Let's dream a new Nigeria
By okey ndibe
As Nigerians brace for the post-Obasanjo era in their public lives, they ought
to ponder the real risks of reliving the nightmare of the last eight years. President
Olusegun Obasanjo’s negative legacy, with its emphasis on aggrandizement,
sheer display of power, hypocrisy and the manipulation of various sectors of society,
is not going to be erased simply because the man will (like it or not) leave office
at the end of May.
If the nation’s democratic forces don’t
act to flush away what I call Obasanjus operandi, Nigeria will face the peril
of ever deepening malaise.
I suspect that Obasanjo is beginning to believe
his own myth about his accomplishments as President. Abandoning his official villa
for days on end, he has taken his political vaudeville show on the road. He’s
behaving as if he were the PDP’s presidential candidate, with Umar Yar’Adua
and Goodluck Jonathan as forgettable cheerleaders.
He takes the rostrum
and beats his chest and reminds Nigerians that their present and future are about
one man and one man alone: Himself. While ostensibly leading his party’s
electoral campaigns, the President has cut the image of a blackmailer on the stump.
Imagining himself to be nothing if not omniscient, the man has exhorted Nigerians
to beware of voting for anybody who, in the President’s lexicon, is a “criminal.”
The President’s conception of criminal is rather broad. It includes
anybody who has publicly feuded with him, especially Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
It embraces anybody who lent a voice, money or sweat to torpedo the third term
agenda. If you have ever questioned the reality of the President’s economic
reforms, or discounted their impact on the body politic, then, why, you are a
criminal. If, for that matter, you’re less than a devout believer in His
Excellency’s godhead, then your criminal self should never expect to smell
power as long as the President has a say in it.
Should Nigerians disregard
Obasanjo’s warning against electing “criminals,” the President
has left nobody in doubt about his recourse. He intends, simply, to refuse to
hand over to “criminals.” It is a hard bargain he’s driven.
Nigerians must elect the President’s slate of favoured candidates or risk
his self-entrenchment in power. It is as if Obasanjo believes there’s only
one vote that counts in Nigeria—and the owner of that vote currently resides
in Aso Rock.
His rhetoric bespeaks this delusion. Months ago, Lamidi Adedibu,
as close a confidante of the President’s as any, let slip that Obasanjo
had revealed to him who was going to be the nation’s next President. I don’t
believe the Presidency ever denied Adedibu’s squeal. And if Adedibu’s
credibility on that score was ever in doubt, the President’s recent utterances
about those who must be ostracized from power made it moot. This is a ruler (for
that’s how he views himself: A ruler) who considers himself interchangeable
with his nation. As far as Obasanjo is concerned, Obasanjo is Nigeria and Nigeria
is Obasanjo.
Nigerians should disabuse him. For a start, the various sectors
of civil society ought to make their voices heard. Nigeria is miniaturized and
pocketed by its rulers only because the citizenry permits it. One lesson to be
drawn from the historical record is that, whenever the generality of Nigerians
have asserted their right to be recognized as truly sovereign, they have had their
way.
Think about Ibrahim Babangida’s perpetual transition bugaboo
and how his perpetuation scheme was grounded when Nigerians said a collective
no! I believe that Sani Abacha’s ploy would have suffered a similar blow
had death not intervened first, bringing his imperious designs to an unanswerable
termination. More recently, Nigerians should not forget how their paroxysm of
outrage compelled the National Assembly to short-circuit Obasanjo’s tenure
elongation fantasy. Beneath this President’s hectoring manner lies a profound
anxiety. For all his hauteur, the man knows that in the final reckoning, his will
is puny juxtaposed against the collective aspirations of Nigerians. If we elect
to reclaim our nation, we can.
And we should. It is no exaggeration to
suggest that the very corporate destiny of Nigeria rides on the forthcoming elections.
That the elections would give Nigerians an opportunity to make personnel changes
strikes me, in the end, as its least significant meaning. The larger burden lies
in offering Nigerians an occasion to re-imagine their nation. And they must come
to the task with the solemn air of a people aware that time is running out. Nigeria
has for too long been an embarrassing under-achiever in the comity of nations.
In the calloused hands of greedy rulers, it has failed to rise to the challenge
of its promise. If we fail in 2007, we may well give up on the idea of Nigeria.
To re-imagine Nigeria is to steer it away from the course on which Obasanjo
has had it in the last eight years, and Babangida as well as Abacha before him.
Like other misrulers before him, Obasanjo counts very little verifiable achievements.
Ask him and his apologists to itemize his achievements and you’ll get a
facile litany: He instituted “economic reforms;” he appointed several
technocrats to office; he’s fighting corruption; he paid off the nation’s
debt to the Paris Club; he streamlined the banking industry; he accumulated huge
foreign reserves.
Don’t count on him, or his champions, to reel
off statistics about how many miles of roads he built or rehabilitated; how many
hospitals he equipped; the factor by which he reduced the crime rate; the number
of jobs he created; his sagacity in stabilizing power supply; how his policies
significantly cut infant and maternal mortality rates; how he enshrined the rule
of law, making sure that no Adedibu, Tom, Dick, Uba or Harry was above the tenets
of justice; how many homes got pipe-borne potable water because he was at the
helm of affairs.
Therein lies the challenge of the future. Unless Nigerians
enthrone new rules of engagement, their nation will continue to throw up mutants
of Obasanjo. Institutions like the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)
and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) will remain tools in the
hands of the man with his hands on the lever of power. Unless we change the rules,
the Nigerian police will continue to seek the President’s permission before
arresting a “big man,” especially where the man in question is close
to the President.
Nigerians must decide that the era of presidents, governors
and local government chairmen who write their own (always glowing) evaluations
is over. They must resolve the perennial issue of how to hold public office holders
accountable.
They must decide that each eligible voter holds as much power,
and responsibility, as the next one, including the President. We ought to emphasize
the subordination of those we elect to mind our affairs; we must insist that they
recognize the onerous nature of their mandate.
And we must arrive at some
educated consensus about where the nation is headed, what its goals are, and the
criteria against which we will test a leader’s mettle. That, or Nigeria
is doomed.