November 12, 2001
As my civic teacher Mr. Ogbata at St. Brigid's primary school, Asata, Enugu in 1960s told us: "Democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people". Naturally, as inquisitive as I was then, I asked him how he came about such wisdom, and he proclaimed that the words were those of Mr. Socrates, the Greek philosopher. Then again scholars have also debated if the statement was actually that of Socrates or that of Plato, another great Greek philosopher. Whether right or wrong, the statement may be true in the real sense of actual democracy being implemented.
However, in the case of Nigeria, a country blessed with so many virtues, human resources, natural resources, and many others, the idiom of democracy has been redefined by the
ruling party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) as "Government of the People, by the few, for the privileged few." Hence, democracy as we know it today has been murdered.
I chose the word 'murdered' because of what actually took place on November 10th, 2001 at the Eagle Square, the prestigious 3 billion naira arena bequeathed the nation by the now retired General Abdulsalami Abubakar-led government, when the ruling party (PDP) held a wake-keeping vigil for the final burial of democracy camouflaged as a convention. It was indeed a day
of calumny, a day every honorable lover of democracy must mourn, and a day that will live in infamy in the annals of our national history.
On that day, without living up to the written constitution of the party, candidates
already pre-qualified and selected by the presidency to become members of the national executives of the party were forced upon the delegates who had the peoples mandate of their constituencies to choose and vote for their choice of party leadership. It was a day that political armed robbery was clearly and deliberately perpetrated against all card-carrying members of
PDP (this writer inclusive), and the Nigerian public in general.
The fact that this shoddy episode can be allowed by the President and his Vice to unfold in our nascent democracy is tantamount to the denial of freedom which God fearing people of Nigeria fought to gain from the military. As Charles Kingsley once said of freedom, "There are two freedoms; the false where a man is free to do what he likes; the true where a man is
free to do what he ought." Perhaps, President Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku, in their selfish attempt to manipulate the votes of 2003 election, took the former.
What really surprised many believers of our democracy is that there are many true honorable politicians, members of the same PDP, who saw the murder happen, witnessed it, but kept their mouth shut; hence, denying their constituencies the truth. I can only mention a few names like Senators Jim Nwobodo, Ike Nwachukwu, Adolphus Wabara, Eriobuna, Idris Kuta, and others
like them. They should protest this denial of democratic process, and shame the evil precipitating the resurgence of the military class of politicians, which we don't need.
As Thomas Babington Macaulay said in 1825, "Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying down as self-evident the proposition that no people ought to be free until they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who had resolved not to go in the water until he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty until they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for ever."
Please distinguished Senators and Honorable Members of the House who are PDP members, don't wait forever to condemn the murder of democracy, and refuse to be witnesses to the murder of democracy, for you shall be judged for not saying anything.
Democracy as we know it today is described in the Oxford American Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1980) as, "Government by the whole people of a country, especially through representatives whom they elect." Since the National Assembly has passed a bill allowing for the registration of new political parties, why then is the President dragging his feet in obeying
the mandate of the people who have altruistically spoken through their elected representatives. I think the main reason is, perhaps, the ruling party is afraid of the newly constituted United Nigeria Democratic Party (UNDP), a party made up of serious-minded bigwigs intent on wresting power away from the ruling PDP and, hopefully, delivering the much needed dividends of democracy as demanded by the masses.
The President, having angered many party loyalists, is also afraid that many of the current
Senators, and House members may decamp from PDP to join UNDP, since the later has prestigious personalities like Chief Sunday Awoniyi, Clement Akpamgbo (SAN), Alhaji Saleh Jambo, Chief Don Etiebet, Admiral Augustus Aikhomu, Prof. Sam Ighovbere, Gen. John Shagaya (Rtd.), Gen. Halilu Akilu (Rtd.), Chief Edwin Umezoke, and many more easily recognizable names in the pantheon of political elixir of Nigeria.
President Obasanjo professes to be a true and honorable democrat. The same dictionary describes a democrat as "A person who favors democracy; a member of the democratic party." The President must therefore steer clear of the way of the registration of UNDP and all other aspiring parties that have met the guidelines established by the new bill passed by the National Assembly. Any attempt to go contrary to the people's wish is tantamount to democratic
catastrophe.
The ruling party (PDP) must be prepared for competition; there must be a true and unabashed opposition party in Nigeria, not the other existing parties as we know them today: Alliance For Democracy (AD) is toothless, and the ever tribalistic Afenifere -- led by ultra tribalist Sen.
Abraham Adesanya -- have refused to cooperate with the newly elected Chairman of the party, the veteran politician, Alhaji A.A. Abdulkadir, who has vowed to reengineer the party to reflect the national perspective, not a Yoruba parochial perspective. He has a dogged fight on his hands, and he's not winning because the Yoruba-dominated party apparatchiks have starved him of functional funds, and the Presidency has equally denied him the necessary funds, as prescribed by the 1999 Constitution. As we say in America, he's in deep s**t.
