STAR ARTICLES: Obasanjo Loses Control/Must Succeed/Can't Succeed

[Mobolaji E. Aluko]

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Features

1. Obasanjo Loses Control (The News)
2. Why Obasanjo Must Succeed: Why He Cannot (Wale Oke)
3. Aluko Commentary
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Nigeria
Obasanjo Loses Control

The News (Lagos)
January 31, 2000
By Henry Ugbolue In Abuja

Lagos - If President Olusegun Obasanjo had not chosen soldiering as a
vocation, he would have been a successful comedian. He is a veritable
walking bag of humour. No matter the rage or temper around him, the
President always succeeds in lessening tension by cracking jokes that
send everyone reeling in excitement.

He was in his vintage jocular mood last week as he arrived Nnamdi
Azikiwe Airport, Abuja to board the presidential jet en route India on
a state visit. A huge crowd of senior government officials gathered at
the tarmac, awaiting the President. But when President Obasanjo saw
the crowd, he remarked jocoseriously: "Who are all these people. I
hope all of us are not going to India o. This country cannot afford
it. So, I hope many of you are here to see me off."

The President was merely pulling one of his verbal stunts and his
aides got the cue most clearly.

Even during serious business meetings, Obasanjo would convey equally
serious messages through jokes. At a meeting with chieftains of the
British Airways and the embattled Nigeria Airways, late last year,
Obasanjo who noticed that officials of the Airways were clutching
gold-plated files wondered aloud; "I thought you people said you don't
have money, but your files are gold-plated. Is that why your account
is in the red? I can't remember the last time I saw a gold-plated
file." At Council meetings and tensed parley with members of the
National Assembly, President Obasanjo by merely clearing his throat
repeatedly with his hands hidden in his huge flowing gown sends even
his worst critics reeling with laughter.

Last year October, a newscrew of the Nigerian Tribune got a dose of
the Presidential jokes.

"Perhaps it will interest you if I tell you what people have been
saying and their perception of me and Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.
They say me I be Hausa stooge, the Vice-President is a Yoruba stooge.
To me that is an exchange and the usual parlance is that exchange is
no robbery."

Eight months after the take-off of Nigeria's fourth democratic
experiment, the public mood is changing. And jokes, even presidential
ones, may be out of sync. Tension is brewing in Nigeria, especially
among ethnic nationalities. The old distrusts and suspicions are back
in far more dangerous ways with the emergence of ethnic militants out
to settle differences on the battle field. The toll has been high, in
lives and properties lost.

After the massacre at Odi, the threat of declaration of state of
emergency in Lagos, the threats of impeachment of the President by the
National Assembly, the politicisation of the privatisation programme,
growing perception, right or wrong, is that the president is being
gradually misled or misinformed to fail, resoundingly and dig own
grave. A more popular variant of this perception is that that sees the
President losing grips with the enormous power which his electoral
victory last February and his oath last May, invested in him.

"The President travels too often. He does not seem to be in control,"
submitted a political analyst close to Aso Rock last week.

On the surface, this observation does not jell with the perception
that the President actually wields strong powers and that in his
exercise of them, he has allowed his military and dictatorial
background to take a greater part of him.

But in a way, the two perceptions are reconcilable: the President's
Prussian disposition is being linked to his being held hostage by a
northern mafia, whose bidding he now does. In ordering a levelling of
Odi, Obasanjo was believed to have succumbed to enormous pressure and
blackmail from this mafia. The same group, analysts said, appeared to
have tricked the President to threaten Lagos with emergency rule.

"A disturbing pattern is emerging," noted Nigeria's only Nobel
Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, in a well-publicised article titled:
"Re-militarisation of a Nation." Soyinka bemoaned the gradual and
evident disposition towards the use of brute force in the polity and
the verbal militancy at the National Assembly. "The language of debate
in the legislature has turned intemperate, imperious and predictably
purblind," he said.

