Mariam Mariam
“The general elections in April 2007 were supposed to propel our country in its movements towards a truly democratic country where the will of the people will be supreme.Unfortunately, the elections were characterized by late voting and non-appearance of electoral officials in may parts of the country, severe shortage of ballot papers,declaration of results even in places where elections were not held, under-age voting,voter intimidation, snatching and stuffing of ballot boxes and a general subversion of the people’s will. It is noteworthy that Mr President himself admitted that there had been massive rigging, malpractices and violence. We fear that whatever the government is formed based on these flawed elections will be politically and massively disabled.The Nigerian people have a duty to ensure that the country is not led again by people who have no mandate. Indeed, our country cannot make progress if its affairs are managed without the consent of its people expressed through free and fair elections. Obviously, our country is in a political logjam”- Comrade Abdulwaheed Ibrahim Omar, NLC President
Two weeks ago, I wrote a piece on this page which I titled “The opposition and mass action”, I lamented the inability of the opposition faction of Nigeria’s political elite to galvanise any meaningful action against the fraudulent electoral process of 4/14/21, which every right thinking observer and the nIgerian people knew were blatantly rigged against the wishes of the Nigerian electorate.
The opposition made a quixotic show of its intention to tilt against the windmills of Obasanjo’s subversion of the popular will with a call for mass action.Unfortunately, just as it did in 2003, there was a lot more huffing and puffing than any meaniful action of a mass kind able to shake the political landscape of the country.The leading lights of the opposition took refuge in a church service, substituting the mobilization of the Nigerian people with a heavy inebriation on the spiritual booze served in a church. How that was expected to galvanise resistance was not spelt out by our opposition leaders.
Of course, the nIgerian people are not fools and were not about to let themselves be led on a wild goose chase by a political elite or a faction of the elite that has not shown a consistent effort in terms of sustained analysis of the nation’s political economy nor a sustained analysis of the nation’s political economy nor a sustained political praxis which has the people’s interest at heart. The opposition made a lot of noise, but could not put together a combination of the extra-legal mass mobilisation of the people with the legal challenge that was being prepared against the electoral fraud of April 2007. It is obvious that even the opposition fears the people, and the fact that a people-centred mass action might go further then the political elite can put a lid on.
The normal pattern of the elite politics is to engage in unprincipled horse-trading, satisfy prebendalist accesses to lucre and use the genuine grieviances of the people for bargaining puposes. It is the background which makes the threats of faction of the elite against each other very hollow. They are united as a ruling class against the class interests of the people they want to use as stepping stones to the centres of power and control. They will therefore not take such steps that they eventually cannot manipulate or control.The greatest fear of the ruling class is after all letting loose the genie of mass action into political terrain which might bring to thefore political demands from the working people and the poor.
The working people have also learnt a lot from the treacherous nature of elite/ruling class politics over the past fifty years or so in Nigeria’s history. That explained why they were very cautious and tentative when the opposition faction of the nation’s political elite tried to jump on the bandwagon of May Day manifestations to promote mass action against the fraudulent electoral process of April. The working people remember that class issues that favour them don’t feature in the political programmes of the various segments of the political elite,so they would not come out to be cannon fodders of the cloak-and-dagger politics of the elite.
But make no mistakes about it; the working people know better than the political elite could that a fraudulent electoral process debases the democratic process. It takes away legitimacy from the nation’s political order because a regime born of fraud cannot work for the genuine interests of the Nigerian people. This was the whole basis of the kleptocratic Obasanjo regime and the working people suffered the most from it. Real-life process is the best teacher fro the oppressed classes of society, and Nigeria’s working people are not an exception to this rule. They are the best guarantee that it is possible to resist the arbitrary illegal and fraudulent activities of the ruling faction of the political elite-the Obasanjo-controlled PDP which massively rigged the April 2007 elections.
Ngeria’s newspapers of Monady, May 14,2007 carried the report that the National Executive Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress met at the weekend;and amongst many other decisions, came out that “the INEC deliberately sabotaged the elections through illegal disqualifications of eligible candidates, poor organization and the subversion of the electoral process and therefore would not allow the sham to stand.” The NLC’s communiqué went further to state that the elections’ outcome was “a conquest of the electorates’s will rather than a free contest by candidates; funadamentally flawed and therefore unacceptable. In many states and parts of the country, the resulr should have been conducted by a credible elections commission’’.
Knowing the way that the Nigerian labour movement operates, I was not surprised when the Congress went further to state that it has opened broad-based organizations, for the purpose of a genuine people-centered mass action which will press for justice over the electoral fraud perpetrated by Obasanjo, INEC, the PDP and the security forces. But Obasanjo’s style is consistent: he corrupts people absolutely to be able to hold them hostage and that he tried with the NLC when the labour center was offered a place in the committee set up to inaugurate Umar Yar’Adua.
A letter dated May 9, 2007 and signed by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ufot Ekaette, was addressed to the NLC president, Comrade Abdulwaheed Ibrahim Omar, requesting him to serve on a presidential inauguration connittee. NLC delivered a most welcome riposte to the Obasanjo clique in its reply to the letter from the SGF. “I am directed to inform you of the committee,” said the NLC’s letter. “As you know, our position is that the 2007 presidential elections were fundamentally flawed and that any government based on it would be illegimate.Participating in the 2007 presidential inauguration committee would, therefore, be inconsistent with the postion of our organs.”
