Ayomide
Chief Tony Anenih has a superb way of intervening in Nigerian politics: he enjoys the most elliptic entrée, which usually guarantees the longest period of impact. The much-vaunted fixer-in-chief used the opportunity of being called to pray at the commemorative event in memory of General Shehu Musa Yar’adua, to open the apertures of political controversy in Nigeria, last week. “May God give the president good health”. Said Tony Anenih, “to be able to complete his remaining six years in office”.
Talk about letting loose a cat amongst the nations political chickens! It was a prayer that was programmed to achieve a purpose; in politics, things hardly happen spontaneously, they are jigged into place. Tony Anenih is a part master of intrigues, and as Mahmud Jega reminded me, he also used the same occasion last year, to express exactly what he felt about former president, Olusegun Obasanjo who kicked his butt, in a manner of speaking,w hen he was knocked off his perch as the PDP’s BOT Chairman. “We pray that God will give you the courage, wisdom and political will to clear the rot you you inerited from the previous administration”. Well, Obasanjo was one of those in the audience; reporters did not indicate that the “born again” despot answererd “amen” to Anenih’s prayers! That was in March, last year.
Well, a year later, Tony Anenih took up the mount again, at the same venue and aginst the backdrop of very important events in the country, such as the deepening economic crisis, which ensured that the Yar’adua regime delivered a dead-on-arrival budget for the country; the simmering crisis within the PDP behemoth over grantingautomatic second term tickets to governors and by extension the president and finally the very significant disappointment and anger which has trailed the government’s White Paper on the Uwais committee’s report on electoral reforms! It has not been a good first quarter of the year for President Umaru Yar’adua; if the truth must be told, the administration betrays a frightening incompetence in the handling of basic issues and its graps of the enormity of the tasks which it faces remains very suspect.
A very perceptive observer of the workings of the Yar’adua regime told me at the weekend, that the entire machinery of the administration is very unsuitable for contemporary Nigeria. The narrowness of the base of the regime itself makes governance under President Umaru Yar’adua to resemble the Native Authority administrations of the 1950s in Northern Nigeria. This is especially true of the inner core of operatives and their sensibility. But the Native Authority was even superior to the exten that it had the local legitimacy and a ‘native’ effectiveness which the present government unfortunately does not seem able to muster, two years down the line.
It is the exasperation with the confusion within the regime, coupled with its inability to generate empathy or inspire confidence within a population which needs leadership able to lead from the front that has also deepened the formation of cliques within the government and inside the ruling party. The PDP is not a poltical party in the sense of an organ which is alive on the basis of the articulation of a set of ideas to construct socirty. It is an electoral vehicle which conveys strange bedfellows into power, with the ultimate purpose of spoliation of our country. It is a nest of intrigues, and to paraphrase the words of the much-lamented Chief Sunday Awoniyi, the PDP is a basket full of scorpions each venomous, primed to sting the other lethally.
It is within such an ambience that Chief Tony Anenih finds his métier of intrigues; and it is the context which bring to light the effectiveness of his “spiritual” intervention last week. Anenih knew that he spoke emphatically the mind of his principla, just as he used to do when he was a leading side kick for former president Obasanjo. Anenih scored many political points with hs prayer. He reminded his enemies just why he was exhumed from a political grave by President Yar’adua. Secondly, but more crucially, he gave an imprimatur to the rumour that the president is already warming up to run in 2011. That fact was eventually confirmed by the Minister of the FCT, Adamu Aliero, early this week. And so effective was Anenih’s elliptic ‘spiritual’ intervention that he managed to raise the political temperature by some Fahreheits and Anenih must be chuckling mischievously, at the response which came from leading members of the ineffective opposition in the country.
One of the most ingenious elements of Anenih’s intervention was to also provide some covering fire for an over-exposed president Yar’adua in the wake of the controversy generated by the White Paper on the Uwais committee’s report. Clearly, Yar’Adua fell far below the expectations of Nigerians who naively thought the man who was going to dismantle an infrastructure that he benefited from –an electoral process full of booby traps and designed to explode to the disadvantage of the Nigerian people; equally run by an electoral umpire with the arrogant incompetence and partiality of Maurice Iwu. As it turned out, President Umaru Yar’adua, an insecure man even in the best of times, chose to stay within limits that he is comfortable with. He kept firmly in his hands the leash which holds the electoral umpire, with an eye on what will happen down the line in 2011.
The anger trailing in the wake of the position to retain the ultimate choice of INEC Chief has been expressed by politicians of all hues, even within the ruling party. What has not been interrogated is the most substantial issue of constitutional prerogatives associated with some of the decisions made under the rubric of electoral reforms. The government’s decision is to scrap the state electoral bodies; but does President Yar’adua have the power to do so? Is he going to get the acquiescence of state to give up the power to conduct elections and that latitude to rig in the chairmen of local governments? Is the president not removing the right of governors to sit on local government funds, which essentially is at the heart of control os states electoral bodies? Former Governor Abdullahi Adamu has already called on the states too reject the scrapping of SIECS, while THE GUARDIAN of Saturday, March 14 reported that “state governors during their last meeting in Abuja within the week agreed to do everything within their power to ensure that the State Electoral Commission would not be scrapped as recommended in the paper. Their argument… is that scrapping SIEC negates the spirit of true federalism, which discourages concentration of power in the center”
Similarly, the decision to accept the recommendation to have independent candidature appeared very altruistic. However, when we go beyond the emotion, we are faced with the constitutional hurdles which must be crossed to achiever to achieve that objective. Yar’adua does not possess the deciviveness to push the constitutional emendation which will achieve the electoral raforms that Nigerian desire. Constitutional amendments are not even within his purview and the legislature as it is presently constituted cannot be interested in the reformation fo the process of fraud by which many of its members found their ways into the National Assembly. If these facts are known to us, surely, they must be known to President Yar’adua.
My hunch is that there will be a lot of hot air, a great deal of motion, but as we move closer towards elections in 2001, nothing meaningful will be achieved with the lectoral reform process. A genuine reform in principle ought to provide a level playing round for all political parties. If that happens, the citizens will then be able to judge the regime inpower on the basis of its record of performance. But it is clear even to the blind, that Yar’adua has been sleep-walking through the past two years, and is therefore unlikely to have a record to earn a second term. It is therefore not in the interest of the regime to have genuine electoral reforms between now and the next elections. The PDP is determined to stay in power for 60 years and is therefore unlikely to allow genuine reforms where the real choice of the people will become the basis of winning political power. We must purge ourselves of any undue optimism about the electoral reform process.
At this point, we can return to Chief Tony Anenih’s prayer. He begged God to grant Yar’adua good health, to be able to complete his reaminig six years in power! Of course, Yar’aduahas just about two more years to vacate Ao Villa. However, political dinosaurs like Tony Anenih, see farthr than their political opponents because they are gladiators sworn to a permanent capture of power, as avenue of plunder. It is this politics to strengthen prevendal power, which ensures the spoliation of Nigeria; the deepening of the despair of its people and its hopeless loss in the morass of underdevelopment. If this politics is not defeated, Nigeria will lurch from crisis to crisis until something gives! And something just has to give, because what is on the ground is so worthless, it cannot be sutained. But the question to ask is, why did Anenih make his recent supplication? Well, it is because that is the wish of his principal, President Umaru Yar’adua. He is getting ready for 2011.
2006 JANUARY – DECEMBER 2006 ENDS HERE
