PDP: Corruption Incorporated [1]
PDP: Corruption Incorporated
By: Dr. Bamidele A. Sobowale
Book Published in 2011
Dedication
This book has been dedicated to all
those Nigerians Obasanjo unfortunately met in poverty and still left in destitution
while he grew from poverty to become immensely rich in those same eight years
as well as the millions who were victims of the death traps his government
called roads.
Corruption has once been defined as “saying one thing and doing something else”. That definition applies to individuals as well as organizations. It applies with equal force to the political leadership of any country. In Nigeria today, like it or not, the political leadership belongs to the People’s Democratic Party, PDP whose first elected president Olusegun Obasanjo in his first 11 interview, granted to the CNN promised to fight corruption to a standstill.
He called corruption a cankerworm which has been responsible for the Million’s lack of progress for thirty nine years since independence. He went on to promise that there would be no sacred cows in the fight against corruption.
Most people believed him and for a curious reason. They felt that a man who had once been military Head of State and who relinquished power voluntarily; who was subsequently roped into a phantom coup plot by one of his successors; who escaped death by firing squad and ended up spending several years in jail must be compassionate and take the matter of corruption seriously. They were wrong; very wrong, for reasons not too difficult to understand.
Corruption is not just about embezzlement of funds – although a significant part of corrupt practices eventually end up being associated with fraud. Indeed, the corruption of the political system from political party primaries, to election of party officials to inter-party elections constitutes the environment against which financial crimes are committed. A nation that cares little about how leaders emerge and leaders that would subvert the constitution of their own parties in order to gain power would generally condone fraud if committed by their acolytes. The very first act of corruption by the PDP involved the nomination and the selection of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as the party’s presidential candidate. According to the party’s own guidelines, confirmed recently by the Chairman of the party at the time, Chief Solomon Lar, Obasanjo was not even qualified to vie for any office, let alone that of the president. But, the PDP did not want to take chances. It needed a candidate that would enjoy the backing of the military. So the rules were bent to allow Obasanjo to run. Next, everybody knew that Obasanjo was almost destitute by the time he was released from jail by General Abubakar. Yet, within a few weeks of leaving jail, he not only became a candidate, he donated a record of N130 million to the party. Till today, nobody has offered an explanation where the money came from. Obasanjo was later to spend close to N1.4 billion on that election. Thus, the foundation was laid for what might be known in history as the most corrupt ruling party in Nigerian history headed by a man who vowed to fight corruption to a standstill.
PDP: Corruption Incorporated includes a lot of materials already in the public domain as well as others barely known to the public. But, all the elements have been offered to the public in bits and pieces. We are therefore missing the big picture. For instance, until this attempt nobody, to the best of my knowledge has accumulated so many facts and summarized the sub-total amount involved in corrupt practices from 1999 to 2007. Even now, we can only talk about sub-total because we receive more revelations every day of embezzlement of public funds, of privatization without due process leading to undervaluation of public assets, of unjustified duty waivers running into billions and the looting of the PTDF account.
This is therefore a beginning. Other researchers and writers will fill in the gaps and provide other insights into how Nigeria was mercilessly defrauded in the eight years of Obasanjo while progress on at fronts was retarded. Posterity must know what happened in our time because of the penchant of our leaders to want to wait for history to judge them.
Nobody has promised to fight corruption while encouraging it more than Obasanjo. Even, his establishment of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, was a reflection of the corruption pervading the administration. The EFCC went after only the perceived targets of the President. It is instructive to note that despite the over N300 billion allocated to roads from 1999 to 2007 and the contracts claimed to have been awarded, no single Minister of Works had been called by the EFCC to explain why the roads have gone from bad to worse while the money disappeared. Again, the EFCC would have us believe that it is still “investigating” the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, when the evident for prosecution of offenders is practically starring the commission in the face. Like anything else in Nigeria, the EFCC has been co- opted into corrupt practices because of its selective prosecution of cases. In this book, you find out why the EFCC cannot prosecute anyone connected with the fraud at the NPA-the biggest fishes are involved.
To save Nigeria, the
honourable men still in the PDP must join hands with other credible politicians
to rescue the party from the practitioners of “garrison politics” and
their beneficiaries at all levels. Unless this is done the fight against
corruption can be regarded as lost for good and with it the Nigerian dream of
becoming a major economic power by 2020.
1
How it all began
Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive
-Sir Walter Scott 1771-1832.
WHEN General Abdulsalami Abubakar announced the transition to civil rule programme in 1998, he created the impression that the elections would be free and fair. Nigerians were led to believe that people would be free to form and join political parties of their choice and the outcome of the elections would reflect the free will of the people of Nigeria. It was deceit of the worst kind. In fact, the military establishment had a chosen candidate to whom Abubakar was supposed to hand over power. The fall-back position of the military class was for Abubakar to prolong his stay in office until a suitable alternative to their first choice could be found. Their first choice was former military Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo, who was serving a prison term for treason after his conviction for plotting a coup against the government of late General Sani Abacha.
The assignment was one that Abubakar was too happy to discharge for two reasons. Abubakar himself felt vulnerable. Abacha had recreated the Nigerian Army in his own image and Abubakar could not count on the loyalty of the top brass. Thus, a short transition programme was in his interest. The choice of a successor was also acceptable to the incumbent Head of State, who had drawn down the external reserves left behind by Abacha from $7.7 billion to about $2.7 billion by the time he departed with very little to show for it. Abubakar was Obasanjo’s ADC when the latter was Head of State up to 1 October 1979 and he had been a loyal subordinate. Knowing that loyalty is an attribute cherished by Obasanjo above honesty or efficiency, Abubakar guessed, quite correctly, that with Obasanjo as his successor, there would be no probe of his government.
He set about with military precision to deliver President Obasanjo to Nigerians in 1999. All that was left was to convince the anointed successor to accept the offer of the Presidency on a platter of gold. That task was assigned to Maradona, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB); arguably the most lubricious officer the Nigerian Armed Forces have ever produced.
Africans have never been known to learn from history and, in fact, we seem to be allergic to it. Irrespective of the religion we practise and the ethnic group to which we belong, we put all our faith in prayers. Out of every four Africans and out of every seven black people in the world, one is a Nigerian. In addition, about sixty per cent of the ethnic groups in Africa reside in Nigeria. Thus this country can in many respects serve as proxy for the black race world-wide. As far as history is concerned, we seem to suffer from a collective amnesia; even if it is contemporary history. George Santayana (1863-1952), the great Spanish philosopher, must have had us in mind when he warned that: Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat its mistakes.
We have ample evidence from our recent history to remind us that the military in Africa in general and Nigeria in particular, cannot be trusted to keep their word. The phrase “officer and a gentleman” implying honour might apply to men in uniform elsewhere; but not on this continent and certainly not in Nigeria. Four instances would help to illustrate the point.
In 1975, the former military Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, announced to a shocked civilian political class that the promised transition to civilian rule was: no longer realistic. Because the political class had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. What precisely the political class failed to learn was not clearly stated, but that nebulous charge provided for the elongation of his stay in power. Today, the excuses are different. Curiously, Gowon apparently had the support of a sizeable percentage of the population at the time. Suddenly, stickers and banners appeared from nowhere proclaiming: Go On With One Nigeria (GOWON). The more things change the more they remain the same in Africa.
The second warning to a hard hearing citizenry came in 1990. After the military President Babangida had annulled the primaries which would have produced late Major-General Shehu Yar’Adua and Malam Adamu Ciroma as the presidential candidates for the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Republican Congress (NRC), respectively, he told reporters by way of explanation: We don’t know who will succeed us but we know those who will not succeed us. We cannot hand over to just anybody, even if “anybody” is the choice of the people of Nigeria. The message was clear but, as usual, we chose to ignore it or were too powerless or too timid to dispute it. Again a lot of the political elite whose direct interests were at stake chose to play it safe. Soon, there were proclamations of support for the annulment.
It was not only in the covert and open manipulation of the results that the military class under IBB decided to determine for fellow Nigerians, they also borrowed from Gowon’s play book on how to extend their tenures. The general approach was to start a new programme, late towards the end of their promised departure time. Invariably, these initiatives could not be completed by the terminal dale and using that self induced handicap to plead or cajole the citizenry to give them more time “to complete their laudable initiatives”. That sleight of hand always comes with the added proviso that those programmes would be jeopardized if handed over to someone else. The perfect example of this is the 1992 Budget Address by President Babangida titled WATERSHED OF OUR NATIONAL EVOLUTION. Part of it is reproduced below:
“Fellow Nigerians,
This year marks the final year [italics mine] of the present administration. The period 1985-1992 would thus mark an important watershed in our national evolution as a multi-national society, which has been subjected to several years of exploitation under colonial rule and of neglect and mismanagement during most of the post-independence era. However, we are justified in stepping into 1992 with some optimism. We are on the threshold of being able to transform our country into a politically and economically modem state…
For us in this administration, the year 1992 caps our political efforts in our attempts to lay a new foundation for a democratic polity within a new political culture. 1 am happy to observe that our transition programme is on track. In spite of our declared good intentions, and with demonstrative actions to prove our resolve to return power to a set of democratically- elected leaders, there are still some cynics who doubt us. They speak of a hidden agenda which would be unfolded later” [italics mine].
