Obasanjo had set out with the primary
objective to install himself a perpetual leader in the mould
of the Mugabes and Eyademas of Africa, but in the process
foisted a one-party orientation in the psyche of the average
Nigerian politician. It came to be accepted that to win
elections or to remain in an elected position, one must
profess loyalty to the President and also be a member of the
Presidents Party; the latter being the natural sequel to the
former. It became an unwritten rule that getting the party’s
nomination meant automatic victory at the polls.
Seeing how stringent the requirements and
the constitutional process for impeachment was, Obasanjo
devised ways to overcome the huddle. He induced willing
State Houses of Assembly members in his target states with
monetary rewards, while recalcitrant ones were harassed into
cooperation with the Presidents bull-dog, the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission. An overzealous Ribadu, buoyed
by the showmanship and the allure of limelight, went to
ridiculous lengths to harass and intimidate the political
enemies of his principal ostensibly believing he was doing
the nation some good.
The concerned
lawmakers with bribe-money stains on their hands on one hand
and a sword of Damocles’ hanging over their heads on the
other went into frenzy, violating all due process in the bid
to please their paymaster. It was then we has to adjust our
understanding of elementary arithmetic to accept that 6 was
indeed a majority in the house of 24
in
Plateau State
and
Dariye became the victim of this rebased mathematics.
Alameyiesiagha of Bayelsa State, Peter Obi of Anambara,
Rasheed Ladoja of Oyo State and
Ayo Fayose of Ekiti all suffered
similar fate in the hands of Obasanjo, whose disdain for
opposition has become legendary.
It was this flagrant abuse of
constitutional procedures that threw up a hitherto unknown
spare-tire, in the person of Goodluck Jonthan as a successor
to the then fugitive, now pardoned bail-jumper and
ex-convict, DSP Alamayeisiagha. One thing keep leading to
another and Jonathan became the President; stepping into the
very same shoes that Obasanjo once wore. As the greatest
beneficiary of the manipulative and remotely guided
impeachments, it is not a surprise that Jonathan has now
taken to the same vice in his fight for political survival.
When Some Governors moved from the PDP to
the opposition APC, thus making an unopposed return by
Jonathan to ASO rock for a third term in 2015, unlikely, and
with his former god-father Obasanjo covertly pitching his
tent with opposition, those with the crystal ball could see
clearly that Jonathan had a tough battle to fight but what
they could not see was that that the very weapon he would
use for this battle was handled down to him by the same
Obasanjo.
We must give it to Jonathan, that he has
now refined impeachment process moving it away from the
crude approach of Obasanjo when a handful of legislators
became the majority under intimidation by EFCC, making it
glaringly dubious, to a situation where overwhelming
majority of the House members are recruited quietly to do
the job, giving it a semblance of a popular action. This did
not however come without an initial attempt at the crude
method in Rivers State which backfired. The man went back to
the drawing board and now he is out for the kill with his
new formula. Despite the seeming majority of the Adamawa
House members acting in concert to remove the embattled
Governor of Adamawa, it was not lost on observers that the
real puppeteer pulling the strings was sitting in Abuja.
Having succeeded in Adamawa, all is now
set to deploy the method in all the remaining APC states,
especially those in which PDP once held sway before the
decamping of the nPDP governors to the APC. The message is
very clear; 2015 is a must-win for Jonathan and win he must
at all cost. The security votes he has amassed for the past
three years in the guise of fighting Boko Haram alone is
enough war chest to buy off all House of Assembly Members
wherever they are. This is besides the 49billion US Dollars
unaccounted for by the NNPC for which Sanusi lost out with
the Presidency. Since there is hardly any Nigerian
politician who is principled enough to reject financial
inducement especially one that comes with threats and some
compulsion to compel acceptance from the powers that be, we
may as well conclude that Jonathon will have his way.
This is the exact danger some of us saw in
the bad seed Obasanjo was sowing, when we cried against the
impeachments galore that permeated his third term adventure.
