By
okey ndibe
Tuesday,
July 03, 2007
If Umar Yar’Adua, the current occupant of Nigeria’s First Address,
has permitted us any glimpse into his political soul, it is to reveal his paradoxical
quality. Last week, Yar’Adua publicly declared his assets, telling Nigerians
that he’s worth N850 million. It was an unprecedented move—no Nigerian
public official at his level had ever made such disclosure.
The move became
a masterstroke; it garnered commendation from various sectors of Nigerian life.
Make no mistake: The man deserves to be garlanded. He has acted with an openness
and forthrightness sorely lacking in fellow politicians.
Still, in extolling
the man’s gesture, we run a grave risk. In the rush to gush praises for
Yar’Adua, many appeared to ignore certain disturbing questions in the man’s
ledger of assets and liabilities. There is, for one, the issue of an apparent
gap in what Yar’Adua the presidential candidate told reporters (which, if
I remember correctly, was that he was worth no more than N500 million) and what
Yar’Adua now says he owns. That gap needs to be explained.
Besides,
why was nobody worried by the fact that Yar’Adua counted campaign donations—of
cash as well as vehicles—as personal assets? Were those donations made to
him in a personal capacity? If so, then the gifts amount to bribery. If they were
made to his campaign office, then the funds and vehicles, properly speaking, ought
not to find their way into Yar’Adua’s asset declaration. They don’t
belong to him but to his campaign organization or his party. Another option is
to refund the unspent funds (and return the vehicles) to the donors.
There
are even trickier questions. One has to do with how a man who spent most of his
life as a lecturer was able to accrue assets that are just shy of a billion naira.
True, the man comes from a privileged family. Yes, he could well have made wise
investments, but still…
My point, simply, is that there is still an awful
lot that is still obscure in his asset declaration. The document tells us how
much the man owns, but shies away from explaining whence the money and assets
came. It hardly amounts to a clear, seamless narrative. This is more than a quibble.
It would be relatively easy, in the end, for public officials to publicly declare
their assets. A more rigorous standard is to require them to offer a broad narrative
of their asset history over time.
At any rate, Yar’Adua’s
gesture has beamed the light on the scandal that passes for asset declarations
in Nigeria. The law merely requires that certain categories of public officials
make confidential disclosures to the Code of Conduct Bureau. The idea of confidentiality
renders the entire process suspect. The air of secrecy impedes, rather than facilitates,
transparency. It serves to mask the ruling elite’s predatory activities.
While laudable, Yar’Adua’s personal example hardly goes far
enough. He has the power to compel his ministerial nominees to follow suit by
offering open disclosures of their assets. He should also lean on the National
Assembly to change the law in order to make public declarations mandatory. The
current custom of withholding asset declarations from the public is outmoded and
counterproductive. Any well-meaning Nigerian willing to step into the arena of
public service ought to embrace the ethic of public disclosure. They should, at
minimum, be open to scrutiny.
The Yar’Adua paradox is evident in
other ways as well. In one breath, he attracts public applause by inviting Nigerians
to glean his assets. In another, he earns public discredit by consenting to play
willing conspirator in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s latest cloak-and-dagger
move. By playing saint one day, devil the next, Yar’Adua has deepened the
widespread perception that his chief mandate is to perpetuate Obasanjo’s
anti-human policies.
Last week, Yar’Adua played the part with ignoble
perfection. He let himself be dragged out to a hotel room where Obasanjo hatched
and executed an illegal take-over of the ruling party’s Board of Trustees.
Yar’Adua’s presence at the "crime" scene lent legitimacy
to Obasanjo’s illicit but altogether characteristic manoeuver. It also exposed
Yar’Adua as a man with little mind of his own. Nigerians can’t afford
to permit such a man to run, and ruin, their lives for four years.
Many
Nigerians must hope Yar’Adua is not hard of hearing. The cry in Nigeria
is for Obasanjo’s regime to be probed. Nigerians want the whole truth about
how oil blocks were handed out to the ex-president’s cronies. They want
a thorough audit of the books of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).