As one of the cynics who detected the hidden agenda as far back as 1990, the events after 12 June 1993 have proved conclusively the lie in the declaration of good intentions. But, more importantly, the budget announced a whole set of new initiatives which could not be completed by 1 October 1992 which was the scheduled handing-over date.
Clearly, there is very little that is materially different today from the 1992 hidden agenda. For over two years, the cynics have repeatedly drawn attention to another hidden agenda code-named Third Term and the spin doctors of the present administration have denied it. Now, even a fool knows there is a third term agenda and it did not start yesterday. It started when President Obasanjo, in what is supposed to be a democracy, unilaterally placed a ban on campaigns for the 2007 presidential elections.
It was obvious to the cynics that there was a hidden agenda which would soon unfold. Unlike other Nigerians, however, the cynics were quick to understand what the nature of this not so hidden agenda would be.
Two more examples would be sufficient to close the case and to prove conclusively that the military establishment has never been honest with fellow Nigerians. First was Abacha’s inaugural address to the Constitutional Conference of 1995 at which he unveiled his own transition programme. As usual with most of his predecessors, except Obasanjo in 1979, it was totally deceptive. Yet, once again the Nigerian political elite not only embraced it, they were antagonistic to those who once again were pointing to the trap. Below are relevant portions from Abacha’s address:
The address delivered on Monday 27 June 1994, at the inauguration of the National Constitutional Conference, later nick named CONFAB by the media is reproduced below:
“1. Our entire nation, all Nigerians within and outside this hall and, indeed, the international community as a whole, are aware that the Constitutional Conference we are inaugurating today is unique in its setting and circumstances. The antecedents are unparalleled in the annals of our history. This conference is not another in the chain of sporadic constitutional experimentation, but it arises from the impact and bitter lessons of the recent past and the need to channel all our creativity towards implanting enduring institutional arrangements that can ensure steady consolidation and growth of democratic nation-state.
2. Those of you gathered here today as members of the Constitutional Conference have, either by offering yourselves for election or accepting the invitation to serve, demonstrated commitment, patriotism and readiness for self-sacrifice in the higher national interest. I congratulate and commend you all for coming forward to join hands with all other patriotic forces who have chosen the path of dialogue and consensus rather than the anti democratic fixed position of a one-option solution to our national advance towards a democratic civil society. [Emphasis mine.]
3. You have the mandate to deliberate on the structure of the Nigerian nation-state and to work out the modalities for ensuring good governance; to devise for our people a system of government, guaranteeing equal opportunity, the right to aspire to any public office, irrespective of state o f origin, ethnicity or creed, and thus engender a sense of belonging in all our citizens.
4. Our nearly thirty-four years of sovereign existence have been beset with a history of continuous political uncertainties. We have had crises of legitimacy, crises of succession, crises of authority and crises of nationally acceptable leadership. Our country is today resolved to terminate this vicious cycle of crises.
5. The proponents of a conference that will assume sovereign powers must draw a distinction between the situation in Nigeria and that of those countries which went through traumatic sovereign national conferences. In all other cases, the issue was how to resolve the competition for political power and control between an incumbent regime and opposition groupings. As you all know, we in the present government in Nigeria arc committed to ensuring that there is speedy and unimpeded transition to a civil democratic rule in which we shall not be participants ”.
[Emphasis mine.]
We should pause here and take a look at aspects of that speech which were deliberately very misleading. What Abacha called the: anti democratic fixed position of a one option solution was the national call that the winner of the 12 June 1993 elections should be allowed to enjoy the mandate given to him by the electorate. Against this time-honoured positions, the military, first under Babangida and later under Abacha, were proposing another transition programme. Meanwhile, the Babangida transition programme had cost the nation N40 billion. That was the colossal amount that a poor nation like Nigeria was asked to throw down the drain. This was exactly what happened; thanks to the “patriotic” military establishment. It was the adoption of the BIG LIE technique made famous by Adolph Hitler (1889-1945) who in his epic, Mein Kampf had written: The great masses of the people … will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one.
That, unfortunately, was not the only untruth in that address to the CONFAB. The most damning lie was contained in section 5 which has been underlined above for emphasis. Abacha came to power in late 1993, when the nation was on the verge of dissolution. There were pressures on him to give Abiola his mandate as well as to retain power himself. By December 1993, it was clear that the mandate was not going to be restored. At the same time, Abacha and his advisers recognised that one way of dividing the country and ruling it was to promise another transition programme. This was certain to please most members of the National Republican Congress, which had lost the election and the military officers, who never supported the transition to civil rule.
When the promise of neutrality was first made, I had in my SUNDAY VANGUARD column of 3 July 1994 made the following remarks: If you believe that bit i.e. “we shall not be participants” then you will believe anything. Instinctively, it occurred to me that Abacha was not the type to go quietly after a short stay at the top. The proof came later. As it turned out, even before the inaugural address to the CONFAB, the late Mazi Sam Ikoku had already sent a secret memo to Abacha outlining how he could have the position of Head of State for keeps.
That explains the undisguised instruction to the CONFAB not to even consider the parliamentary system. According to Abacha:
9. “Our generation is old enough to remember the difficulties of the parliamentary system. At the local level, it features political parties with their constituency-based strengths giving rise to highly intense communal rivalries. Entire areas from which a slim majority may have voted against the ruling party in the region were easily identified and penalised”.
Despite the fact that this statement was made by a Head of State, it was pure drivel. Abacha himself announced the military coup which toppled Shagari’s presidency. By the time the coup occurred; whole areas of the South-West and South-East which voted against the NPN were under siege by the Mobile Police controlled by the ruling party. So it was not the parliamentary system but the practitioners who determined the outcome of the experiment. Most importantly, Abacha realised that his ambition would be best realised under a presidential system and so the first intrusion into the transition programme was to declare the parliamentary system a no-go area.
The military accept deception as a component of every war effort. The Allies during the Second World War deceived the Germans about the landing in Normandy and that ruse was one of the major causes of the defeat of the Nazis. Locally, our military officers have accepted politics as “war by other means”. Thus deception is also allowed in politics.
Thus when Abacha providentially died on 8 June 1998, his successor. General Abubakar also organised another deceptive transition programme; one whose major outcome was predetermined, while pretending to the entire world that he was also neutral. But, first there was a serious matter to settle. What was to be done with Chief MKO Abiola? General Abubakar had no wish to hold him much longer. At the same time, the late Chief had vowed not to relinquish his mandate. There was only one option left: MURDER. Murder by poison that would be untraceable within a few minutes after the victim had died. Abubakar did not arrange this himself; the security forces knew what to do to help the new Commander-in-Chief out of a difficult jam.
With Abiola conveniently out of the way, the transition programme could then proceed to its logical conclusion unimpeded. The meeting of the Gang of Four sealed Nigeria’s fate soon afterwards. Yet, deception did not end there.
The plot thickened very quickly once they got rid of Abiola. Even the media were taken for a ride. When the former President Babangida visited Obasanjo on 27 June 1998 at his Iyalode residence, Abeokuta, eight days after his release from Jos Prison, it was widely assumed that the meeting was the first between the former Pleads of State. In actual fact, nothing could be further from the truth. IBB had been the key player in getting Obasanjo released and for reasons known to himself. And according to sources close to the Jos Prison, the Minna-based former president had paid a secret visit to the imprisoned Obasanjo once Abacha’s death had made it safe to do so. People close to the man called Maradona believethat the first meeting provided him with the opportunity for outlining his group’s plan for Obasanjo. It is quite possible that Obasanjo did not believe IBB because until his conviction for the phantom coup, Obasanjo had been a sharp critic of Babangida.
For instance, in February 1994, at the Arewa House, Kaduna, when Obasanjo told the distinguished audience that Babangida was corrupting the Armed Forces and destroying civil institutions, he was merely repeating most of what he had said on previous occasions.
Earlier, in 1992, when IBB annulled the primaries that would have resulted in a run-off election between Yar’Adua and Ciroma, Obasanjo had warned darkly: “Don’t mistake the silence of Nigerians for the weakness and the sycophancy of the greedy and opportunistic people who parade the corridors of power as representatives of the people’s true feelings”. That warning, on the face of it might be interpreted as a spirited defence of the right of the people to elect their leader. That would be a mistake. Both Yar’Adua and Ciroma were close friends of Obasanjo and irrespective of who emerged as President, Obasanjo’s interests were guaranteed to be well protected. It is also noteworthy that the warning Obasanjo gave to Babangida in 1992, when it was clear that IBB was nursing a hidden agenda to prolong his stay is now being given to Obasanjo concerning his third term ambition. Predictably, Obasanjo is rejecting it thereby adding hypocrisy to his multitude of personal attributes and defects.
Obasanjo’s attack on IBB continued even after his release from prison. On 20 June 1998, he released a statement which reads:
“Without the resolution of the events of June 12, 1993, we may not have a firm and solid foundation to erect the structure of democracy on a lasting basis apart from the implications for unity and stability in the country. And that is even when the subsequent foundation is not defective as the present foundation for Nigerian democracy is. But, defects can be corrected.