Femi Falana, the Lagos lawyer and president of the Committee for the
Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), especially rebuked the President for
threatening Lagos. "I think he was succumbing to pressure from around
him and insinuation from the media that because he is a Yorubaman, he
has been condoning the excesses of the alleged members of OPC. I think
that is the only rational explanation for the very unwarranted letter
that oozed out of the Presidency to the Governor of Lagos State. I
think the threat is uncalled for and unknown to the constitution."
When northern senators met in Jos two weeks ago and issued a statement
backing President Obasanjo to declare emergency rule in Lagos, they
appeared to have confirmed suspicions that the President had not acted
on his own in threatening Lagos.

But northern position on emergency rule in Lagos was a study in
contradictions. As one group after the other wanted OPC outlawed and
Lagos tamed, northern elders who met in Kaduna endorsed the setting up
of the Arewa People's Congress, (APC). However, when eyebrows were
raised about this obvious double-standard, Northern emirs rose to
cover the lacuna by declaring publicly that they would not support
APC. "This is a typical Northern subterfuge," said one analyst. "The
North merely wants OPC emasculated to afford APC time to set up its
structure."

Whether this suspicion is real or not, only time will proclaim a
verdict. Northern leaders are not the only ones cut by the bug of
contradiction. The National Assembly is. And so are the 17 Northern
senators who ganged up against Obasanjo in Jos two weeks ago.

At the National Assembly, President Obasanjo is pilloried for being a
dictator. At the same time, the Assembly wanted him to deploy martial
tactics to deal with the OPC problem in Lagos.

President Obasanjo's military background which was once touted as his
strength, has pitched him against members of the ruling PDP and the
National Assembly. "It is now clearer to us that the fear of some
people were right. I regret to say that we have a civilian dictator as
President. The President simply does not appreciate the beauty of
democracy," Alhaji Sadiq Yar'Adua, a member of the House of
Representatives, lamented in a chat with The News last week. "The
apprehension that many people had that having served as head of
military dictatorship, his becoming civilian president would not be
good for the nation, is coming to pass," added Yar'Adua who was a
prominent member of Obasanjo's election campaign team. Strange enough
Yar'Adua's views reflect the thinking of many of the nation's Federal
lawmakers especially those of them from the President's party, the
PDP. The consensus among these members is that the President knowingly
breaches constitutional provisions only to return to apologise
profusely to the National Assembly. "It is not a matter of loyalty to
the party, these are constitutional matters, these are things that
concern the continued existence of this country. If the President
continues to act outside the constitution, I am afraid we would soon
be engulfed in a constitutional crisis in this country," offered
Alhaji Ahmed Bulkachuwa, another member of the House of
Representatives. Senator Rowland Owie, the Chief Whip of the senate
believes President Obasanjo is being haunted by his past. "You know
the President ruled this country before as military head of state.
Then, he was used to decrees. He gave orders then and junior officers
obeyed right now, the setting has changed but Mr. President is finding
it difficult to cross over," Senator Owie said.

Indeed, a battleline now seemed drawn between the President and the
nation's lawmakers. Their grouse, they say, is that the President
breaches the constitution and undermines the legislative arm of
government. When the lawmakers resumed from their four-week long
Christmas and New Year break last week, they were under immense
pressure to resume deliberations on several of President Obasanjo's
pending bills. President Obasanjo himself had to beg them in a joint
address to hasten the approval of the appropriation bill.

Despite the presidential plea, members were still divided on what to
do. Lawmakers, mostly from the PDP, were insisting that action on the
bill be put on hold until President Obasanjo implemented fully, the
approved budget of 1999. "I don't think the discussion on the budget
is important now," posits Sadiq Yar'Adua, "we discussed the 1999
Supplementary Budget and it was passed into law. The President himself
signed the bill into law, what happened later? The President refused
to comply with the provisions of that Act," he added. The News learnt
that after signing into law the 1999 Supplementary Budget, President
Obasanjo in apparent objection to adjustment made by the National
Assembly, issued warrants to cover only the original bill he sent to
the legislature. For many of these lawmakers, this signalled that the
President had rubbished the adjustments made by them.