The other party, All Peoples Party (APP), led by Alhaji Yusuf Ali as Chairman, is moribund; at least, it can be said that the Chairman knows that the sun rises from the east, and sets in the west, but the direction of his party is still a labyrinth in the corridors of national politics. Its members in general are generally disillusioned. As a result, the ruling party (PDP), believing that none of these other parties could be a credible opposition, is taking the hard-fought freedom -- wrestled from the military by the masses -- for granted, by teleguiding the instincts of the voters to 2003 through the creation of various vanguard groups insisting on the return of incompetent incumbents or their transmutation.
It readily appears that all incumbents from the office of the President, the vice President, Senators, House of Representatives members, Executive Governors, State Assembly members, Local Government Chairmen, and their councilors will stop at nothing to execute a successful return of their persons back to office. They will corrupt, even kill, and manipulate the voters to achieve these objectives. Well, as they say, "a child easily emulates the actions of his parents." The elected officials are merely influenced by the actions of the President in manipulating the leadership of his own party since the election of November 1999, when Engr. Barnabas
Gemade was forced upon the people, supplanting the efforts of Chief Sunday Awoniyi, whom many described as the natural leader of the party, given his wisdom and experience as a politician schooled in Sarduana era politics.
As if that was not enough manipulation, the freedom of the party delegates, and
that of its general membership, and the nation was stripped again at the last camouflaged election, which I term the 'vigil for democracy', when Chief Audu Ogbeh and his Argonauts were forced upon the people. And, for Gemade, it's a case of a herbalist testing his own poison. After all, "freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better," said Albert Camus.
If the military gave us the freedom to be better, and we failed woefully, how then do we cry freedom again? W. Somerset Maugham once posited of freedom: "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." The Nigerian voters must think very
hard this time around: are they monetary and material wealth-induced voters without democratic principles or voters who truly relish their freedom; that being the freedom to chose their leaders and servants alike.
The actions of both the leaders and the led are not that of people who underwent through the turbulence of military dictatorship. There is no clear difference between the elected officials today and those of the Supreme Military Council (SMC), Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC), and the Provincial Ruling Council (PRC). During the term of the later, the populace (including this writer) even wanted the then Head Of State, late Gen. Sani Abacha to transmute himself into office. Some others opposed it. But the government of today is doing the same thing without giving Mr. Democracy a chance to evolve.
How soon we have forgotten our history.
The current President, Chief Obasanjo, in one of his books (Nzeogwu, An Intimate Portrait, Spectrum books Ltd. Pg. 78-79) in articulating the reasons given by the mutineers of
January 1966 coup, led by his bosom friend Major Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, said the following; "As I gathered after the events, it was the mishandling of the elections in the western region, and the subsequent total break down of law and order which resulted in complete insecurity of life and property, that was the last straw." He went further by explaining the discussions and
concerns of the officers of the military, "They talked of ineptitude and the lack of purpose of the government, the nation was sick, they said. Brinkmanship had become the order of the day, every national issue since 1959 had led us one or more steps towards the brink of political precipice".
In continuation Obasanjo stated, "The election of that year was fought on regional loyalty, with a strong tribal bias. But the government that emerged was also regionally based parties leaving the third party, also regionally based, out in the cold. With no patriotic feeling left and with selfishness, greed, corruption, sectionalism and tribalism being extolled, the third
party embarked on ceaseless mischief to ensure that the unstable stool fell, no matter what happened to those sitting on it, around it and under it. The cry and attitude was North for the Northerners, West for the Westerners, and East for the Easterners. Nobody seemed to care sufficiently for Nigeria as a nation.
Those who were not directly involved in the politics of the day, which were politics of hatred, division, victimisation, destruction, unabashed graft, greed and ostentation, were powerless to do anything about it. The nation was divided within itself. But obviously, the ship of the nation had drifted aimlessly for too long." Those were the words of our current President, and it seems he had forgotten that yesterday wasn't silent after all. The same ugly situations have manifested their diabolic hydra heads again, and they need to be addressed fast.
One cannot mention Obasanjo's past statement of fact without mentioning the one written by the actors of that first mutiny that has continued to spiral the nation aimlessly: Majors Ben Gbulie and Adewale Ademoyega (both retired). Major Ben Gbulie mentioned a litany of reasons for their
destabilizing an existing government, and murdering many of our leaders then. I will only select the most relevant from his book (Nigeria's Five Majors, Coup d'état of 15th January 1966, First Inside Account, Africana Educational Publishers Nig. Ltd., pg. 7-8). He opined, "A bold red sign, a clear warning of an imminent national disaster, had long loomed large on the nation's horizon. The federation had floundered through a widely boycotted general election and the census crisis, which had preceded it. And, although the annual Tivi operations (cleverly designed to hound out and eliminate politicians opposed to the NPC) had folded up for the year, hundreds of innocent lives had been lost in excess of the normally yearly casualty toll.
Thousands of people had been rendered homeless, as town after town lay ravaged in the wake of the internal security (IS) operations originally meant to restore law and order. The country's politicians not only appeared to be above the law, they seemed to be actively engaged in breaking it - in using the military to achieve their fulsome political ends."