“ When in February 1994, I publicly warned the nation in an address at the Arewa House, Kaduna, that regime [Abacha’s] which had eight years tutelage under Babangida and lapped it all up would be worse than Babangida’s, I was called an alarmist among other names.
“Today, we are all victims and eye witnesses. Let me venture to give another warning no matter what name I may be called or what threat or danger may be involved. Our military personnel have generally become inured to corruption, lying, selfishness, lack of patriotism, avarice, and character and conduct unbecoming of a good military”.
In actual fact, Obasanjo’s comments about Babangida were more devastating. Reproduced below is a part of it:
“As it turned out after successfully undoing his military colleagues with the acquiescence of the non-military, General Babangida came out in his true colours, demonstrating again and again that he is a master of intrigues, mismanagement, corruption, manipulation, deceit, settlement, cover-up and self-promoting at the expense of almost everybody else and everything else…. I need to only add at this juncture that General Babangida is the main architect of the state in which the nation finds itself today, and that General Abacha was his eminent disciple, faithful supporter and beneficiary”.
Well. As the great story teller Aesop (c550 B.C) has remarked: “Only cowards insult dying majesty”. Obasanjo made these remarks when IBB was out of office and when it appeared as if Abacha might not last long. The statement and the timing speak volumes for the man’s courage.
There was nothing new in all of these, of course. The former Chief of Army Staff, under Babangida, Lt-General Ibrahim Salihu, on retirement from the army had described the Nigerian army as one “where anything goes”.
Given the disdain in which he holds Babangida, which might have been mutual, one would have assumed that the last person to whom he will open his doors on his release would be IBB. Yet, exactly a week after repeating these damning statements about his successor and former subordinate, Babangida came calling.
According to the report in VANGUARD of 28 June 1998 by Kolade Lanrewaju: “Former President, General Ibrahim Babangida, yesterday visited recently freed former Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo as his Ita-Iyalode Abeokuta residence to felicitate with him on his release….
News men who besieged the house were barred from gaining entrance while the two former heads of state conferred for about three hours.
Later in the report, IBB described Obasanjo as an “elder statesman and my big brother” perhaps meaning all was forgiven; if not totally forgotten and they could proceed to business as usual.
However, the media and the entire country missed a hint that was inadvertently dropped by Babangida when he said: “Iam very grateful that General Obasanjo is now very much with us. He is one of the men that this country really needs”.
Thus Babangida, a firm believer in the notion that “every man has his price” had concluded another deal as far as he was concerned. But, what does that say about Obasanjo, who entered into a deal with a man he had accused of introducing into “the army corruption, lying, selfishness, lack of patriotism, avarice, and character and conduct unbecoming of a good military officer”.
Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are. Still, we have not reached the depth of Obasanjo’s insincerity and inability to hold long on to a position, unless it serves his personal purpose.
Nothing demonstrates this better than his relationship with a journalist which was always a reflection of his status at any point in time. Until Monday 13 March 1995, when three plain-clothes security officers visited Obasanjo Farms at Ota, resulting in imprisonment for 1,099 days, Obasanjo had a healthy disdain for journalists. Right on his front gate was posted a signboard warning: Dogs and journalists keep out. The same sign was present at the front gate of his Abeokuta residence. At the few public functions which he attended, Obasanjo had little time for media men and the response was often hostile and rude. Fortunately, journalists are not as vindictive as Obasanjo. At any rate, they must get their stories; even if from the most hostile sources. The media actually went to bat for Obasanjo, at great risk to themselves, throughout his detention and their outcry played a major role in his being alive today.
On 17 June 1998, on arrival at his Abeokuta residence, Obasanjo had one of the first few complimentary words to say about the media. He announced to a startled group of reporters: “I thank God and all those including the media God used for my release. 1 thank friends and loved ones and those who have supported me and my family all these days. God bless you all”.
According to the VANGUARD State Correspondent, Kolade Lanrewaju, in a report filed on 20 June 1998, prison seemed to have changed Obasanjo’s belligerence towards the media. Writes Kolade: “Last Wednesday, at his Abeokuta country home even journalist were pleasantly surprised when Obasanjo personally, welcomed reporters into his living room, ushered them into their seats and exchanged banters with them. The pressure of the numerous visitors to the former Head of State, most of whom were royal fathers could not allow the elder statesman to exhibit his transformation and new found love for journalists”.
But, was there a real transformation? Kolade could be forgiven because he was not the only journalist who had been fooled by the outward demonstration of change. Deep down Obasanjo still hated the media. The Obasanjo, just released from prison, was a different person from the one that would re-emerge later and resume his hostility to journalists. The Obasanjo who was enjoying his freedom on the third day of his release faced a life with many uncertainties. His beloved Obasanjo Farms and most of his other businesses have been totally or partially destroyed by Abacha’s government. The challenges facing him included where, and how, to begin again re-building his life. Given a military regime at the centre, meaning no legislature and a judiciary under the boot of the military, the Fourth Estate of the Realm as Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) has called the media remains the only free institution to which he could cling.
Obasanjo reverted to his frosty relationship with the media within weeks when, at last, convinced that he was the chosen successor to Abubakar by the Gang of Four.
Catalogue of deception by the Military
Since the first military coup of 15 January 1966, which resulted in the assassination of the Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and his wife; the Sardauna of Sokoto, Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, Premier of the Northern Region and leader of the ruling Northern Peoples’ Congress, NPC; Chief S.L. Akintola, the Premier of the Western Region; Brigadier Ademulegun, the highest ranking Yoruba officer in the military as well as keep the civilian population divided through a deliberate policy of “divide and rule”. One military regime after another after ascribing to itself the role of a “corrective regime” had hastily gathered under it some of the old politicians who were overthrown plus a few young and new faces. The new faces which invariably included academicians and social critics, plucked out of relative obscurity and near poverty and catapulted into the ranks of the wealthy overnight, provided the legitimacy the military needed to entrench itself in power. Thereafter, they proceeded to promulgate obnoxious decrees which deprived the citizenry of their fundamental human rights. Nothing had proved so conclusively the bankruptcy of principles among the civilian politicians and their comrades in the academia than the ease with which virtually all of them abandoned the fight for human rights once they became part of the ruling class, even if as second class holders of transient power.
Even the decrees promulgated, ostensibly designed to promote the general welfare of the masses, ended up being subverted by the top hierarchy of the military themselves – for their own benefits. In this regard, no Head of State, civilian or military, ever abused his office to advance his own personal interest at the expense of the people more than Olusegun Obasanjo. And none was more hypocritical about his stated good intentions. Let me now quickly illustrate this point by citing two examples.
The first was the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree of 1977 which was signed into law by Lt-general O. Obasanjo on 12 June 1977. The decree itself repeals of four other previous decrees. These were:
- The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree 1972.
- The Nigeria Enterprises Promotion (Amendment) Decree 1973.
- The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion (Amendment) Decree 1974.
- The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion (Amendment) Decree No. 2 1974.
- The Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree 1976.
A casual observer might presume that all those decrees and amendments were actually designed to promote Nigerian enterprises. Nothing could be further from the truth. The objective was for the military officers to seize the lion’s share of the divestment which expatriates were to be forced to undertake. The top brass was going to rob foreigners as well as fellow Nigerians and they needed the decrees to legitimatize what would have been barefaced larceny. And the looting was just for officers. As Allan Silitoe has observed in THE FLAME OF LIFE: “The Men whowield the sword or fire the gun don’t get rich. They are hired labourers because armies maintain their hierarchies and caste structures in order to preserve themselves for future robberies. Those at the top get everything, while those at the bottom receive nothing”.
The signal that the 1977 decree was ill-motivated came early. The decreeitself was presumed to have come into force on 29 June 1976, even though it was not singed until six months after. Lawlessness by military governments was perhaps best demonstrated by the penchant to give retroactive effect to decrees passed with evil intentions. From 1972 until 1977, it was clear that the military took a very keen interest in this matter. In fact, no other issue of public interest was visited so often and became the subject of so many decrees and amendments as the single one involving the ownership and transfer of ownership of business enterprises.
On the face of it, all those decrees and amendments were designed to give Nigerians a fairer deal because of what was perceived as the lopsided distribution of wealth based on trading. Nigeria in every sense could be described as “another nation of shopkeepers”. There were very few manufacturing enterprises. While it would be interesting to reproduce the entire decree, it would not be necessary. We will only cite here those sections and subsections of the decree which prove the military duplicity in general and particularly how Obasanjo as Head of State proceeded to subvert his own decree. Later, more evidence will be provided to establish the point that subversion of this decree was not an isolated case. Instead what we had was a pattern of corruption of decrees under Obasanjo as to make the man a serial law beaker; a trait he exhibits even till today.
First, there is the evidence provided by Mr. Allison Ayida, Secretary to the Federal Government, SFG, under both Generals Murtala Mohammed and Obasanjo who could be regarded as a credible witness and who certainly was not fooling around when he writes in The Guardian of 1 April 1990:
“When the White Paper on the Adeosun lndigenisation Panel Report was drafted by one of the Perm Secs [Permanent Secretaries], Chief John Oyegun, whom you instructed in vain never to discuss the contents with me, you gave me the draft White Paper and report for my comments within 24 hours…
There were no-go areas on some of the panel’s recommendations which on your specific instructions included, “where a Nigerian had acquired the bulk of the shares in any enterprises outside Schedule I, the shares should be confiscated and forfeited to the Federal Government and the names of the ‘money-bags’ publicized. Apparently, you had not studied volume III of the report where the names of such shareholders were listed. When I drew your attention to the pages where your name appeared, you readily agreed that the panel’s recommendation should be rejected. [emphasis mine.]
