Obasanjo: To run or not to run
By Levi Obijiofor

IN the dark days of military dictatorship, Nigeria's former military heads of state had a reputation for using interview opportunities with foreign news media to announce major domestic and foreign policy decisions. Local journalists were not granted such a privilege because the dictators, in their infinite judgment, felt that Nigerian journalists could not reproduce and report interview transcripts in as accurate a manner as their overseas counterparts. Whether the interview was conducted at home or abroad, the military dictators - from Yakubu Gowon to Olusegun Obasanjo to Muhammadu Buhari to Ibrahim Babangida to Sani Abacha and to Abdulsalami Abubakar - believed that major policy decisions announced by foreign news media would not only enhance their image overseas but would also confer international legitimacy to their regimes. It was a belief driven by inferiority complex and fear of international sanctions.

Six years on since the return of democracy in 1999, any assumption that the end of military dictatorship also marks a change in government attitude to, and relationship with, local journalists must now be dismissed outright. The practice returned during a recent visit to Europe in mid March by President Olusegun Obasanjo, the born-again defender of democracy. In Berlin, Germany, for the inauguration of the new headquarters of the global corruption watchdog, Transparency International, Obasanjo applied logic to convince his international audience why corruption had become a hard nut to crack in Nigeria. He said: "Deep-seated corruption would not go over a short time; you will be stepping on toes and will face warnings, blackmail, threat and intimidation." Obasanjo was well aware of the ongoing investigations into serious allegations of corruption at the highest levels of the National Assembly and at specific federal ministries in Abuja.

It was during the same visit to Berlin that Obasanjo revealed to his German hosts and stunned Nigerians at home and abroad that he was under serious pressure to run for a third term in office, even though the Constitution did not provide for such an ambition. At a lecture entitled "Nigeria: a strong emerging economy" which he gave to the Germany-Africa Association, Obasanjo said certain people (un-named) were pestering him to go for a third term. According to the News Agency of Nigeria report, Obasanjo told his audience: "They keep worrying me, may be you should stay a little longer... But I believe our transition will not be complete without transiting from government to government and from one personality to another."
Given that similar claims were made in the past by former leaders such as Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, it is difficult to decipher whether Obasanjo was merely trying to gauge public attitude and reaction to a possible third term in office or whether he was indeed reporting unsolicited pressure being mounted on him. Whichever case subsists, the nation has seen it all before. In simple terms, human ambition and thirst for power is as endless as the quest for money - none has a marginal utility. The more political power you have, the more you want to have. Similarly, the longer you stay in political office and relish power, the more the desire to prolong your hold on power -- legitimately or illegally. Obasanjo's revelation about the forces trying to shape his political future was a major news item which, for some strange reasons, he chose to break to the world while he was overseas. From the moment he admitted publicly that he was under pressure to prolong his tenure, Obasanjo has remained tacit about the names of the organisations, agencies, individuals and groups that were mounting pressure on him to stay in office longer than what the constitution would allow.

Obasanjo is not the first Nigerian leader to entertain thoughts about staying longer in office. Yakubu Gowon did not only harbour such thoughts, he used his military power to play with his future and the future of Nigeria when he postponed his promised date for handing over power to an elected government. In the end, it was Gowon's closest allies who told him it was time to go. For the eight years he was in power as military president, Ibrahim Babangida schemed and plotted and re-wrote his political transition programme so many times that the nation lost track of the programme and also lost patience with him. By the third quarter of 1993, no one advised Babangida that he had run out of ideas on how to fool the nation. Babangida, who came to power as a hero, left office through the backdoor, booed by a disenchanted nation.

Sani Abacha, the man who wore sunshade eyeglasses in the day and moon-shade eyeglasses at night, decided to borrow a leaf from his military predecessor, Ibrahim Babangida. Right form start, Abacha did not hide his ambition to crown himself the longest reigning monarch in Nigeria. He set out to achieve his military-cum-political aspiration by setting in motion all the structures that would facilitate the actualisation of his pet dream. Abacha's errand boys and chorus singers mobilised all the political parties to nominate him as the unopposed presidential candidate. The plot was as dim witted in planning as it was in execution. Somehow the elements intervened and Abacha did not live to witness the fulfilment of his ambition. All these are in the history books now.

Those un-identified supporters and presidential courtiers who are urging Obasanjo to stay for a third term should draw lessons from history. Despite what Obasanjo might say on this issue, he is the only one who will make a decision whether to take Nigerians on a circus ride and go for a third unprecedented term in office, or whether he wants to keep to his promise to quit at the end of his second and constitutionally approved final term in 2007. The choice is his. He has the power to do as he likes (including tinkering with the Constitution) but he must also realise that those who are urging him to go for a third term are the same people who will derive fun watching the king dance naked in the market square.

From Berlin to London, Obasanjo changed venues but the theme of his public addresses in Europe remained corruption and the climate that nurtures corruption in Nigeria. In London, Obasanjo took verbal aim at his military colleagues whom he blamed for the culture of violence, financial wastefulness and corruption in Nigeria. Obasanjo told his London audience: "It was the advent of oil, military rule, contractor consultants and the expansion of the web of corruption, fiscal profligacy and financial indiscipline that precipitated distrust, manipulation and violence on religion and other exploitable identities." Obasanjo was addressing intellectuals at the Centre of Islamic Studies at Oxford University.

It is interesting to note that Obasanjo identified military rule as part of the genesis of the current climate of ethno-religious distrust and violence, fiscal recklessness and corruption. But as a former military ruler, Obasanjo cannot absolve himself from these problems. For the four years that he ruled as military dictator before he handed over to the democratically elected government of Shehu Shagari in 1979, Obasanjo's military government made certain decisions that could be described at best as lavish and unwarranted waste of public resources. For example, it was Obasanjo's military government that hosted the most extravagant and wasteful cultural fiesta staged anywhere in the world - FESTAC '77.

Apart from reinforcing black consciousness, FESTAC '77 remains, in my judgment, the worst example of fiscal waste supervised by any government in the name of cultural revival and the re-awakening of black consciousness. Twenty-eight years after that cultural extravaganza, Lagos and various cities of Nigeria are still littered with the metal scraps of decrepit and disused buses imported and used during FESTAC '77. Some of the houses built to accommodate participants at, and visitors to, FESTAC '77 have gone the way of other public property in Nigeria. These remain Nigeria's legacy to the world of cultural renewal. What did a tired clichZ say about those who live in glass houses