15 Jul 2006 |
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How far can Atiku go? THE fight between the President, and his Deputy gets messier by the day. It is already threatening to become the single most important item on the political calendar, the benchmark from which every other move by the Presidency can be read. As once predicted in this column, that fight has since produced many victims and losers with the most interesting episode being the failure of the President's third term agenda, for which the Atiku group practically took credit, if not in the open, at least by its conduct. And the President has been fighting back, there is no doubt about that, with the Atiku group also clinging on so desperately it seems to the ropes of power. We are thus in a post-Third Term season and our politics has become even more interesting. There is no denying the fact that the relationship between the two most powerful men in the corridors of power in Nigeria has broken down irretrievably. Nigerians are saddled with a divided Presidency where gossip, mind-reading, character assassination, and self-censorship have become the main tools of inter-personal relationship. There is a clear and volatile division between Baba's people and Atiku's camp, in and out of the PDP, among contractors, consultants and advisers, friends and family. In this poisoned atmosphere, not much can take place by way of quality focus on the more important issues that affect Nigerians. The fight has even extended beyond the precincts of the Presidency to the private sector, to the political class, and to the streets. Friends of Atiku are being hounded. His bank records are being probed. The other day, he was booed by a group of trouble-makers at the Lagos airport. He is Vice President but the instrumentality of power is being used to turn him into a political leper. The intention is to turn him really into a liability in his own political constituency. The President has even fired more than ten of his Special Assistants. I wouldn't be surprised if by April 2007, he is left with only his wife and some domestic staff. It is also an open secret that he no longer exercises influence in the running of government. With his protests, he has more than made his point, though. With the collapse of the Third term agenda, and the inability of the PDP to expel him despite his problems with the Obasanjo faction of the PDP, he has successfully demonstrated that he knows a lot about the art of politicking. The collapse of the Third Term agenda strengthened him and his supporters. If it had succeeded, Atiku's political ambitions would have been buried. He would have had to leave government....But this is only one side of the story. In this post-third term season, the fight in Aso Villa has been reinvented, with the Vice President and his supporters being pushed into a defensive position. Every time the Obasanjo Presidency uses the state to intimidate the Vice President, the man from Adamawa is forced to look for something to do or say in form of defence or retaliation. In the last two weeks alone, the Vice President allegedly announced that he would soon leave the ruling PDP, and consider the possibility of joining others to form a political party. Speaking on the BBC Hausa Service, he sounded in translation as if he was an activist, or better still an outsider in PDP: a party that is already divided down the middle. He has also repeatedly made the point that he has been holding meetings with Generals Ibrahim Babangida and Abdusalami Abubakar, both former Nigerian leaders. Is it right for the Vice President to embark on moves that can sabotage the government while he is still a member of that government? Should he advertise the fact that he is having meetings with leaders of other political parties? Shouldn't he just walk away? He has been provoked endlessly. He has been pushed to a situation whereby a special biography has had to be written to tell us "how he made his money." Editors of Nigerian newspapers published that story without even insisting on seeing a copy of the book! "How Atiku made his money!" It was so obvious that the newspapers that carried the story were merely publishing a press release, without any serious follow-up work. Following the controversial "arrest" of the Globacom Chairman, Otunba Mike Adenuga, the Vice President also had to start offering explanations to warn Nigerians that Adenuga was being targeted because of him. Two days later, EFCC officials, who in the Adenuga case have serious questions to answer, reportedly visited Bank PHB to "arrest" the VP's financial records in that bank. Should the Vice President remain in government to suffer this continued humiliation, or should he move on, and say bye to all that? What is going on is a deadly game of power in which the Obasanjo group continues to throw mud at the Vice President. Atiku's voluntary exit from government is a scandal that the Obasanjo government and the President himself may never be able to resolve. The President's leadership skills would have been called to question. Atiku would have changed the present political calculus. Out of Aso Rock, Atiku would be in a better standing to mobilise his supporters, and run a proper campaign for the Presidency. He would have shown himself to be a man of courage, a man of his convictions. But can he do so at this time? How much longer can he hold on to his office? What we are all confronted with is a special dynamic about power relations in Nigeria. Relevance is tied to office. Atiku knows that he is being hounded, so he could angrily leave office. But if he does so, he would immediately become vulnerable. Forty policemen could be sent to arrest him. He could be denied bail. Dirtier mud could be thrown at him. And he would have lost out in the pursuit of other law of power: never be the complainant. The sub-text of it all is that Nigerian democracy is still strangely peculiar. But how would the Vice President realise his ambition of being President if he insists on remaining in office till his boss leaves? He has to stay on because he is clearly the biggest source of embarrassment to the Obasanjo government today. He is the President's Number One Opposition figure, and although the security agencies may check his bank records, the comment is not about Atiku, but about government generally. We have a Vice President who is constantly telling his boss: "Come on, do the worst." And a President who shoots down anything his Deputy touches...And the National assembly cannot do anything because its members don't want to get involved. For us as a people, the greater value of the fight among the powerful is the suicide that their class may commit in the process. We certainly do not want nor do we deserve a distracted Presidency where so much energy and resources are devoted to sword fights. It is Nigeria's democracy that is being undermined with these endless squabbles at the top. And it is sad. And the sadness of our circumstances can be illustrated with the following excerpt from a news report in ThisDay newspaper of July 11 at page 11: "...According to information, the thinking is that if Obasanjo makes it clear somehow that a Babangida candidacy would not get his blessing, the latter would switch his machinery to bolster the support of Gusau's aspiration. But in the event that the coast is clear enough for Babangida to test waters, Gusau would on the other hand, be expected to withdraw from the picture and pitch tent with the former. . there have been reports in recent past that Obasanjo is no longer comfortable with the IBB option and may not be disposed to considering a Gusau candidacy if that would be accepted as a mid-way point between the incumbent and the Minna-based General. Babangida was a strong force that mobilised the Northern political establishment in 1998 to support Obasanjo as a compromise candidate of the South when it was clear that power could no longer remain in the north. But a gentleman's agreement between both men was said to have existed at the time such that at the end of Obasanjo's tenure in 2003, Babangida would be positioned to take over from him..." This is the picture of Nigerian politics as it is today. There is no reference to the people. What we are being told is that elections are mere rituals around here. Certain persons in high places can simply decide among themselves how to rotate power, and who should be the candidate. If they disagree among themselves, then the whole country is thrown into turmoil. They can decide to ban whoever they don't want near the corridors of power. They reach a "gentleman's agreement" about power, they negotiate the destiny of the nation. And when they fight among themselves, we are required to take sides, even when there are no issues affecting us...But how far can Atiku go? How many more stones can he throw from within? And how far can Baba go too? And really, do our leaders ever think of tomorrow? That same tomorrow that would soon be here, with the present actors on different sides of the stage, and new lessons to be learnt... The lesson, the big lesson is that we owe ourselves as Nigerians a duty to rescue the leadership process from the men of power who have seized it. We have a duty to make our votes count. This is the long and short of it.
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