Several facts are revealed in this article, none of them complimentary to the former Head of State. First, was his deliberate attempt to violate the Civil Service ethos which, had it been maintained, would have saved the nation from the calamities that have befallen it during all the years of military misrule. Second, was hypocrisy; which in this case meant the calculated attempt to nail some individuals called ‘moneybags’ only to discover that he was one of them. Third, was the rejection of recommendations by a panel, established by Obasanjo himself, which would have resulted in more equitable allocation of the shares simply because the Head of State refused to give up the shares which he had acquired through the questionable processes adopted at the time.
However, damning as that particular episode was, it pales into insignificance when placed side by side with the atrocities that were committed under the Land Use Decree of 1978. If ever a law was passed in Nigeria since 1914 which could be called satanic, this was it!
Land Use Decree of 1978-Or the Great Land Robbery
On paper, the Land Use Decree which was signed into law by Lt- General Olusegun Obasanjo on 29 March 1978 would have been an ideal statute in a honest socialist republic or any country subscribing to the definition of justice provided by Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832, who wrote in the Commonplace Book: “The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation”. Granted, land acquisition and retainership were in total chaos in most states especially in Lagos and the border state of Ogun. Speculation and fraudulent deals were common. Land acquisition for private and even industrial development was generally risky. The pervasive need for land reform was unquestionable. And only a military and unitary government could have in one swoop passed a law binding on all the states because the problems were different everywhere. But, the decree that emerged eventually served only the personal interests of top military brass without resolving many of the problems it set out to solve in the first place. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the decree was Head of Stale Obasanjo. Strictly speaking, when considered on its merits, the Land Use Decree should have approximated the Bentamine ideal but for some of the provisions which were deliberately inserted with abuse in mind. Again, space and time would not permit us to reproduce the entire decree. At any rate most of the portions not reproduced here derive from the most important parts and those that paved the way for corruption of the decree.
Titled Decree 6 of 1978 it started with a preamble which states:
“WHEREAS it is in the public interest that the rights of all Nigerians to the land of Nigeria be asserted and preserved by law:
AND WHEREAS it is also in the public interest that the rights of all Nigerians to use and enjoy land in Nigeria and the natural fruits thereof in sufficient quantity to enable them to provide for the sustenance of themselves and their families should be assured, protected and preserved:
NOW THEREFORE, THE FEDERAL MILITARY GOVERNMENT hereby decrees as follows:
PART 1-GENERAL
1. Subject to provisions of this decree, all land comprised in the territory of each State in the Federation are hereby vested in the Military Governor of that State and such land shall be held in trust and administered for the use and common benefit of all Nigerians in accordance with the provisions of this decree.
2. -(1) As from the commencement of this decree:
(a) all land in urban areas shall be under the control and Management of the Military Governor of each state; and
(b) all other land shall, subject to this decree, be under the control and Management of the Local Government within the area of jurisdiction of which the land is situated.
(2) There shall be established in each State a body to be known as the “Land Use and Allocation Committee” which shall have the responsibility for:
(a) advising the Military Governor on any matter connected with the management of land to which paragraph (a) of subsection (1) above relates;
(b) advising the Military Governor on any matter connected with the resettlement of persons affected by the revocation of rights of occupancy on the ground of overriding public interest under this decree; and
(c) determining disputes as to the amount of compensation payable under this decree for improvements on land.
(3) The Land Use Allocation Committee shall consist of such number of persons as the Military Governor may determine.
(4) The Committee shall be presided over by such one of its members as may be designated by the Military Governor and, subject to such directions as may be given in that regard by the Military Governor, shall have the power to regulate proceedings.
A pause is required here to examine the divergence between the stated reasons for establishing the decree and Part 1 of the decree. For a long time, economic theory has held it as an axiom, still mostly true till today, that land is the basis of all wealth. Even, in today’s knowledge economy, land still plays a vital role in wealth creation. For a mostly agrarian society, like Nigeria, where about 70 percent of the people live in rural areas, land is quite often the only substantial property they own. Yet, after starting out with the generally acceptable objective of promoting “the rights of all Nigerians to use and enjoy land in Nigeria”, the decree has ended up depriving them of their right to land. Instead of all Nigerians, nineteen Military Governors owned the land. Even the allusion to rural land and the role of Local Government Chairmen was either deliberately or inadvertently deceptive because under military government, Local Government Chairmen were appointed by the Military Governor and they served as his pleasure.
Secondly, Local Government Chairmen were only allowed to exercise the power granted to them by the decree only if the Military Governor had no use for the land in question. At any rate, the decree also granted the Military Governor the power to determine which areas were urban and as such directly under his control.
Furthermore, by deliberately failing to determine the number of members of the Land Allocation Committee, the decree made it possible in many states for the Military Governor to appoint a one man committee who served purely as the Governor’s assistant on land allocation issues. Most did not even bother with pretences; they appointed none. One former Military Governor in Oyo State, after reportedly collecting N50,000 to sign the Certificate of Occupancy, [C of O] will announce to all who cared to listen: “and you can go and tell Abacha”. He was not even an indigene of Oyo State. Such was the insult to which the people were subjected under this decree.
More to the point, given the nature of a military regime, all the Military Governors were on military posting; they served at the pleasure of the military Head of State; which in effect meant that all Nigerian land had only one landlord – the Head of State, Olusegun Obasanjo. To underline the subservient role of the Military Governor to the Head of State under this decree, section 28 (4) of the decree provides that:
“The Military Governor shall revoke a right of occupancy in the event of the issue of a notice by or on behalf of the Federal Military Government if such notice declares such land to be required by the Government for public purposes”.
The meaning is quite clear; the revocation of any Certificate of Occupancy given to an individual or corporate entity becomes mandatory once the Military Head of State requested it.
The other provisions under Part 1 are generally laughable given the subservience of Nigerians to those in transient positions of power. The Land Use and Allocation committee was usually a smokescreen and powerless as we noted earlier on. Toeing the line became the first requirement for those appointed to stay in office and help themselves to their own share of the choice of land allocations.
Thus in the discharge of the responsibilities given to them under the decree, the Land Use Committees invariably fell far short of the standards of fairness necessary for the decree to serve the purposes for which it was established.
Almost twenty pages long, the decree includes all the window dressing needed to render it acceptable to a vast majority of the people of Nigeria. But, the explanatory note which comes at the end, gives the whole game away. Unfortunately, extremely few Nigerians ever bothered to read the entire decree; even the lawyers who took the trouble probably focused on how they could benefit from it. For posterity and those who might not have access to the decree here is the Explanatory Note in its entirety.
(This note does not form part of the above decree but is intended to explain its purport).
“The decree vests all land comprised in the territory of each state (except land invested in the Federal Government and its agencies) solely in the Military Governor of the state who will hold such land in trust for the people. The Military Governor should henceforth be responsible for allocation of land in all urban areas to individuals resident in the state or to organizations for residential, agricultural, commercial and other purposes while similar powers are conferred on Local Governments.
Provision is made in the decree for the establishment in each state of a Land Use and Allocation Committee (composed of at least two estate surveyors or land officers, a legal practitioner and some other members representing community interests with advisory functions and power to determine disputes as to the amount of compensation payable for improvements upon revocation of Certificates of Occupancy. Each Local Government would also set up a Land Allocation Advisory Committee hut with a purely advisory role.
The other provisions relate to designation of urban areas; statutory and customary rights of occupancy; issue and revocation of occupancy and sundry matters.
Quite apart from the confusion arising from first of all vesting “all land in the territory of each state” in the Military Governor and apparently giving powers over rural land to Local Government Chairmen, the decree also empowered the Military Governor to allocate land for agriculture which was the area of real interest to Obasanjo, who at the time was having difficulties persuading many families in Ota to sell their ancestral land to him for the establishment of Temperance Farms now Obasanjo Farms. In one day all the owners of those parcels of land were by decree deprived of their land.
In practice, military and civilian governors have, by and large, abandoned the laudable objectives of the decree. Land has since the promulgation of this decree been allocated and sold for self enrichment of the governors; they have been allocated to close relatives and Commissioners; to political associates irrespective of whether they are resident in the state or not. And instead of providing access to land by “all Nigerians” (itself a pipe dream), the opportunity has been narrowed to those with access to government.
Abuse of the decree, with regard to allocation of land, runs simultaneously with abuse of the power to revoke the Certificate of Occupancy even till today. Newswatch magazine of 3 April 2006, reported the case of Abdulmumini Kundat, a former Deputy Speaker in Bauchi State, who now heads a committee asking the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to probe the administration of Governor Mu’azu, who was elected on the ticket of the PDP. According to the report, filed by Tobs Agbaegbu, Abuja Bureau Chief of the magazine, “He [Kundat] and some other members of the committee however, paid the price of finding their governor guilty. Kundat did not return to the House in 2003. Later the State government bulldozed an uncompleted petrol station he was building in Bauchi with a promise of compensation.