That a President could (mis)use the enormous power and
financial resources at his disposal to prosecute personal
political battles and muzzle opposition runs contrary to the
very principles of democracy where dissent and diversity of
political opinion is sacrosanct.
A situation where an elected Governor is
removed by the whims and caprices of one man without
recourse to the people who elected him is anti-democratic.
The semblance of people participation in the removal as
claimed by some, citing the fact that the assembly members
who did the impeachment were elected by the people, is just
skin-deep. Truth is that even if the members of the House of
Assembly in Adamawa for instance, were elected by the
people, the people did not push for them to initiate
impeachment process against their Governor. The House
members never consulted their constituencies nor held any
town-hall sessions to gauge the desires of their people.
Abuja was the payer of the Piper and thus detected the tone.
This was confirmed by the Acting Governor, the Speaker of
the Adamawa House of Assembly who went to Abuja to inform
the leader of their party, PDP, that he has delivered their
mandate. By this, the Acting Governor implied that his
loyalty is not to the people who elected them but to the
highest bidder in Abuja.
There is this other argument that the
governors who were (and are currently) impeached actually
had some skeletons in their cupboard and so it serves them
right. The problem with this thinking is that it does not
address the reason for the un-touch (ability) of dozens of
PDP governors who have bigger skeletons and even fresh
corpses in their freezers! It would have made some sense if
the President’s clamp down on these Governors is motivated
by some zeal to fight corruption but alas the man himself
sees corruption as unduly over-emphasized in Nigeria. Here
is a man who sees nothing wrong with ‘mere’ stealing of
public resources and is seriously worried that people would
equate that with corruption.
When Stella Uduah, the then Aviation
Minister squandered N225million on bullet-proof cars the
President looked on as if nothing happened. I also watched
on, squirming on my inside, as the Central Bank Governor
exposed that billions of Dollars were not remitted by the
NNPC to Government coffers; but nothing was done, not even
by way of a query to the Minister of Petroleum resources,
rather the President took the accusation personally as an
affront to his Presidency. From the blues, came a purported
report from a hitherto little known Financial Reporting
Council indicting the Central bank Governor for very funny
offences and pronto, the President suspended the CBN
Governor.
It is therefore specious for such a
President in whose world view corruption is tolerable to
cite corruption on the part of the Governors as reason for
his wanting them out. Had Jonathan wanted to fight
corruption, he had enough starting material in the over 30
ex-governors whom Ribadu had declared corrupt while playing
the script of Obasanjo but these people are free men.
The lesson from this is that visionary
leaders ought to set good precedence as benchmarks for
future leaders. One of the greatest failures of Obasanjo as
a leader was his deliberate refusal to deepen democracy, by
giving opposition breathing space. He chose rather to
promote a one-Party state and ‘god-fatherism’. He subtly
abolished the rule of law and substituted it with the rule
of the gang where the gangster sits in Abuja and deploys
state resources against any dissenting voice across the
nation. He elevated loyalty to the president above loyalty
to the nation and its constitution. While he was at this,
many politicians like Nyako urged him on either by acts of
commission or omission in the belief that it will never come
to them. They were wrong. In the final analysis, people like
Nyako who worked with Obasanjo in the PDP to build the
anti-democratic culture whose bitter fruits they are reaping
now should take part of the blame for their woes.
It is no exaggeration to say that the only thing that
occupies the heart of the President is how to remain in
power beyond 2015 and terror awaits any ‘Jupiter’ who dares
to stand in his way. His
body language says it loudly. The big question however is
why does he want power this much if he has no idea how to
use the power to improve the lot of the Nation?
What drives President Jonathan?
Is it just enough that the shoeless son of a
fisherman became President of Nigeria? Should we just
celebrate this uncommon feat and forget about the stench of
monumental corruption that oozes from all facets of this
Presidency? Should we just overlook the progressive
destruction of the democratic tenets and the economy for the
fear of hurting a President who thinks criticizing his
failures is a taboo?