Gbulie went further: "But the prevailing political situation had constituted an unpleasant jar to Nigeria's nerves, the stench of corruption in high places had given her a racking stomach-ache. Bribery and graft had long exchanged places with high moral principles, which the country's leaders had callously flung to the winds in the name of the so-called 'eating the
national cake.' The politicians and public officers had indeed let the nation down. Globe-trotting (ostensibly to seek financial aid) had become a common practice, while many a public servant had fraudulently enriched himself with the ten per cent takings and kickbacks from contractors.
Embezzlement, too, was on the increase. The ship of state appeared rudderless. Public officers, whose duty was to set a model for others to follow, had themselves cleverly looted the nation's coffers. These leaders had thought nothing of plunging the whole country into a state of moral turpitude. Those who did not install mistresses in far away London, Paris and/or New York, or 'keep' them back home in Lagos, spent most of their ill-gotten wealth either acquiring shares and landed property or recruiting thugs - hired killers - to guard, defend and protect their financial empires."
All these happened in the sixties, well over thirty-plus years ago. However, can we truly say that Nigeria as we see it today, under a democratically elected government, has learnt lessons from our past. Anyway, let's continue with what the other major said.
Amongst the many reasons postulated by Major Ademoyega, the salient one is when he wrote: "Socially, we realised that the society was split into two broad divisions - the privileged class that were housed in Government Reserved Area (GRAs) and the masses who lived in the slums. This was inherited from the British administrators who lived far away from the people they governed.
The separation of quarters and the difference in living standards brought a great cleavage into the Nigerian society, such that government officials and newly elected political officers such as commissioners and ministers moved into the GRAs. Once they were so uplifted by the society, they became solely and wholly motivated to use every opportunity to lift their immediate family out of the level of the masses into the privileged class and also keep themselves perpetually in that class and totally abandon the masses. This was the main reason why some of them became in the main, sit-tight and irresponsible ministers and commissioners, as well as rabid, fraudulent and corrupt officials. Once in office, their aims ceased to be the care of the masses, but simply how to keep themselves perpetually on top and privileged. It was for this reason that Chief Akintola, although totally defeated in the Regional election of October 1965, refused to quit the premiership of Western Region and publicly stated that he would rather be killed in office than voluntarily quit the stage! It was typical."
Having stated all that was wrong with our country in the past, the reasons for the unfortunate chain-reaction coups that engulfed the nation, one would at least believe that the current PDP government, led by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, would have seen the handwriting of our past being rewritten on the walls of Zamfara State, Taraba State, Kaduna State, Kano State, Katsina
State, Nassarawa State, Bauchi State, Borno State, Sokoto State, Plateau State, Benue State, Enugu State, Anambra State, Ebonyi State, Abia State, Rivers State, Cross River State, Bayelsa State, Akwa Ibom State, Delta State, Edo State, Kwara State, Lagos State, Osun State, Oyo State, Ogun State, Ekiti State, and almost all other parts of the federation.
Instead of paying rapid attention to the cancer that is eating the nation -- such as
unemployment, tribalism, religious intolerance, high cost of staple food, scarcity of kerosene and petroleum products, high crime rate, epileptic power supply, lack of portable water, lack of drugs in hospitals, high cost of living, lack of adequate housing, corruption, and lack of love for fellow man -- they rather play politics of self-destruction by murdering democracy,
thereby, feeding the military frenzies and legitimizing any attempt by the military to usurp the freedom of the people.
May God forbid this from happening.
In essence the Nigerian media have failed to point out the anomalies of this government objectively. Instead they are busy castigating General Ibrahim Babangida (Rtd.) as the root cause of all that is wrong in this government. From the way they project the retired General, one would think that he is still the President and/or that he alone invented corruption as practiced
today in Nigeria.
Well thanks to documented records, we have seen that the business of corruption well existed and was practiced by all and sundry in the sixties, and was one of the major reasons for the military musclemen, who are also legitimately corrupt in their own rights, to take over power. Why not? One may ask, are they not Nigerians by birth and citizenry? Even when they (the military) took over power from each other, they sited corruption as one of their reasons -- all at the expense of the masses, who have also proven to be equally corrupted.
The Nigerian masses have spoken through their respective legislatures for the need to allow more parties to be registered. I honestly think that Chief Obasanjo should really test his popularity by allowing the much politically dreaded United Nigeria Democratic Party (UNDP) and others to be registered.
If it turns out that Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gets tossed out of power, so be it; at least, we can safely say that it was a civilian take over in a civilian coup. This keeps our democracy, liberty, and freedom of choice and expression alive. As Harry Emerson Fosdick once said, "Liberty is always dangerous - but it is the safest thing we have." And, John G.
Diefenbakere said, "Freedom is the right to be wrong, and not the right to do wrong."
Long Live Federal Republic Of Nigeria, and the people of Nigeria! You still have the chance to resuscitate the murdered democracy by insisting on the registration of more political parties to enable all participants the opportunity to exercise their freedom, liberty, and pursuit of political happiness in that blessed nation called Nigeria.
It is through the freedom of choice and political association that a party motivated by the needs of the people will truly emerge to deliver them.
Guides
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Has Murdered Democracy