He told Newswatch that he had received no compensation ever since, neither has the government developed the site”.
The demolitions ordered in the Federal Capital Territory from 1999 to 2007 have also been lopsided.
It is demonstrably true that the Land Use Decree which started out as a positive instrument for land reform has degenerated into a weapon for vindictiveness and avenue for satisfying the greed of governors. But, before that, it became a licence for satisfying Obasanjo’s greed for land at Sango Ota. Within months of promulgation of the decree, vast areas of land were compulsorily acquired by the Military Governor of Ogun State and transferred to the military Head of State, Olusegun Obasanjo, for what many considered less than market value.
Buhari-Idiagbon corrective regime
The government headed by Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, as military Head of State, and Major-General Idiagbon, as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, was refreshingly different from most of the other military regimes in two ways. First, no transition to civil rule was announced and no terminal date to their rule was promised. Indeed, when reporters, in 1984, asked General Buhari when his government would leave, he bluntly replied: “Nobody put us in power; so nobody has a right to ask us when we shall leave”. His government was also very vocal about wiping out pervasive indiscipline and corruption in the country. And, in fairness to that government, it was well on its way towards achieving those objectives. For once Nigerians were forced to start imbibing the queuing culture and the enforced environmental sanitation day, every last Saturday of the month, has survived as a lasting legacy till today.
Unfortunately, that is all the credit that the regime will receive. While Buhari and Idiagbon were themselves relatively honest and dedicated, their subordinates and those to whom important functions were assigned soon entrenched corruption on a scale matching those of the regimes that preceded it. Buhari’s government which was the most draconian at that time, amply demonstrated the observation by Lord Acton, 1834-1902: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men”.
Two important examples will serve to illustrate this point. The first was in connection with the introduction of the Form M system to allocate scarce foreign exchange. Under this scheme, companies requesting foreign exchange allocation which was exclusively a government affair, for the importation of raw materials, components and spare parts, were required to fill a form designated as Form M. In this form the company was expected to declare, among other things, the nature of its business, its annual turnover, capacity installation, requirements for foreign exchange; staff strength and it was also requested to furnish the authorities with evidence of payment of taxes for the previous three years. These criteria, if faithfully applied as the basis for the allocation of foreign exchange at the time, would have provided a level playing held and serve as objective criteria for assessing the equity of the allocation procedure.
In practice, things worked out differently. The federal Ministry of Commerce which was charged with the execution of the policy became a bee-hive of corrupt practices. The most obvious form of’ injustice was the ethnic bias that was introduced by the Minister and his staff. For instance, in the published allocutions for 1985, the UAC of Nigeria, then the country’s largest conglomerate with staff strength almost 140,000, received less than ten percent of its requirements. Lever Brothers (now Unilever), the nation’s first and largest manufacturing company at the time; Nigerian Breweries Plc, with three plants in Lagos, Kaduna and Aba; and Dunlop, among other blue chip companies quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, received less than a half the foreign exchange allocations of companies purportedly based in the north. Most of these companies were either not existing or they had used forged documents, which with the minimum of checking would have been revealed to be so. Clearly, it made no sense for the UAC of Nigeria to have received less than any other company in Nigeria at the time under review.
This writer was the Marketing Manager for North Brewery Limited, Kano, which was then the largest private, direct and indirect, employer of labour in the state at the time. We also paid the highest taxes of any enterprise. The brewery received far less foreign exchange allocation than a Kano State indigene without a factory and who did not fulfill the requirements. One of the humiliating experiences for many of us in management at the time involved having to beg individuals without registered businesses to sell the foreign exchange allocated to them to us.
The pattern of corruption was the same nationwide. The foreign exchange allocation process was so corrupt that a top official of the Ministry of Commerce, appointed fresh out of the university and after his Youth Service year was already the proud owner of a personal jet, among other symbols of affluence, a year after his appointment. He was not even hiding the fact. Yet, the “corrective regime” looked the other way. As can be expected, he was not alone. There was no official of the Ministry of Commerce at the time, from the messenger to the Minister, who was not immersed up to his eyeballs in corrupt practices too numerous to mention. It became the ministry to which everybody in service wanted to be posted.
The second incident involved what became known as the scandal of 53 suit cases. Early in 1984, the government’s cardinal monetary policy aimed to bring all the money in circulation, but outside of the banking system, back into the system to create the pool of funds which banks could provide as loans for rapid economic development. It was estimated at the time that over seventy percent of all the money in circulation was outside the banking system. The approach the government adopted was to change the bank notes in use which also had the secondary objective of determining those who were sitting on piles of corrupt wealth. Finally, despite the fact that the Naira was not internationally convertible, the currency was still available in many countries abroad, especially in ECOWAS countries. Bringing back those currencies was another of the problems government intended to solve in one stroke.
Two methods of implementation were adopted. Very little time was allowed for the exchange to take place in the first instance and from the date of announcement of the policy all incoming travelers’ luggage, without exception was to be opened and searched and any undeclared currencies forfeited. The person involved was also subject to prosecution.
Again, this was a sound policy, given the objectives it was designed to achieve. As usual, it was rigorously enforced until the twin evils of tribalism and favouritism arose in the form of 53 suit cases. The Emir of Daura, was the traditional ruler of the emirate from where the Head of State came. Buhari might be Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, but the forces of tradition were stronger. The Emir apparently saw no reason to obey a decree passed by one of his own subjects. Despite the fact that Nigerian travelers are notorious for the number of suit cases they carry on their travels, every one of them was painstakingly searched. Then came the Emir of Daura. He had travelled abroad with some of his wives and, like royalty everywhere, they carried more than the average load of baggage. On arrival, the party had 53 suitcases to declare. A conscientious Customs official, acting on standing instructions given to every officer operating at the border posts, demanded that each of the suit cases be opened for inspection. The Emir’s staff, who had all come to receive the royal father and his entourage, bluntly refused on two grounds. First, it was an insult to the Emir to have his luggage and that of his household checked by and like an ordinary commoner. Second, the officer, being male, could not be permitted-to search the suit cases of the Emir’s wives and peep into their private wardrobes. Even the deployment of a female Customs official did not persuade them to yield to the search.
The Customs officials were adamant that orders were orders. At any rule, severe penalties awaited any officer caught allowing suitcases to pass through unchecked. A Mexican stand-off resulted and under ordinary circumstances the luggage would have been seized and the travelers detained. The impasse was broken when a senior military officer, who had been telephoned by the Emir, arrived. The military officer ordered the suit cases released without inspection as required by regulations governing the currency exchange programme.
Through this one had example, the Buhari-Idiagbo regime opened the flood gates to thousands of suit cases which later entered the country unchecked. Only God knows the amount of incalculable damage that was caused by the deliberate sabotage of its own programme by this “corrective regime”
The N40 billion transition to another military regime
Military deception and corruption took a different turn when Babangida replaced Buhari as military President. Instead of the perpetual frown on the face of Idiagbon and the serious mien of Buhari, Nigerians were confronted with a smiling military Head of State. IBB, as he was fondly called at first, immediately announced the repeal of many of the draconian decrees his predecessor had promulgated; even though as the Chief of Army Staff, he was party to their enactment. But it was good politics and it eased the problems of acceptance and legitimacy. He was also very jovial and that was a trap into which most Nigerians fell. Unfortunately, most Nigerians have never heard of Albert Camus, 1903-1960, the French Nobel Prize Winning philosopher who warned that: “He who jokes at the head of government has a tendency to tyranny”. Even the warning of their own citizens that there might be a hidden agenda fell on deaf ears until it was too late. Many of the decrees repealed in 1985 by Babangida were later replaced by others just as harsh.
However, nothing better demonstrates the insincerity of the military than Babangida’s N40 billion transition programme, which was advertised as transition to civil rule but, which ended as a transition from one military government to another. In the Budget Address of 1986, delivered on 31 December 1985, Babangida was on record as saying the following:
“Fellow patriots, let me now turn to the issue of our political future about which I spoke in October 1985. In order to establish a viable and enduring people-oriented political system devoid of perennial disruptions, this administration has decided to involve the people in the search for a solution to the problem of political instability which characterized our past experiments in democracy.
Certain factors have continued to feature as the main contributors to our political instability. These are:
(a) Political insensitivity and intolerance.
(b) Mismanagement
(c) Failure to effect political succession without rigging, rancour and violence.
(d) Crass opportunism
(e) Narrow perception of power as an instrument of self or sectional aggrandizement
(f) Corruption
These factors, in turn, often give rise to economic depression, social chaos, cynicism, apathy, and total disaffection of the general citizenry from the political leadership and processes, as manifested during our two fatal experiments at establishing a political system capable of ensuring:
Justice
(a) Opportunity for people to participate in the decision-making process.
(b) A new social and economic order based on peace, stability, and harmony, and on equitable distribution of national resources and opportunities.
We must not forget that the collapse of the economy is directly attributable to bad government, corruption and the absence of public accountability. The establishment of a viable political system is, therefore, an essential prerequisite for the achievement of our national goals and objectives”.
