abdulraheem
I did not appear on this page last week, because I was in Bamako, the Malian capital, attending the inaugural meeting of the African Statesmen initiative. It is a forum which brought under the same roof, about sixteen ex-Presidents, and ex-Heads of Government of various African countries to find a platform for a continued relevance in the African democratisation process. Naturally, I would have written about my Malian experience today; but on the flight back to Nigeria, I think at Abidjan, I saw a Nigerian newspaper, which carried a report of the changes that the Obasanjo team had effected in the hierarchy of the People’s Democratic Party. It became clear to me that Obasanjo had gone to a different level in his asphyxiation of the political party process in the country. I told the colleague who travelled with me, that my column this week, would try a mischievous pun on the new twist in Nigeria’s tragic fate in the hands of the peasant from the rural backwater of Ibogun Olaogun, now President, Olusegun Obasanjo. A background is necessary here. At the height of the crisis which swept Chief Audu Ogbeh from his chairmanship of the PDP, I held a series of meetings with a party insider, who was on the Obasanjo side of the chasm. He had assured me that the battle was clearly directed at uprooting whatever influence Vice President Atiku Abubakar had in the party. Ogbeh’s removal was just a first step in a carefully worked out process of “de Atiku-ization” of the PDP. Those days of discussion allowed me to put within context, the meeting Nigerian Editors held with President Obasanjo on Sallah Day, November 29 2003 at his farm in Otta, Ogun State. Against the backdrop of the schism leading to the PDP convention of February 2003, one of the Lagos Editors had asked Obasanjo about the state of relationship with his Vice, given all that Nigerians knew about the days leading to that convention. Let me just say because the meeting was supposed to be informally interactive, I will not repeat what Obasanjo said about Atiku on that occasion; but it provides a useful clue to the deconstruction going on in the PDP today. Obasanjo has taken the party by the scruff of its neck, and without any pretenses about due process or any respect for the provisions of the party’s constitution, he has gradually turned the PDP into a monster, which is expected to faithfully reflect his dominance of the nation’s political space in a way that is not envisaged in a democratic process. Nigerian democratisation has been purged of the rational kernel and in its place an authoritarian ogre has been let loose by the Obasanjo group. This is not altogether surprising from the standpoint of an analytical reading of the sequence of events leading to the unfolding events of recent days. The political elite which formed the G34, that transformed into the People’s Democratic Party, was actually a hodgepodge of strange ideological bed fellows. But the sentiment of the clay, from their standpoint was understandable. It was to ease out the military regime and to institute a civilian administration. It was an overriding raison d’etre, which seemed to be more important than all else. If the truth must be told, there was a deep seated fear which each element of this omnibus party nursed and brought to the formation of the party. The fear of the elite was that the Nigerian society had witnessed a level of radicalised activism which had never been seen before in the land. New political forces had emerged on the terrain that were rooted in the deep-seated anger which followed the disorientation visited on the country by the Babangida regime’s Structural Adjustment Program; the corruption of the military dictatorship and the truncation of the transition process with the annulment of the June 12 Elections. The new political forces were a mixed bag of working class, middle class, ethnic forces and a huge reservoir of urban lumpen elements, that all collectively felt they had no stake in the Nigeria society as dominated by the military dictatorship and saw the state as a legitimate target of their anger. This background shocked the more far-seeing and idealistic representatives of the Nigerian elite such as Chief Sunday Awoniyi. This led them to conceptualise the possibility of constructing a huge political party that would accommodate Nigerian political actors of all tendencies, united by a basic platform of dedicated political service to the Nigerian people. The idealists of the Awoniyi school hoped that they could transcend the bickering of the past; the unhealthy political rivalries which often became an end into themselves, with a complete loss of focus about the need to use political power to serve the interests of the Nigerian people. They wanted to save the Nigerian political elite from its proclivities to self destruction, which often led to the emergence of military rule and in the process institute a new political culture that will help to re-inforce the legitimacy of the state. Unfortunately for Chief Awoniyi and his idealists, the PDP was an elephant, in whose belly had been accommodated so many other tendencies and individuals, who did not share the lofty ideals of national service and commitment that led them into helping to construct the party often described as the largest political party in Africa, in the first place. As we all know one of the strongest tendencies within the PDP behemoth was the military wing; it was and still is very rich, has a hugely developed capacity for cunning and can deploy cruelty whenever it suits its goals. It has had in addition, a stranglehold on the nation’s