Late last year, leadership of the Assembly were known to have been
sent to confront the President on the non-implementation of the
supplementary budget as passed by the House. "People don't know this
man. He simply has no regard for anybody. When they met him on the
issue, he merely apologised and said he ran out of money that he would
do something about it . But for a long time, he did nothing," confided
Alhaji Bulkachuwa. He said, however, that when pressure mounted on the
President to obey the National Assembly, "he just signed warrants for
portions of the budget amended by the National Assembly but refused to
back them with cash." Bulkachuwa said the National Assembly was
shocked when President Obasanjo rushed back to the National Assembly
seeking approval for another supplementary budget for the year 1999.
Here was a man who said he did not have money but he came asking for
approval to spend N49 billion in the month of December, 1999 alone.
Can you see that." The request was denied. Senator Samaila Mamman, the
leader of the PDP in the senate, who also chairs the Senate
Appropriation Committee, said the National Assembly had decided to
merge this second supplementary bill (1999) with the year 2000
appropriation bill.

The Presidency has, however, dismissed as false claims by the National
Assembly that President Obasanjo was undermining the legislature.
Indeed, Dr. Doyin Okupe, the President's Special Assistant on Media
and Publicity told The News that it was the lawmakers that were
over-stepping their bounds by dictating to the President to spend
money that he has not got." Budget is just an expression of an
intention to make an expenditure but it does not mean that the
President must implement everything that is in the budget." Dr. Okupe
insisted that the President never disobeyed the National Assembly as
regards the 1999 budget. "When the budget goes to the National
Assembly, the members have the right to scrutinize it, to do anything
to it and then pass it in any way they want but it does not mean that
the President must implement everything what if he runs out of money?"
Okupe queried. The Presidential spokesman said the National Assembly
had no facts on ground to show that the President had violated the
constitution. On the contrary, he posited that President Obasanjo had
become the toast of international agencies who do business with the
country because of his insistence on fiscal discipline. "That the
President has not spent as much as they expected is fiscal discipline
and it is something that has earned us respect from international
agencies which Nigeria is going to draw mightily on this year."

That viewpoint will not wash with the Nigeria Labour Congress whose
leaders believed that the President, in trying to seek foreign
approval, has had himself sold to anti-people's programme, like the
proposal to increase the pump price of petrol products.

Obasanjo has always believed that every economic policy must have a
human face. People are thus shocked when he came on television to
justify the hike because petrol is being smuggled across the nation's
borders!

Political sources said critics should not knock the President too hard
as he was talking about an issue in which he has allowed his vision to
be clouded by advisers who have interest in petrol prices being
jacked.

The News can confirm that there are indications that the President has
become hostage to these advisers, because he reposes too much trust
and confidence in them.

"He (Obasanjo) calls these men old and trusted hands, but I don't
think he truly knows these people," one of these associates of the
President told this magazine last week.

President Obasanjo, it was learnt, has frequently said that he could
vouch for many of his close aides and advisers. "They are people I
have known for ages and I have worked with them before," President
Obasanjo would usually say, according to sources. The News learnt that
the President was initially vehemently opposed to any policy that
would lead to the hike in pump price of petroleum products. Pressure
was, however, mounted on him by his Chief Economic Adviser, Chief
Phillip Asiodu. "President Obasanjo unfortunately keeps assessing
Asiodu based on his knowledge of him as a former super permanent
secretary.

But Asiodu since retirement embraced the lucrative crude oil lifting
and refined product marketing business." Indeed, before he joined the
presidential race last year, Asiodu had become a big player in the
national as well as international oil business. His clamour therefore
for the deregulation of the marketing of the refined petroleum
products especially the premium motor spirit (PMS) has been
interpreted in certain quarters to mean a move aimed at foisting the
agenda of fellow oil marketers on the nation. Curiously, President
Obasanjo has swallowed the deregulation bait hook, line and sinker.