The unmitigated gall of our military leaders was probably never better demonstrated than that address by Babangida. The man whose rule typified political insensitivity and intolerance, gross mismanagement, failure to effect political succession without violence, crass opportunism (or what do you call multiple coup making?), narrow perception of power as an instrument of self- aggrandizement and, above all, corruption had the audacity to lecture the citizen on these factors which, by his own admission, “give rise to economic depression, social chaos, cynicism, apathy” among other maladies retarding national progress. From the start of the Structural Adjustment Programme, SAP, for which his government was best known, to its end, the nation was reeling in deep economic depression.
Yet, it was this same IBB who was the arrow-head of the military for the enthronement of Obasanjo as president in 1998/99. Somehow, perhaps on account of limited education in history or philosophy or both, the top military brass who imposed Obasanjo on the nation had forgotten that you cannot carve a masterpiece out of rotten wood. Given Obasanjo’s track record, known to many of them, it was one of the wonders of the world that he was trusted.
Was the disaster called Obasanjo administration intended or was it an inadvertent consequence of the military’s strategy of remaining in power perpetually, even if it means doing so by installing a soldier in flowing robes? That is difficult to answer. One thing, however, was clear from the start: national interest was the last thing on their minds. What was uppermost on their minds were the interests of the ruling class and the PDP had to be hijacked to pursue it. They were confident that given the greed of most of the political class, they would have no difficulty in gaining control of the party. And they were right. It took a donation of N130 million by Obasanjo, money donated by his promoters to set the stage and in no time the G-34, the original founders of the PDP were swept aside.
Having succeeded in luring the nation to sleep with that tranquiliser of a speech, Babangida proceeded to give the nation the run around as he executed what turned out to be his “transition to another military rule”. Again, critics who pointed to a possible hidden agenda were dismissed as prophets of doom by the military and denounced by politicians who were too gullible to notice the sleight of hands as the political cards were shuffled and reshuffled to serve IBB’s interests. Otherwise the politicians were so eager to regain power that only a few of them refused to play “the only game in town” because they could see clearly that it was crooked.
But, all things come to an end. And 12 June 1993 came, and an election generally adjudged to be free and fair was conducted and a president elected. Suddenly, the iron fists concealed in the velvet gloves were revealed. IBB annulled the election. The winner and the electorate were stunned. For IBB, it also proved to be a fatal mistake as the social uprising resulting from the annulment forced him to “step aside” from the military. But, he still had a hand to play. Instead of leaving the nation to determine its own fate, he imposed Chief Ernest Shonekan as the Head of what he called the Interim National Government, ING Shonekan must have been the only one in Nigeria at the time who did not realize that he was living on borrowed time granted by the military then headed by General Sani Abacha. He lasted 82 days.
For the winner, the victory also proved to be fatal. Chief Abiola, and IBB were close friends and the president-elect had specifically asked the former Head of State if the military was sincere about transfer of power to civilians. He was reassured not only by IBB but by all the service chiefs with whom he was on a first name basis. He felt secure with those assurances. Little did he know that he had “signed a pact with the devil” (apologies to Adolf Hitler); little did the world know that Abiola had signed his own death warrant and that of his wife Alhaja Kudirat Abiola.
The chain of events that led to their deaths began with a series of deceitful pronouncements by the military. Abacha also came into office proclaiming that his administration would not stay “one day longer than necessary”. By the time he died, five years after, he was well on his way to becoming the only candidate for the presidential election of 1998. That was after ensuring that rubber stamps were elected to the legislative houses at national and state levels.
Thus Obasanjo’s betrayal of trust only followed a pattern that had been well-established by the military. But, the method he adopted for solving an old problem is the subject of this book because it was unique. Neither Gowon, nor Buhari, nor IBB nor Abacha pretended that they were running democratic governments. There were no parties or constitution to restrain them. Like Louis XIV, 1638-1715, each could with a great deal of justification, claim that: “I am the state’’, but not President Obasanjo. He was a creature of both the PDP party’s constitution and the 1960 Constitution. We shall examine how his approach to leadership turned a noble experiment in party politics to the nightmare that it became for its founding fathers and others who joined later on.
Betrayal and control
While the civilian members of the PDP had in mind a political party that was democratic in principle and practice and had written a party constitution to give effect to those ideals, the president they elected, like all military officers, had a different objective in mind. Obasanjo, out of power, they were to learn later, attacked Babangida and Abacha, not because he was opposed to their power grab or their quest for absolute power. There was no principle involved in his opposition. He was simply envious that his successors could exercise powers which he lacked as Head of State from 1976 to 1979. Right from the start, he set his sights on absolute control. His strategic plan as it unfolded had three components. First, was divided and rule. Second, replace all those likely to constitute the strongest opposition to subversion of the party’s constitution with “yes-men”. Third, use corruption-loaded patronage liberally. Altogether, the strategy could be reduced to two words: force and fraud. Like Lucius Accius, his motto was: Oderint, dum metuant, (Latin) meaning Let them hate, so long as they fear.
It didn’t take him too long to unveil his plans. Fortunately, the 1999 Constitution written by the military with the planned successor to General Abubakar being a former military Head of State, had placed at his disposal all the forces in uniform. He was not only Commander-in-Chief of the Armed forces, he also had the exclusive right to appoint and sack the Inspector General of Police as well as all the heads of the security services.
For an ambitious person nursing a secret agenda, that was a precious gift. The President of Nigeria literally enjoys the power of life and death over all citizens; especially when the immunity clause shielding him from prosecution for actions taken while in office are thrown into the baggage. We were later to see how the power of death was utilized at Odi and Zakim Biam.
In addition to all that, he had the unlimited patronage at his disposal. The President of Nigeria can literally turn a pauper into a billionaire overnight by the stroke of the pen. This power was at first shared with two other people who constituted the triumvirate of power in the PDP – the Vice President, Abubakar Atiku, and Chief Tony Anenih, who was bestowed with a title, not recognized by the party constitution, of Party Leader. Like all other triumvirates in history, this too started as a three-man mafia running the PDP; it was destined to become a one-man show. But, neither Atiku nor Anenih knew what was in store for each of them.
There were, however, three known major obstacles in the way of Obasanjo’s ambition; the fourth will emerge later. First was the Board of Trustees, BOT, headed by Dr Alex Ekwueme, former Vice President in the Second Republic and widely regarded as “the father of the PDP”; a lawyer and a strict constructionist of the party’s constitution. The second was Chief Solomon Lar, the incumbent National Chairman of the party; another lawyer and strict constructionist who believed in the supremacy of the party over elected officials, including the President. And the third was the party’s constitution itself. It was a product of outstanding legal draftsmen, including late Chief Bola Ige, the former Attorney-General of the Federation, who later departed to join the Alliance for Democracy, AD, in 1998.
The framers of the PDP constitution were all bent on bequeathing a democratic institution to posterity. All these had to be subverted if Obasanjo, who had sworn to uphold the constitution of the party as well as the nation’s constitution, was to succeed in his quest for absolute power.
Okwesilieze Nwodo was one of the founding fathers of PDP. On the front page of the Sunday VANGUARD of 26 July 2009, he was quoted as follows: “A motion was moved and seconded and carried that if you want to become a state governor on our party platform, you must deliver your local government and if you want to become the presidential candidate, you must deliver your state… When we got to Jos, I made it clear to them that Obasanjo did not qualify to be an aspirant, much more a presidential candidate and some people cried blue murder”. He went further during the interview granted to the paper to draw an elaborate picture demonstrating how the party right from the start corrupted its own ideals by subverting the constitution just to favour the man who would later pretend to fight corruption. Below is an excerpt taken from that interview.
VANGUARD: But, even before the 1998 local government elections Olusegun Obasanjo was already being touted as the possible president and all the civilians were just filing behind the choice of the military?
NWODO: In fact, let me tell you even until the time the governors emerged, there was no real military interference, although in some states, the people who were transiting as military governors may have helped some of their friends to succeed them, but, these were scattered cases here and there….
VANGUARD: What I am saying is that Obasanjo had started throwing money here and there as a PDP heavyweight contender. .?
[It might be added at this point that nobody asked where a man who was almost destitute when he was pardoned got the money from a few months after to throw around].
NWODO: I’ll tell you how Obasanjo came about. After his release from prison, Abdulsalami Abubakar’s regime granted him [alone out of those convicted] amnesty and that amnesty was engineered by General Ibrahim Babangida. It was Babangida’s own way of trying to put the June 12 debacle behind him, because he believed that the South West had actually been pushed to the wall so much so they were already singing their own Oodua anthem and were already hoisting their own flag in some places; and he believed that Nigeria could not survive another secessionist war. So the way he thought fit to placate them and carry them along was to cede the presidency to the South West.
He also figured that Obasanjo was the right man to do the job because Obasanjo was a man who, once he’s convinced about what he has set out to do, he would do it without bothering what Nigerians and the Press would say about him; and that Nigeria needed someone like that at the time – that was his own analysis of Obasanjo and why he believed that he was the best man at the time”.
Let us pause again at this point to understand what Nwodo was saying. It has again been confirmed that while the military pretended to us “fellow Nigerians” that they were preparing for a transition to democratic rule, they were also preparing to impose a president whose personal attributes were anti-democracy. In short, they were going to subvert democracy from the top. Meanwhile, they allowed civilians to amuse themselves by assuming that the selection of the PDP flag-bearer was going to be free and fair.
