Cameron Duodu:LETTER FROM THE NORTH
You’ve got to be either a very brave man or a foolish one to make predictions about Nigeria. I shall prove to you in a minute that this statement is a paradox – the point is not that Nigeria cannot be predictable, but that you, the predictor, will predict it wrong.
If that has confused you, it is all to the good. We are talking big mystification here.
Okay, the proof. In 1993 I went to Nigeria to cover the presidential election after which General Ibrahim Babangida was to hand over power.
I followed the candidates around the country. Everywhere we went, we saw tremendous enthusiasm. When I returned to Lagos, I told my friend, Toye Akiyode, former editor of The Vanguard newspaper, that Babangida would go down in history for putting in place an electoral system that seemed capable of delivering real democracy.
Toye looked at me with profound pity and said: “When things begin to happen, they will happen very, very fast. You will have to pinch yourself in order to believe that you are fully awake and yet you are seeing such things.”
“What things?” I asked.
He said, “You wait and see.”
Well, I was in Johannesburg, enjoying the incomparable luxuries of the Carlton Hotel (now, alas, forever lost to the world) as the results of the election began to emerge. I was following them closely on BBC and then, suddenly, the results just stopped coming through.
Why? The Association for a Better Nigeria had filed a court case. But Henry Nwosu, the chair of the Electoral Commission – who had allowed the election to go ahead in spite of previous court cases, because he said electoral laws precluded the ordinary courts from adjudicating on election matters – had disappeared. Was he alive? Was he dead?
I think the hiatus lasted only two or three days, but it was like a lifetime. Then Babangida came to the microphone to introduce a new word into Nigeria’s political lexicography: he had “annulled” the election! Annulled it!
I thought I was dreaming. Then I remembered. And I said, “Toye Akiyode, you are one bad son of a very bad witch!”
A few years earlier, I’d slipped into Nigeria quietly, hoping not to be recognised as a few of my articles had apparently not gone down very well at Dodan barracks.
Those were the days when petrol was dead cheap and the Peugeot motor car assembly plant was in such full swing that the government, in an attempt to bring some order to the “go-slows” or traffic jams in Lagos, decreed that only vehicles with licence plates starting with an even number should ply the roads on certain days, leaving the rest of the week to those with odd numbers. But the government found that everybody had bought second or third cars, and had somehow managed to secure the licence plates they wanted.
Well, Lagos airport was like a taxi drivers’ jamboree. I was surrounded by about 20 of them. I asked no one in particular, “How much is it to the Bristol Hotel?” Everybody said, “Eight naira!”
Someone whispered in my ear, “Offer three.”
I said, “Three naira!” They all accepted!
Meanwhile, one taxi driver had taken my suitcase while another had got hold of my typewriter. No force on earth was going to make either party surrender his piece of my luggage.
Soon, a huge brawl had broken out. The guy holding my suitcase accused the one who got my typewriter of illegally picking up fares at the airport. Some people took the side of one taxi driver, while others took the side of the other. I sweated.
Eventually, the commotion reached such proportions that I had to be rescued by soldiers guarding the airport. Talk of slipping quietly into Lagos.
So, shall I predict whether democracy will come to Nigeria after General Abdulsalami Abubakar hands over to General Olusegun Obasanjo on May 29? The omens aren’t too good.
Earlier this week, Obasanjo had to appear on television to assure the populace that he had neither been assassinated nor died in a car crash, as had been widely rumoured in Lagos. These rumours had caused riots in some of the city’s more volatile areas.
Who started the rumours and why?
The Abubakar government has been going on something of a spending spree prior to leaving the scene.
According to The Guardian, the government had posted 80% of a deficit budgeted for the whole year by the end of March.
Empty treasury plus restive populace equals what? Another military coup, of course. QED.
Is that what Abubakar wants? I don’t know. The guy’s behaviour is quite peculiar at times. He allowed the presidential election to go ahead – without releasing the new Constitution.
So the elected president didn’t even know for sure how long his term of office would be – or whether he could have second crack at the job!
With the election over, there was still no Constitution!
Abubakar eventually signed the document into law – in public – on May 5!
But up to now, only a few privileged people have seen or read it. Yet this is a document that could blow Nigeria apart if, as is rumoured, it has attempted to incorporate Islamic law or Sharia into the law of the land.
And yet, don’t forget, these same Nigerians can be so pragmatic that they could ignore even an explosive issue like Sharia, and plumb for the democratic form of government that suits their temperament and aspirations, away from religion.
I honestly do wish them all the best.