political process for a very long time, using years of military dictatorship to build alliances, create its own political supporters and generally dwarfing the political elite of the land in the rough and tumble so characteristic of politics in a neo-colonial society. This military tendency used the platform created by the idealists of the Awoniyi school, to steal into power, by installing one of their own, Olusegun Obasanjo, as the President in 1999. They were able to manipulate the desire of the Nigerian people for a better life after the harrowing experience of military rule, to get Obasanjo into Aso Villa. People like Chief Awoniyi worked conscientiously to achieve victory for Obasanjo, almost as if they all forgot the characteristics of the man: a ruthless streak; an unforgiving spirit; a supremely self-righteous, messianic delusion; and a total lack of respect for the tradition of debate, dissent and consensus building that help the growth of the democratic process. This is the background that has taken the People’s Democratic Party to its sorry pass. By extension, it is also why the nation’s democratic process resembles a patient who has taken the dead – on – arrival ride to the mortuary! We would recollect that Obasanjo had authored a book which extolled one party dictatorship: he had forged the Electoral Act of 2002; he has always argued for the constriction of the democratic space, by advocating the limiting of the number of political parties and he masterfully rigged the elections of April 2003 to achieve his dubious second term in power. So the take over of the political party is just another piece in the jigsaw of his many conquests. A party he contributed almost nothing to its conceptualisation and formation in the first place. The leopard never changes its spot and President Obasanjo remains an unrepentant military dictator despite the fact of civil rule since 1999. This explains why leading members of his entourage have tended to be members of the military juntas: either the one he led in the past, or those that came after him. It is also the reason that leading members of the Obasanjo group that has captured the PDP, such as Commodore Olabode George, would say that it is only in the military that total loyalty is assured or words to that effect. It is also the explanation for the militarization of the much vaunted, biggest political party in Africa, the PDP. I am sure that the founding fathers of the party cannot recognise the metamorphosis of their baby, and its most recent incarnation. What happened to the vision to create a vibrant political party, able to accommodate different political tendencies? Where is the vibrant platform of debate and a laboratory of ideas for national development? It was strangled and has been re-born rather like a Haitian Zombie. It now drips from all pores with intolerance; revulsion for inner-party democracy; and has become anything but a political party leading a democratic process. It has taken the character of its leader, the inimitable General Olusegun Obasanjo! Although unsolicited, I am hereby offering the party some advice to aid its newly acquired status. It should take advertisement space in a select number of Nigerian newspapers. There is a time-tested template it can use. It goes thus: ‘I formerly called the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), now wish to be known and called the Sojaman’s Party of Nigeria (SPN). All former documents remain valid. Nigerian politicians; foreign contractors; contributors to the Obasanjo Presidential Library Project; buyers of our national patrimony in our privatisation program; our masters in the White House, the IMF and the World Bank; please take note.’ To further ensure the water-tight discipline needed in a militarised political process, it would be useful for the Obasanjo group that has completed the take over of the political space, to turn to other institutions of Nigerian society. For example, can’t they get a retired top military officer who happens to be a lawyer to take over as the Chief Justice of Nigeria.? It will ensure that the judiciary will stop judging cases on ‘technicalities’; a fact that has irked the ‘pro-consul’ of the PDP, Colonel Ahmadu Ali. Similarly, a retired defence or military spokesman might also be drafted to be installed as the new President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), since Smart Adeyemi’s tenure will soon expire. Such a decision would ensure that journalists, who write articles that hurt President Obasanjo’s unceasing junkets around the world in search of foreign investment, can then be put in their place. Who knows, Nigeria journalists might have been responsible for Obasanjo’s inability to achieve the debt relief he searches for all around the world, and for whose sake he had to get a new presidential jet! Oh, he might want to tell us how many such trips the Presidents who got their nation’s debts cancelled made before they got their relief. If we use Obasanjo’s trips as a benchmark. Then those Presidents must have lived abroad permanent to have achieved the success announced a few days ago! This is just by the ay. Back to the militarization of’ the political process there are many retired warrant officers who could he recalled to the patriotic service of’ teaching the members of’ the Sojaman’s Party of Nigeria (SPN), sorry PDP, the etiquette of the parade ground and the regimental ethos properly attuned to the spirit instituted by Obasanjo and his cohorts in the recently conquered People’s Democratic Party (PDP) or do we accept that it has now changed its name to Sojaman’s Party of Nigeria.