What happened after Nwodo insisted on enforcing the party’s constitution on eligibility for aspirants was perhaps the most unmistakable evidence that this bunch of people, who were later to become the ruling party had no intention of upholding any constitution -not even the one they wrote themselves. Read on.
NWODO: We had had a meeting -the National Executive Committee, NEC-of our party and a motion was moved and seconded and carried that if you want to become a state governor on our party platform, you must deliver your local government and if you want to become presidential candidate of our party, you must deliver your state to the party.
VANGUARD: Could that have been targeted at Obasanjo or was it a coincidence?
NWODO’. The motive of chat motion was to ginger our candidates, that if you want to be a governor, the best you can do is to deliver your local government and if you can deliver more the better. And we used it to screen governors and we had to use it to screen the presidential aspirants. When we got to Jos, I made it clear to them that Obasanjo did not qualify to be an aspirant… I was accused by the Obasanjo group of wanting to disqualify Obasanjo… A lot of fireworks came in from the government (of General Abubakar which was pretending to be neutral) and from IBB and from a lot of other people who wanted Obasanjo. And they put a lot of pressure on Solomon Lar.
To his everlasting shame, Chief Solomon Lar, caved in under the pressure and allowed Obasanjo, who was not qualified to be a candidate to vie for the office. Solomon Lar, among other qualifications, is a lawyer who was even a member of the committee which drafted the PDP constitution he was helping to subvert.
But, history has a funny way of repaying perfidy. Later, after Obasanjo became the most powerful person in Nigeria, he repaid Lar and Babangida with ingratitude – one of his indelible traits. That, however, will come later.
Fortunately, the party itself had helped him out by pandering to expediency when he was allowed to run for the presidential elections despite the eligibility requirements that would have disqualified him. By undermining its own rules, which is corruption of process, the PDP had signalled to Obasanjo that he was in a party where “anything goes” as long as it is properly packaged. He started with inducements; later he would introduce force in all its forms.
The Chairman of the BOT, the National Chairman and other top officials of the party were allowed to nominate ministerial candidates and almost invariably their wishes were granted. Few of them knew at the time that those concessions were the last they would receive so easily, unless the strategic plan developed a hitch. In that case more inducements would be trotted out to keep everyone in line. In any case, Obasanjo was aware that the Ministers served at his pleasure. Once they got accustomed to the perquisites of office, almost all of them would transfer their’ ‘loyalty” to the President and desert their benefactors.
The thrust of the plan aimed to weaken the BOT, almost to the point of rendering it redundant and capturing the National Working Committee starting with the Chairman. The first convention of the party provided the opportunity to remove Solomon Lar and replacing him with a chairman loyal to Obasanjo rather than the party.
Getting rid of Lar was the first major challenge faced by Obasanjo and the other members of the PDP mafia. To begin with, it was unheard of for a political party to want to change a winning chairman who had just led the party to a resounding victory at the polls. But, Obasanjo resented Lar’s known independence and loyalty to the party rather than the President. Very soon, a silent campaign was being waged against Lar. Throwing principle and decency to the winds, those embanking on gaining total control of the party employed a mixture of truths, half-truths, deliberate exaggerations and outright falsehoods.
As the story went, the nation which Obasanjo inherited from General Abubakar was economically comatose and even on the verge of political disintegration unless the newly elected government moved fast. For these reasons the President needed a “free hand”, but how free was never stated, to decide policy unshackled by the party hierarchy. For economic growth of seven to ten percent per annum to be realized, the nation must move at a fast pace. Indeed, the President needed not just to appoint Ministers and Special Advisers to assist him “move the nation forward” but he must be allowed to influence the choice of the National Working Committee, NWC, as well. Very credible story, and given the urgency of getting the nation moving again, very few people would argue against it, if the intention was noble. But the ultimate goal was anything but honourable. The circumstances in which the nation found itself were being exploited for personal advantage.
Certainly, the nation was in dire need for rapid transformation. Many of the countries of the Far East, which were at the same stage of economic and social development as Nigeria in 1960, had left the country far behind. There was a huge gap to close. But the first change that the country required was the enthronement of democracy at all levels and respect for the rule of law. Instead, Obasanjo sought to undermine the constitution and the march to full democracy. He desired instead the lawlessness of military regimes under a democratic dispensation and all he wanted at the top hierarchy of the party were the people to help him achieve that goal. There was tension in the land, but the threat of disintegration was either grossly exaggerated or absent for the simple reason that there were no leaders around to lead any section desiring secession to embark on such a venture. Most Nigerians just wanted an end to military rule which had brought more problems than it solved.
Surprisingly, even the most enlightened people within the PDP who would have been expected to see through the scam fell for it. The only person who read the game plan correctly, was late Chief SB Awoniyi, the Aaro of Mopa. Thus when the seat of the Chairman of the PDP was up for grabs, Chief Awoniyi threw his hat into the ring. Like most decent men, in the rough and tumble politics of Nigeria, he had expected at least neutrality from Obasanjo, a man he once saved from certain death. Shortly after Ironsi’s government was toppled bringing a final end to Major Nzeogu’s coup, Northern soldiers had gone on a revenge mission aimed at liquidating Southern military officers known to be close to the coup plotters. Obasanjo’s friendship with Nzeogu was well known within the army and so he was marked for death. The plan was leaked to him and he sought refuge in Awoniyi’s house. At the time, Chief Awoniyi was one of the most highly respected Permanent Secretaries in the Northern Regional government. He took Obasanjo in and bluffed the soldiers who had come in hot pursuit. Thus, for Awoniyi, the tussle for the Chairmanship of the PDP was time to collect his IOU from a man whose life he had saved. Surprisingly, Awoniyi’s demands were not too high; he just wanted Obasanjo to stay neutral and allow all interested candidates to go into the level playing field. Awoniyi was mistaken.
Indeed, his declaration for the Chairmanship presented the three-man mafia with the fourth serious obstacle and the second serious challenge, in a few months, to the strategic plan designed to remake the PDP in Obasanjo’s image for two main reasons. One, he was immensely popular in the North and since the post was zoned to the North Central it was widely assumed that whoever the zone presented would emerge as chairman. Two, he was one of the G-34, the founding fathers of the PDP. And he had been a member of the northern ruling class since the days of Ahmadu Bello. In fact, Awoniyi was one of the people to whom Obasanjo was taken by the “Gang of Four” for endorsement when they decided to impose Obasanjo on Nigeria.
Unfortunately, those qualities – honesty, fair play, loyalty to people, regard for the rule of law, and respect for democratic principles, among others, were the attributes which would render him unacceptable to Obasanjo, whose abiding preference was for people who would be loyal to himself, even if it meant betraying their country. So Awoniyi too had to be checkmated. For this purpose a programme was already put in place for patronage to be supervised by Chief Tony Anenih, also known as “Mr Fix” it”.
N10 billion war chest and its uses
Anticipatory expenditure, meaning that the President could spend money in an emergency and seek the approval of the National Assembly is allowed in law. It is not expected to be applied to a programme that has not been articulated or costed. It is still a mystery till today, and maybe for all time, how Obasanjo settled on N10 billion instead of N8 billion or N12 billion. Thus, when Obasanjo announced the approval of N10 billion as a package for the Poverty Alleviation Programme, PAP, most knowledgeable people, especially economists, knew that the very corruption which Obasanjo had promised to fight to a standstill was being encouraged instead of being fought. Although this expenditure will be treated again later, the following aspects of it are pertinent to the discussion on how Awoniyi was defeated and eventually forced out of the party. In fact, Obasanjo used Awoniyi to establish a precedent which would be repeated until he left office in 2007. He not only broke those who disagreed with him; he humiliated them and forced them out of the party.
The N10 billion was given to Chief Anenih who was not only, at the time, the Minister of Works, a post guaranteeing maximum patronage, he was the “Party Leader”, a post which kept him extremely busy on party matters; but most importantly, he had never had any experience in executing any programme that was economic in nature. It was the perfect example of putting a square peg in several round holes at the same time. It was perfectly clear to those who had had experience in poverty alleviation programmes that the funds were not meant to fight poverty.
Instead, the approval was supposed to serve as a “war chest” for the battles to capture the PDP. How the N10 billion was spent remains a mystery till today; no reports have ever been issued publicly on how such a colossal amount was spent although some of the patterns of operating the funds have become known.
However, its impact on the PDP convention, which led to the election of Chief Bernabas Gemade, could be regarded as the second major victory for Obasanjo and it paved the way for his ultimate total control of the PDP. It was also the first signal that the PDP was going to be organized as CORRUPTION INCORPORATED. Ghana-Must-Go bags, which had featured prominently during the presidential primaries of the PDP again played a decisive role. Against such a huge war chest, Awoniyi had no chance.
