General Olusegun Obasanjo, president-elect of Nigeria, is in the position of a man who is damned if he does, and damned if he does not.
Damned by his fellow soldiers because in October 1979, while his military government, the Supreme Military Council, was enjoying a lot of popularity, he handed over power to a democratically elected government. His fellow soldiers – who had been feeding themselves fat on a Nigerian economy then bloated by the oil price boom – have never forgotten that he did some of them “out” of a few more millions.
Obasanjo is also accused of having broken one of the rules of which soldiers are enamoured – that of esprit de corps -by publicly attacking a military leader, General Ibrahim Babangida, for implementing a “structural adjustment” programme “without a human face”.
Babangida’s reputation would have sunk anyhow, as it took twists and turns and feints in line with his “Maradona” style of politics. Babangida, of course, finally entered the annals of supreme infamy by organising, at enormous cost, a presidential election whose result he then annulled. But Obasanjo had been there first, warning the nation to watch the man with the gap-toothed smile. Ironically, Obasanjo’s current victory is credited to the financial backing of Babangida.
Obasanjo again went against the grain of esprit de corps when he fell foul of the mad dictator, General Sani Abacha. The Obasanjo/Abacha saga is full of mystery for the two men seemed to have worked together, with Babangida, in the initial stages of the annulment of the June 12 1993 election, to install an interim national government headed by Chief Ernest Shonikan.
Even when Abacha arrested Moshood Abiola in June 1994 for declaring himself president, and appeals were going to Abacha from world leaders who realised that Abiola could die in Abacha’s jail (as he eventually did), Obasanjo was quoted as saying that Abiola was “not the Messiah” Nigeria was waiting for. Some Nigerians deduced from this that Obasanjo didn’t want Abiola around, because he himself had an eye on the presidency.
Did Abacha come to the same conclusion? It appears so, for the charges on which Abacha got Obasanjo sentenced to life imprisonment in 1995- reduced to 15 years to placate world opinion- were patently false.
Abacha stitched up a case in which a military officer, whom Obasanjo appears never to have met, testified, after torture, that Obasanjo had invited him to his farm to discuss a coup to overthrow Abacha. The date on which the officer said he met Obasanjo coincided with Obasanjo’s absence from the country. The officer could also not tell where on Obasanjo’s farm the alleged conversation had taken place.
Nevertheless, Obasanjo was found guilty and nearly sentenced to death. In other words, Abacha – and his cronies in the Nigerian armed forces whom Obasanjo had somehow offended- were determined to get Obasanjo, no matter how.
So determined was the Abacha crowd to disinform – or inform – the world about Obasanjo’s “treachery” that they brought colour pictures to London to show to journalists. These show Obasanjo ensconced in Abacha’s presidential jet, with Abacha and another former military head of state, General Yakubu Gowon.
The pictures were supposed to indicate that Abacha – such a nice fellow – had formed an “informal club of former military heads of state”, whose members he took with him on foreign jaunts. Yet Obasanjo, “having eaten with us” (the Abacha regime) had turned round to “attack us”.
Much of the foregoing is known to the Nigerian electorate, so it was no wonder that quite a bitter campaign was mounted against Obasanjo when word got round, shortly after he was released from Abacha’s jail by General Abdulsalami Abubakar last year, that he was interested in the presidency. The National Alliance for Democracy, the body that had waged political warfare against Abacha and has a tight hold on Obasanjo’s own south- western region, would not give Obasanjo “face”.
But Obasanjo persevered, and eventually got himself adopted by the most powerful elements of the north, which, together with the East, had forged a formidable alliance called the People’s Democratic Party.
The campaign against Obasanjo was carried out on two fronts: “He did not have a home base, therefore, the rest of the country should not trust him, either;” and, “He was once a soldier, and if you vote for him, you are just asking for military rule to continue, albeit under a constitutional form of government.” So voting for him would be going “from khaki to khaki”.
The electorate was regaled with stories of huge sums of money donated to Obasanjo’s campaign by “fat-cat ex-generals”. They were doing this because they were confident that with Obasanjo in power, they would continue to feed fat from the cream of Nigeria’s oil earnings.
But the voters decided that a “half-military” regime might bring stability, and was therefore better than the blessing of a fully civilian government or the curse of a fully military one.
Purists will no doubt call the election’s outcome a great pity. But it has to be acknowledged that the Nigerian electorate has opted for pragmatism of a fairly sophisticated kind.
And the charges from Obasanjo’s rival, Chief Olu Falae, that the vote was rigged and therefore the election was a “farce”?
Bah! Almost everyone who stands for election in Nigeria tries to rig the vote, but complains if the other side manages to pay more people better to rig on its own behalf. And thereby wins.