"There is no going back on deregulation," the President retorted in a
recent television programme. It is also no secret that Asiodu is
scheming to gain recognition of top international monetary agencies
such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

But analysts and labour leaders have located inconsistencies on the
part of government. "What do you make of a government that shouts
about poverty alleviation only to impose hardship on the workforce and
the market women by hiking fuel price?," queried Mr. Adams Oshiomole,
President, Nigeria Labour Congress. Even while government holds that
deregulation does not mean price hike, government officials have
repeatedly complained that the nation's fuel is too cheap especially
when compared to the situation in neighbouring countries.

This magazine has since found out that many of President Obasanjo's
men are still being patronised by big buyers of Nigerian crude. Alhaji
Rilwan Lukman, the ex-scribe of Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
Countries, (OPEC) who is the President's special adviser on petroleum,
is known to be profiting from the crude lifting contract of the
London-based Vitol.

Another London-based company, Trafigura is also known to have the
sympathy of Vice-President Atiku Abubakar. Trafigura is said to be
scheming for a huge oil deal. Total Fina, the giant French oil firm
which remains a big player in the Nigerian oil sector, has the Defence
Minister, General T.Y Danjuma as the middleman. Danjuma is a huge
investor in Total. The National Security Adviser, General Aliyu
Mohammed Gusau is also known to have huge interests in a number of
independent oil-marketing companies in the country. "With these men
teleguiding our oil and economic policies, President Obasanjo would
soon lose control of the economy. Our policies in these areas are all
geared to profiting these businessmen in government," offered a labour
activist.

Members of the National Assembly have also faulted the privatisation
policy of the Obasanjo regime. Indeed, the belief is that
Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has hijacked the whole process and that
not much is being told Nigerians and, indeed, potential investors
about the process. "Obasanjo just handed the whole thing to Atiku
Abubakar and the boys he (Atiku) appointed in the Bureau for Public
Enterprises are just on rampage," lamented a senator last week.
Honourable Sadiq Yar'Adua even predicts that Nigerians may soon throng
the streets to protest the privatisation exercise. "The process is not
transparent at all. I blame the President. I have the feeling that
they want to sell off this country to foreign interests. We are
opposed to this. We are ever ready to shed blood for this," said
Yar'Adua.

Atiku as the supervisor of the privatisation programme is said to
wield enormous powers, more than his boss can ever conceive. Sources
close to the stalled Lagos State power project told The News, that
aides of the Vice- President had told Enron, the big power company
behind the $800 million Lagos Independent Power Project (IPP), that it
should discontinue talks with Lagos government. "We are the people to
see. Only us can make things happen."

Enron officials were more than stupefied by these comments, having
been assured by President Obasanjo himself that the project can go on.
After the Federal Government and officials of NEPA signed agreements
with Enron, the firm brought in barges to generate 90 megawatts for
Lagos. But the project may be still-born as NEPA and the Bureau of
Public Enterprises moved to scuttle it. In a secret memo sent to the
Vice-President, the BPE said if the Lagos project goes ahead, it will
make citizens of Lagos State, "Nigeria's first class citizens." The
BPE is now recommending that for the Lagos project to go ahead,
similar independent power projects must be set up in Maiduguri, Kano
and some other centres up-north.

To further nail the project, President Obasanjo is believed to have
written the Lagos government listing several obstacles for the
project.

"The President is virtually a stooge to Northern interests," said an
official of the Lagos government. While the comment may appear harsh,
it is anchored on the fact that the President has initially endorsed
the project. But all of a sudden, he developed cold feet. The
suspicion is that he is kowtowing to Northern interests.

Political analysts who have studied the way the BPE and the economy
are being run said the suspicion is not far-fetched.

With Obasanjo on global tours much too often, Atiku is virtually on
his own to run the BPE like a Czar. Although the BPE has a 12-man
board, Atiku is the chairman and the finance minister, Adamu Ciroma,
is the vice-chairman. The director-general is 42-year-old Nasir
El-Rufai. All are from the North.