They demand a cancellation of the fire brigade sale of the nation’s refineries
to business associates of the former president. They want an inquiry into the
assassination of Bola Ige, Harry Marshall, A.K. Dikibo and several other political
figures during Obasanjo’s watch. They want to know who empowered thugs to
overrun Ibadan and to cause mayhem in Anambra. They want the senseless slaughters
in Odi and Zaki Biam investigated.
Deaf to the popular sentiment in Nigeria
that wants Obasanjo consigned to his farm (or worse), Yar’Adua has stepped
out to consort with the nation’s public enemy number one. If there was a
public relations disaster for the record books, this was it. Yar’Adua, who
already labours under the burden of illegitimacy, exhibited poor political instincts
when he chose to advance Obasanjo’s inordinate political ambitions. A friend
sent me a doleful e-mail. "Obasanjo’s third term has just begun,"
he wrote.
In keeping Obasanjo’s perfidious company, Yar’Adua
appears curiously intent to authenticate Nigerians’ suspicion that he was
smuggled into the Presidency to act as stooge. His "presidency," by
the evidence of his own act, seems marked by surrogacy. By helping the former
president to hijack the reins of the ruling party, Yar’Adua has accentuated
his own political deficits.
Which brings one to Yar’Adua’s
fervent political enterprise: The selling of "unity government" as the
fix for the crisis of illegitimacy in which his government is trapped. Let’s
be clear: A unity government as conceived by Yar’Adua cannot address the
nation’s political malaise. Far from acting as a credible instrument of
remediation, Yar’Adua’s usurpation of the Presidency means he is part
of the problem. As a usurper, he is encumbered by a lack of legitimacy. In that
spirit, he lacks the constitutional wherewithal to initiate a unity government.
Such a government is deeply pernicious, for its objective is to consolidate an
illegality: The widespread disenfranchisement of Nigerians.
It is hardly
surprising that some opposition parties are in thrall to the idea of unity government.
They are, after all, factions of the usurping class, a collection of men and women
who operate in an ethical vacuum and whose only principle is greed. These men
(and a smattering of women) are wedded to the notion that Nigeria is theirs to
gorge on. That explains their desperation to grasp some quota of ministerial and
other political appointments.
"Unity government" is an invitation
to the nation’s rapacious elite to congregate around the idea of collective
sharing the spoils. It is a seductive idea for career politicians whose lone means
of livelihood is lucre, but it represents a toxic prospect for other Nigerians.
Predictably, the sponsors of this facile idea have taken to intoning the mantra
of "moving the nation forward." The falsity of this creed is self-evident.
Nothing founded on impunity and crime can move forward. And the April election
was a carefully conceived, coldly executed crime against the sovereign will of
Nigerians.
The right response to that crime—the proper way to move
the nation forward—is for all sectors of society to repudiate the electoral
heist, to expunge it from the national data.
The courts and tribunals
should have the courage to lead in this process. Nigerians should encourage members
of the Bench to do the right thing, to uphold the integrity of the Constitution
and the sovereignty of the people. The judiciary ought to see to it that the impositions
that passed for elections at all levels are squelched.
One has nothing against
Yar’Adua. In fact, I suspect that if armed with a legitimate mandate, he
may prove an astute President. He may be an angel for all we know. But the forces
that imposed him on Nigeria are determined to, and will, stifle his angelic intentions.
Witness the alacrity with which Yar’Adua left off other engagements
and hastened to Nicon Hotel at Obasanjo’s bequest to enable the old fox
to consummate his seizure of party power. Witness Yar’Adua’s inability
to reject Obasanjo’s cruel and senseless imposition of higher fuel prices
on the eve of his departure from power.
Witness Yar’Adua’s
spinelessness to probe, or cancel, the questionable sale of the nation’s
refineries to friends of Obasanjo.
One must hope that Yar’Adua, deep
down, is a patriot. If so, he must know that Nigerians deserve a legitimate government,
not a confected and bastard mutant called "unity government." If he
means well, let him rally the political parties, not to consolidate an illegality
in the name of a unity of thieves, but to agree on constituting a high-powered,
independent panel to investigate the sham elections.
It would fall to
the investigation panel to recommend how to conduct credible elections run by
trustworthy umpires, not a shameless academic who defends fraud. This is the road
to be taken should Yar’Adua aspire to be a patriot and hero. If he wants
to cling on to illegitimate power, then stay the odious course of "unity
government."