The Nigerian working people have spoken here and we should begin to brace up for a genuine mass action against the fraudulent elections which Obasanjo has used to foist on our country an incoming regime of fraud and illegitimacy, programmed to actually protect the despot and kleptocrat Obasanjo from the fate and justice he deserves for all the crimes he has committee against the Nigerian people over the past eight years. Nigerians should join the working people to stage a genuine mass action against the fraudulent electoral process of April 2007 whenever it is called for. As I have stated here repeatedly, if we allow Obasanjo’s fraud to stand, we have waved bye-bye to democracy in Nigeria. It’s clear.
The race for Senate Presidency
Most of last week, I was making frantic telephone calls to people around Kwara and Niger states, as well as Abuja, and even Lagos. This was as a result of the anger that I was nursing in respect of the well-orchestrated, if crude spin in the media about the race for the Senate Presidency in the incoming legislature. Without giving us any meaningful reasons, elements in the media have come to a bizarre conclusion that Senator David Mark has become the front-runner for the Senate presidency, which the PDP was said to have zoned to the North-Central states of Benue, Kwara, Kogi, Niger, Nasarawa and Plateau.
But it is part of the absurdity of the past few years in Nigeria that North-Central has become synonymous with the ‘Middle Belt’ and by extension, even narrowed to the aspirations of the Benue and Plateau political elite. So in recent times, positions zoned to the North-Central have largely gone either to Benue or Plateau preponderantly. During the Babangida transition, Benue State had two Senate Presidents; during this era, Plateau had the party chairman in the person of Chief Solomon Lar, and that shifted to Benue through Chief Barnabas Gemade and then Chief Audu Ogbeh. In the meantime, the Deputy Senate President was held by Senator Ibrahim Mantu for so long it almost became a lifetime chieftaincy title!
It was the defeat of third term which provided a basis for all the changes that everybody is now attempting to profit from. But that is now the central point of the spin for very unscrupulous write-ups in the media. David Mark was a notorious defender of third term; he stood against the best interests of the Nigerian people during the third term debates, including those of his constituency. He was a vicious battering ram in defence of Obasanjo’s tenure elongation project, became alienated fro his people, and was one of the beneficiaries of the PDP’s massive elections rigging of last month.
His perfidious defence of Obasanjo’s life presidency project has now become a ground which is being used to canvas his candidature for the position of Senate president. It is an indication of sorry pass that Nigeria has reached that those who supported the subversion of Nigeria’s constitutional order by Obasanjo who were mercilessly routed by the Nigerian people in that project have now become the strongest candidates to run our nation’s most important legislative body. This much was evident in analyses in various newspapers, including THE GUARDIAN of Wednesday, May 9, 2007, which quoted extensively the very principled contribution which Senator Gbemisola Saraki gave during the third term debate and concluded that “there are many who think that her postion in May 2006 might be her greatest undoing for office of Senate President.
Pray, but her undoing, who with? Obasanjo? Will the PDP and Nigeria continue to run on the basis of the preferences of Obasanjo even when we are allegedly going to be having a new dispensation? To even worsen matters, INDEPENDENT newspaper of Saturday, May 12, 2007 carried a mischievous report that PDP had settled for David Mark as Senate President stating that “certain factors decided in Mark’s favour, One; he is a Christian”! This is very absurd given that for eight years, Obasanjo, a Christian president worked with a succession of Christian Senate presidents from Southern Nigeria, and that wasn’t a problem. It’s when a Muslim president has seemingly emerged that a Christia, David Mark, would be tipped fro the position of Senate President just because of his religion! It is absolutely preposterous really.
What is playing out is that elements of the Benue elite, or even David Mark himself, has been using the media to shore up claims to the Senate Presidency while Kwara and Niger States don’t even get a look in, in what is supposed to be a North-Central affair. In the past eight years, nothing meaningful has come to those two states whose senstors also took the principled position of opposing the tenure elongation project of Obasanjo. This is why I think that those who have chosen the PDP as the vehicle of their political ambitions ought to speak of Kwara and Niger states. It is unacceptable that these states should play second fiddle, not getting anything meaningful in the context of Nigeria’s presidential political calculations. I am from the North-Central, but I am NOT from the so-called Middle Belt and David Mark, a battering ram for Obasanjo’s unpopular projects in the Senate, cannot represent my aspirations.
Similarly, we should refuse to be cowered by the dubious point that a senator from Benue State such as the reactionary and very backward supporter of tenure elongation like David Mark should be anointed as Senate President just because he is aChristian. It is cheap blackmail and dirty politics which should not frighten anybody. Ranking senators like Nuhu Aliyu, who I have never met in my life, have shown a tremendous level of commitment to the nation’s good during the tenure elongation debate; he has been a mature contributor to debates on the floor of the Senate and should be given equal opportunity for the position. This also goes for Senator Gbemi Saraki, who is also high-ranking and whose positive contribution during a critical period in Nigeria’s history is now being spun in a Geobbelian fashion against her and her chances. Let the two states, Niger and Kwara, make a bold claim for the Senate Presidency. It is not a hereditary titled reserved for Benue State.
Similarly, the PDP has to find a way out of its crisis of illegitimacy by breaking from the pernicious hold that the departing kleptocratic despot, Olusegun Obasanjo, has on it. Obasanjo is a force of evil, absolutely held in contempt by the vast majority of the Nigerian people. It is the visceral hatred for that kleptocrat that permeates through to the feeling against the PDP. This feeling was further reinforced in the manner that the PDP, a vote-rigging contraption, went about stealing April’s election at the behest of Olusegun Obasanjo. If Obasanjo, outside of the trappings of power, continues to have a stranglehold on the PDP, I have no doubts in my mind that it would eventually disintegrate as the political machinery. A modern political party system cannot be the vehicle of the ambitions of a despot kleptocrat out of power at this time in Nigreia’s development.