"We are told what to do and we do it, though we try to do it
transparently and honestly," said El-Rufai, in a recent magazine
interview.

It is not only in the economy arena that Atiku holds sway. He controls
the PDP party machine. He has also, the loyalty of the principal
officers of the National Assembly.

"Obasanjo is virtually at sea. He is at the mercy of his deputy to
survive," said a political observer.

Analysts also said the President's hold on the national security is
tenuous. The man at the apex of it is said to have several layers of
loyalty.

When Obasanjo sent his infamous letter to Governor Bola Tinubu, not a
few people linked the panicky tone of the letter to a dose of
misinformation by the security network, acting in the interest of the
North.

"They have been looking for ways to have the President fight his
people but the man has been resisting them until this OPC saga came,"
confided a Presidency source. Indeed, the sudden embrace of the
Obasanjo regime by the South-West has not gone down well with the
North. In last year's presidential polls, the South-West snubbed
Obasanjo who was the candidate of the Peoples' Democratic Party, (PDP)
and voted en masse for Olu Falae, the candidate of the alliance
between the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All Peoples' Party,
(APP). For Obasanjo and the PDP, the winning votes came mainly from
the North and the South-South. But contrary to the winner-takes-all
politics of yesteryears, Obasanjo extended a hand of fellowship to the
South-West. Thus into his cabinet, he included even AD chieftains. In
virtually all the appointments he had made, Obasanjo had striven to
attain a measure of balance. For this, the North, including even those
that were in Obasanjo's campaign team, have alleged that the President
was fleshing out a so-called Afenifere agenda.

Repeatedly, Obasanjo had clarified that he was only on a
reconciliation mission. Even this explanation angered the President's
Northern critics the more. Thus aware that Northern oligarchists have
not been happy with the President, the security team in Aso Rock led
by the NSA, Aliyu Mohammed Gusau, have been scheming out ways to have
President Obasanjo lash out at the South- West. When the OPC militants
struck repeatedly in Lagos in recent times, it was an answered prayer
for these security men. The letter to Governor Tinubu and threat of
emergency rule have since been dismissed as panicky and unwarranted.
Ultimately, however, the authors of the letter have succeeded, or so
it seems, in reducing considerably the President's rating and
popularity in the South. Is there a ploy to rob the President of the
strategic South-West support and make him vulnerable?

Not a few people have read double-standard into the actions of the
National Security Adviser. In most Northern states, the introduction
of the controversial Sharia Islamic legal system is threatening to
snowball into major civil strifes. Sharia as introduced in Zamfara
State, for example, negates the provisions of the 1999 constitution.
"So, why has the NSA not advised President Obasanjo to write stern
letters to Zamfara, Kano, Kaduna and Niger state governors to warn
them against this breach of the constitution," wondered another
source.

As things are, the North appears to be holding Obasanjo by the balls.
Having fully serenaded him from reality and pitched him against his
people, Northern senators are even now threatening to impeach Obasanjo
if he does not give more appointments to Northerners.

It is an old blackmail that dogged the early days of the Obasanjo
presidency. But the noise subsided after the North realised that more
than it could ever imagine, the appointments favoured their people
more.

Alhaji Liman Ciroma, former secretary to the central government told
Weekly Trust, the Kaduna-based weekly recently: "If you go by the
pattern of ministerial appointments, you will see that major posts
came to the North. So, we are not talking of marginalisation." So, who
is fooling whom?

Additional reports by Iyobosa Uwugiaren.

Publication date: February 7, 2000
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Nigeria
Why Obasanjo Must Succeed: Why He Cannot

The News (Lagos)
January 31, 2000
By Tayo Oke

Lagos - Nigerians are now growing accustomed to the rule of law in
practice; we are witnessing the sackings of some senior legislators
while others get promotion, summary justice for law breakers is being
supplanted by due process, rampaging uniformed officers no longer heap
terror and abuse on innocent citizens on the streets.