Even then, the mafia would leave nothing to chance; they were not people to do things by halves. Chief Awoniyi, had expected a normal open convention such as the party’s constitution prescribed, in which candidates for various offices zoned to their areas, in his case North Central, would vie for office. So he prepared himself for a normal campaign. But by then, the mafia had taken over. Overnight, the party announced what was called a “Consensus List” of candidates for every office. Votes, in a party, regarded as democratic, were not needed; the new owners of the party had decided for everybody else. Anyone not on the “Consensus List” was wasting his time and money. And, if he persisted in fighting for his rights, he was cut off from patronage or worse. It is no coincidence that more politicians in or close to the PDP party had been victims of assassinations.
Having succeeded in imposing Chief Gemade on the party, Obasanjo became convinced that he could repeat the feat any time he wanted. Soon Gemade was out of flavour and he too was replaced by Chief Audu Ogbeh. But Ogbeh, an Old Boy of Kings College, Lagos, again proved to be too independent for Obasanjo and, in one of the most explosive breaks with PDP Chairman, Obasanjo again removed him. Finally, Colonel Ahmadu Ali (retired) was brought in, undoubtedly because he understood the language of conquerors. He was the ultimate “garrison commander” who could be relied upon to obey orders whether legal or not.
But in 1999, all these were still in the future. The only person who knew where he was leading the flock was Obasanjo himself. Having got the rest swallowing the bait he prepared for them, he set about building up the forces to impose his will. Each time he managed to persuade that it was in the national interest, such as the establishment of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.
Obasanjo’s final deceit: The quest for Third Term
There is a great deal of controversy over what was contained in the agreement reached between Obasanjo and the Northern power brokers and it is also not clear whether the agreement was written or just a “gentlemen’s agreement”. If the latter, then, the Northern leaders who drafted Obasanjo into the race were vastly mistaken. The phrase “an officer and a gentleman” was by 1998 no longer applicable to the majority of the members of the Armed Forces. They have, for the most part, become social parasites. The dispute which arose as Obasanjo was finishing his first term centred around whether there was an understanding or agreement that Obasanjo would serve only one term ending in 2003. Several Northerners and even some Southerners claimed to be aware of such an agreement; Obasanjo and his growing band of supporters denied it. At any rate, the argument was advanced that since the Constitution permitted the President to attempt to run for the second term, then he should be given the chance because the Constitution superseded any private agreement. The details of the arguments and the names of the protagonists of each position need not delay us here. Obasanjo received the second term mandate after the 19 April 2003 elections which came to be known as the “419 elections” given the unprecedented level of electoral malpractices.
As it turned out, neither the opponents, nor the supporters of the second term, reckoned with the possibility that Obasanjo might be planning to govern for a third term. This was something the Constitution did not allow. Few people expected that the President, who had strenuously opposed calls for a National Conference up till his re-election, would now turn round to champion what he called a Constitutional Review on his own terms. The Constitutional Review Committee was established without input from the National Assembly, and the National Assembly did not authorize the funds, which came from mysterious sources. Till today, Obasanjo has chosen not to reveal the source of the funds. And the PDP controlled National Assembly had not bothered to ask.
Soon, it became very clear, even to the dim-witted, that the Constitutional Review was a smokescreen for a planned third term bid by Obasanjo. Again, this is no place to discuss in detail, all the events leading to the defeat of the President’s third term ambition after a brutal national debate and struggle that at one time threatened the very existence of the nation, whose unity Obasanjo had sworn to defend.
Like many of the things which Obasanjo did from 1999 to 2007, and, which surprised many people, this was vintage Obasanjo to those who have kept a close watch of his actions instead of accepting his word at face value. Before 1998 and shortly after his release from prison, Obasanjo has carved the image of a born again freedom fighter and a believer in democracy. After all, he has to his credit the fact that he voluntarily handed power to a civilian government in 1979. Not only that, he had chided his military successors whenever they trampled on the peoples’ fundamental human rights. So convincing was the hypocrisy that many people at first did not believe the cynics, like this author, who proclaimed a third term agenda in the works, until it hit them. Levi Obijiofor writing in THE GUARDIAN of 3 May 2006, probably summarized the entire transformation of Obasanjo from a highly respected member of the world’s eminent persons to another would be sit-tight African leader-the sort he had denounced for over twenty years. Below are excerpts from that brilliant essay, once again preserved for future historians studying the phenomenon called Obasanjo:
“When Olusegun Obasanjo, the retired army general, was advertising publicly his opposition to the sit-tight mentality among African leaders, he did not realize that what he proclaimed in public and in writing could one day be used as evidence against him. From one public forum to another, from one speaking engagement to another, Obasanjo was never afraid of criticizing his brothers-in-uniform, sit-tight military heads of state in Nigeria and in other parts of Africa. Within a few months, Obasanjo was perceived at home and abroad as the champion of democratic principles and ideals.
As Obasanjo was granted audience in western capitals to espouse his new found political views, his ego grew and he began to shout democracy louder and louder. At home, Obasanjo’s critical comments riled dictators such as Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha. It is no surprise that these two dictators became the butt of Obasanjo’s criticisms eight years ago. But by heaping severe criticisms on Babangida and Abacha and presenting himself as a saint, Obasanjo succeeded in exposing the contradictions in his person and his character flaws.
In retrospect, the Obasanjo we know today sitting astride the Aso Rock throne and weighing options of how to convert into reality his pet dream project of president-for-life, is a distorted image of the man whose name used to induce hoorays among student activists and human rights advocates. In order to juggle our collective memory of Obasanjo’s long quarantined political views on leadership in Nigeria and Africa, THE GUARDIAN this week reproduced in its editorial-opinion pages an essay written by Obasanjo and published in the renowned The New York Review of Books nearly eight years ago.
Eight years ago, Obasanjo, the man who now wants to rule eternally over the nation, began his essay in this emphatic manner:
“For over four and a half years – from November 17,1993 to June 8, 1998, Nigeria, which had been under military rule since the end of 1983, was reduced to a police state: a big prison with gallows where intimidation, assassination, and deprivation were the instruments of mis-governance of the state by General Sani Abacha, a sadistic, apparently deranged, corrupt, incompetent, arrogant, and ruthless military dictator.” Keep in mind that Obasanjo cleverly omitted the period he served also as a military dictator, Obasanjo further noted: “To take an independent stand became an exception and an extremely risky one.”
If it was so risky to present dissenting views during the reign of Abacha, it is just as dangerous today when politicians and members of the public who express opposition to the third term project as constantly harassed, intimidated and threatened. So what’s the difference? Not much except in the fact that one leader wore military uniform and the other, who has retired from the army, now wears traditional clothes.
“The Nigerian military men, who once could claim to be officers and gentlemen, became men of double-talk, unkept promises, and devious actions and behaviour inimical to public order and proper military conduct.” This statement could easily be replaced by a common cliché: the kettle is calling the pot black. Look who is talking!
In terms of double talk and unfulfilled promises, Obasanjo should be reminded that his current government is also being described with such words. Nowhere is the double talk more evident than in the secret plot to change the Constitution just to enable one man to extend his reign.
Is it not double talk to criticize sit-tight leaders and secretly engage in a project that seeks to imitate the atavistic political strategies of those sit-tight leaders? Is it not double talk for a political leader to make empty promises to rural communities, abandon those promises and plan to ask for another term in office to enable the political leader to accomplish those sham promises? Is it not political hot air to promise the nation regular and more efficient electricity supply (more than four years ago) while the situation continues to deteriorate? Where is the accountability and responsibility expected from public institutions in the country?
There were only two aspects of the unmasking of Obasanjo which Obijiofor did not touch in that article, the bribery and corruption which attended it and the legal as well as the physical violence unleashed on the opponents of the third term. It was a minor miracle, given the arsenal of weapons of destruction at the disposal of the President. Perhaps it was just a case of loss of nerves at the decisive moment. Money, which had been in short supply for road maintenance, health services, education, aviation and other social services, suddenly was trotted out in abundance to promote the third term agenda.
Meanwhile, Obasanjo kept on deceiving the entire world, including the British Prime Minister, the German Chancellor and the US President that he had no third term ambition, while people were kept busy day and night at the Control Centre, House Number 7, in the Presidential Villa. Professor Jerry Gana, ever ready to serve anybody in power, however dubious, was the arrow head of the group sent to infiltrate the Constitutional Review Committee. He at first denied the third term ambition. But, Gana, always a chameleon, turned round, after the defeat of the third term plan, to admit that Obasanjo was the mastermind of the plan.
When Samuel Butler, 1835-1902, said: “That vice pays tribute to virtue is notorious; we call it hypocrisy” he had in mind someone like Olusegun Obasanjo.
The remaining chapters of this first volume will
elaborate on how the PDP became the elongated shadow of its first presidential
candidate. Never mind that most of the members were themselves men and women of
doubtful integrity. Under Obasanjo, they
served a leader who was eight years ahead of them in deceit and duplicity. And
who was self-righteous in addition.
APPENDIX to Chapter One
THE NIGERIAN ENTERPRISES PROMOTION DECREE 1977 (See attachment)
Catalogue of deception by the Military
- Indigenisation Decree and its Uses
- Land Use Act Decree and its beneficiaries
- Form M and its beneficiaries
- The case of 53 Suitcases
- The N40 billion transition programme
- IBB’s promise to Abiola- a friend
- Abacha’s looting of the Nigerian state
- Abubakar’s depletion of Foreign Reserves.
