union and vice versa. But confronted with the monster of fascism and Hitler, these different political tendencies built a coalition which defeated fascism and saved humanity from the brown plague of Nazism and fascist bestiality. At the end of this fight everybody went his own ideological way. I guess this realisation of the need to move beyond the old pains to confront the new and present danger, informed the marvellous insight that Adamu Adamu provided in his column of Friday, October 7, 2005. Adamu correctly, in my view, pointed out that “while the TBO might not find it easy to forgive or forget the role personally played by Atiku in the attempt to deny an ANPP victory in Buhari’s ward in Daura”, he however added that “all the same, the travails of the vice president shouldn’t be a cause for glee for the TBO, because the fate and direction of its future politics will be put in even more difficult circumstances if Obasanjo is allowed to crush everyone except Buhari.” In a most perceptive understanding of real politik, Adamu Adamu advised further, that “instead of being mere spectacles, members of TBO must joint any effort to make life difficult for the president, even if, along the way, they plan to confront the vice president. Certainly, the TBO shouldn’t be an onlooker in a drama celebrating the division of the future spoils of its own electoral property.. .To allow (Obasanjo) to continue when he can be challenged is not a very effective strategy. Opposition outside the ruling party should complement the trouble brewing inside it”. There is nothing to add to the beauty of this assessment. For the avoidance of doubt, the effort by Obasanjo to subvert Nigeria’s constitutional order continues ceaselessly, as the report of the plan to ensure the six year term through the Mantu Committee, has come to the pubic realm in the past twenty four hours or so. That is coming on the heels of the set back the Obasanjo clique suffered in the hands of the judiciary, over the processes of manipulation of the leadership of the PDP. Like a rat on the run, the Obasanjo machinery is desperately in search of whatever hole it can run into, to actualise its unconstitutional ambitions. The moves in the political arena are actually to protect the even more brazenly anti- national steps that the regime has taken in the realm of economic reforms. It was Lenin who used to say that politics is a concentrated expression of economics. Obasanjo’s regime of economic neo-liberalism has created a coterie of fabulously rich individuals, who have been making a killing out of the privatisation process that is at the heart of the regime’s economic program. The process is very unpopular with the Nigerian people, so the crony capitalists need the ‘covering fire’ of Obasanjo’s continued stay in power, to consolidate their hold on Nigeria’s economic jugular vein. On the other hand, Obasanjo cannot relinquish power because he is mortally afraid of what will happen to him in future, given his unbridled attachments to illegalities and unconstitutional wielding of power, over the past six years. Clearly, Nigeria is locked into a very serious crisis situation which has the democratic project in mortal danger in the hands of a desperate President Obasanjo. This is why the imperative today is to build a coalition of all the democratic forces of Nigerian society: the political elite and their parties, civil society organisations, the media and all patriots, to defend the democratic process, through a decisive defeat of Obasanjo’s sit-tight agenda. A minimum content of this coalition should be to probe the economic program of Obasanjo’s tenure to restore our national patrionomy that has been dubiously offloaded into private hands over the past six years.