Yet, it is easy to forget how close the country was to total collapse
prior to May 1999; barely a few months ago. The new democratic
dispensation is, nonetheless, far from perfect. The National Assembly
is full of novices; the President has had no experience of elective
office before May 1999; the current Senate leader only had six months
experience of elective office before assuming his position; the leader
of the House of Representatives had even less experience of
legislation before being propelled to the top slot.

In more matured democracies, novice parliamentarians spend years (ten
or twenty years in some cases), sweating and worming their way through
party and parliament before climbing to the pinnacle of legislative
power. This makes it difficult to take power for granted, talk less to
abuse it. The prolonged military rule in Nigeria is, of course,
directly responsible for this state of affairs. However, given a
choice between novice legislators and experienced dictators, there is
no contest there at all.

The above is a good enough reason for the on-going democratic
experiment to succeed, as it provides a breeding ground for crops of
(experienced) future legislators, but there are two more important
reasons. First, the selection of Obasanjo as PDP's presidential
candidate was a stroke of genius by the Northern oligarchy which,
through the evil deeds of Abacha and Babangida, had made the case for
the breakup of the Nigerian state unanswerable. The Northern oligarchy
clearly saw the writing on the wall, and opted for a tactical retreat
from total domination.

Given his military pedigree, and his record as the leader who ensured
the election of Shehu Shagari in 1979, Obasanjo was seen by the
Northern feudal lords as a fairly emollient figure, who can at least
be relied on not to rock the boat too much. There is, however, some
evidence to show that Obasanjo is standing his ground rather than
kow-towing to the feudal north. The setting up of the Oputa panel on
human rights abuses, the scrapping of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF),
and the relocation of key parastatals back to Lagos are indicators of
the Northward drift of central authority and resources, which is now
being redressed.

Obasanjo is not exactly a darling of the South neither, nor should he
be. His party, the PDP, is a reincarnation of the old NPN remembered
for its ruthlessness in monopolising power. The greatest service
Obansanjo can do to Nigeria right now is to bite the hand that fed
him, by engineering the demise of the PDP in order to foster a
re-alignment of politics cutting across the North-South axis.

The second reason why Obasanjo must succeed is structural. The country
is governed on a federal system, but it is anything but federal. The
constituent nationalities within the larger whole are discontent about
misuse of power by the all-too-powerful center. There is continuing
clamour for a constitutional conference to settle the issue.

My view is that this position is misguided in light of the military's
handing over of power to a civilian administration, and also, more
importantly, in light of Nigeria's several dismal attempts at
restructuring the state via constitutional conferences. To expect
members of the present legislature (including AD members), to support
a move for a 'sovereign' constitutional conference is to expect
'honourable' members to commit hara-kiri. That will not happen:
turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

Furthermore, there have been no less than eleven different occasions
since 1957, where constitutional conferences have failed to resolve
any fundamental issue in Nigeria. The constitution of the United
States for instance, took just six months to draft, and has not had a
new one since it 'revised' the Articles of Confederation in 1787. It
has evolved over the years through a number of amendments reflecting
changes in the American society.

It is commonplace in Nigeria to spend one year drafting, one year
discerning and another year amending, only to restart the process all
over again the moment it is completed. The present administration
therefore needs to stay in power long enough for reform-minded
political parties to come up with an agenda for a fundamental
restructuring of Nigeria, which can then be tested in the heat of
electoral battle, preferably at the next election or the one after
that.

If the reasons why Obasanjo must succeed are compelling in view of the
foregoing discussion, the reasons why he cannot succeed are equally,
if not more compelling. Let me highlight just two of them. First of
all, Obasanjo is a product of 'one Nigeria', he fought in the civil
war to defend the integrity of Nigeria. He and his generation belong
to the school of thought which for understandable reasons place a
premium on 'unity' at the expense of fairness and equity. It is a
generation that shudders at the thought of devolution of power because
it smacks of separatism at best, and disintegration at worst.

Obasanjo is ipso-facto, a leader for today, but not for tomorrow. A
leader for tomorrow will be one that does not assume anything
automatic about Nigeria's 'unity', that will be willing to engage in a
far-reaching fundamental reform of the state, a leader that will be
willing to let go of central authority in order to preserve the whole
entity as one. Obasanjo is an appeaser and a fudger by instincts. He
is, at the moment, busy assuaging the feelings of southern
'minorities' by throwing crumbs of concessions their way, while at the
same time tackling the hard-faced harridans of the feudal north with
the vigour of a man willing to strike but afraid to wound.

Secondly, for Obasanjo to succeed, he needs to appeal to the
middle-of-the road Northerners, who are themselves disdainful of the
northern oligarchy, but mindful of reactionary elements in the South.
At the same time, he needs to neutralise AD/Afenifere's stranglehold
on the large parts of the South-West. The 'Igbo question' need not
worry him unduly, as experience of war has turned the Igbo leadership
from being the most idealist to being the most pragmatic in present
day Nigeria. Obasanjo with his cabinet of old faces cannot pull too
many strings without losing their nerves. He needs people like
Danjuma, Ciroma, Ige and Jemibewon in his cabinet, but they are, for
all their qualities, a spent force. The average age of the first
Clinton (USA) cabinet in 1992 was 38, that of Tony Blair (UK) in 1997
was 40. The average age of Obasanjo's cabinet ministers on the
contrary is 60 - hardly a team beaming with vigour and fresh ideas.

We are thus in a classic catch 22 situation in Nigeria. Obasanjo is
needed to steady the ship, and hold on to it long enough for the green
shoots of recovery to emerge. At the same time, no fundamental change
for the better can come out of this administration for all the reasons
thus far enunciated. Proposals on how the Gordian Knot can be cut is
open to debate. It lies beyond the scope of this present article.

* Oke is Regional Director, Africa Professional Development
Foundation, London, UK and visiting lecturer in Political Science and
International Relations, Vidzeme University College, Latvia.

Publication date: February 7, 2000
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Aluko Commentary
----------------

One really worries about the present trajectory of Obasanjo's rule. He
has shown in many ways that the democratic bones in his body are, at best,
few, and at worst, non-existent. Hate them or love them, in the
"democracy" that we run, it is important that the Executive work with
respect with the Legislature - and vice-versa - for the good of the
nation. There are almost 500 National Assembly members - no chicken
number to annoy!

The other allegations - whose stooge is who, whether Obasanjo is a stooge
of the North, or Atiku Abubakar is a stooge of the Yoruba - remain
contentious, but perceptions die hard, and provide fodder for
mischief-makers like that intemperate Senator Joseph Kennedy (!) Waku of
Benue State who is reported to have treasonably called for professional
coup-makers to take over the civilian administration over Obasanjo's
dictatorial tendencies.

Obasanjo must succeed for our own good, and he can, only if he reins in
his authoritarian and dictatorial instincts, and also reins in
rambunctious spokespersons like Doyin Okupe - who is beginning to remind
one of the Uche Chukumerijes of the military era - who believe that the
president must be defended LOUDLY and RUDELY at every turn. That serves
no purpose whatsoever except to cause more pulling of punches against his
boss.

Nigerians must be moved from enjoying the absence of Abacha (whatever that
might be) to enjoying the presence of an Obasanjo administration. Right
now, that is not happening - no security, no jobs, no food, no shelter, no
education, no nothing. Obasanjo should stop gallivanting around the world
- we thought that that was what he wanted to put behind him during the
pre-installation whirlwind tour around the world - and settle down in
Nigeria to do the work for which we were told he was elected, abi?

It may be still early in the day, but evening is on the horizon.

A word is enough for the wise. A stitch in time saves nine.

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[UGAH...@aol.com]

Netters:

To expect members of the present legislature (including AD members),
to support a move for a 'sovereign' constitutional conference is to expect
'honourable' members to commit hara-kiri. That will not happen: turkeys
don't vote for Christmas.