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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 25 February - 3 March 1999 Issue No. 418
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Democracy and the generals
By Peter MwesigeOn 27 February, Nigerians will elect a new president. Retired army General Olusegun Obasanjo, fielded by the People's Democratic Party (PDP), and Chief Olu Falae, joint candidate of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All People's Party (APP), are vying to lead the country into the new millennium.
Obasanjo stands out as the country's only military ruler to have voluntarily handed over power to an elected government. A Baptist Christian with a frank and cutting tongue, he reluctantly accepted his first mandate as leader in 1976, following the death of the popular General Murtala Muhammad. After retiring to his pig farm, Obasanjo was critical of fellow military men who sought to return to office through the ballot box. What, he asked, had they left behind in the State House that they were so eager to retrieve?
Having won a reputation as an officer-democrat in a country better known for military dictators, Obasanjo then metamorphosed into a world statesman. In 1991, he was even considered a possible candidate for secretary-general of the UN.
Though a southerner, his main support comes from the north, the region which has dominated Nigerian politics since independence in 1960. Recently, however, the north has bowed to popular demands for a shift of political power towards the south.
Born in Abeokuta in southwestern Nigeria, Obasanjo belongs to the Yoruba tribe, one of the country's three major ethnic groups. However, like the proverbial prophet, he is not much loved at home. His kinsmen accuse him of betrayal, after he "awarded" the presidency to a Hausa Fulani on handing over power in 1979 to elected President Shehu Shagari.
Obasanjo later spent three years in detention for an alleged coup plot against the late General Sani Abacha. He was released in June last year by the current head of state, General Abdulsalaam Abubakar, following Abacha's death. Abubakar has pledged to step down on 29 May after handing over power to the first civilian president in 15 years. But as Obasanjo takes another shot at the presidency, this time through the ballot box, his military background continues to haunt him. His party, the PDP, has close links to the armed forces and he himself is clearly the soldier's favoured candidate. Over 100 retired senior officers are card-carrying PDP members and their support has brought a lot of money into Obasanjo's war chest.
Accepting his party's nomination as presidential candidate, Obasanjo appeared to respond to those critics for whom his election would be merely the continuation of military rule by other means, when he vowed that his leadership would put an end to the "illogical polarisation of the nation into soldier and non-soldier."
Obasanjo's opponent Falae is no stranger to intrigue, either. A banker and an accomplished administrator, Falae, 60, is a graduate of Nigeria's premier University of Ibadan and Yale University in the United States. He had a distinguished public service career spanning almost 30 years. In particular, he served as finance minister under the Babangida presidency, before leaving government in August 1990.
On his resignation, Falae began to nurture his presidential ambitions through the Social Democratic Party, one of the two political parties approved by the Babangida regime. However, Babangida moved swiftly to sabotage Falae's plans, disqualifying him, along with 22 other presidential aspirants, from the contest in 1992. Falae, however, remained in politics. He supported the candidacy of late millionaire politician Moshood Abiola, who was coasting to victory in 1993 when Babangida decided to annul the election results.
Falae later joined the opposition National Democratic Coalition in their campaign against the regime of the late Abacha. In 1997, Falae was one of 17 Nigerians, among them exiled Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka, who were charged with treason in connection with a spate of explosions that rocked the country. Following Abacha's sudden death in June 1998, his successor Abubakar freed Falae along with his fellow prisoners from that trial, as part of his programme if national reconciliation.
Falae's links with General Babangida continue to weigh heavily on his reputation, however. Babangida's name stinks in Nigeria, because he botched the country's transition to democracy by annulling the 1993 elections widely believed to have been won by the late Abiola. As Babangida's finance minister, Falae also presided over economic programmes that brought great economic hardship to ordinary Nigerians.
Beyond the personalities of those contesting the elections, however, is the wider question of whether this event will indeed bring about the much-trumpeted transition to genuine civilian rule. Abacha's death last June and the emergence of Abubakar as interim leader opened the door to sweeping economic and political reforms and a consequent rush of optimism. The international community which, under Western leadership (as usual), had isolated Nigeria, decided to give this new general the benefit of the doubt. Even prominent Nigerian activists, such as Wole Soyinka, who have been highly critical of successive military administrations, seem to have given the transition programme their blessing. Earlier this month Soyinka, who has spent the last four years in exile, paid "a working visit" to Nigeria. Yet in spite of this apparent endorsement of the Abubakar transition, he warned that "there is still work to be done." And there is. Lots of it.
Nigerian civil society remains suspicious that the country's military is subtly putting in place a government which will be amenable to its interests. For example, they point out that the armed forces made no attempt to consult the people, or those organisations which might have some claim to represent them, about the transition. Meanwhile, the military is still heavy-handedly suppressing civil unrest in the Niger River Delta states, which produce at least 70 per cent of the country's oil, but are themselves impoverished, politically marginalised and environmentally polluted.
Yet despite the misgivings which surround the present situation, it may not be entirely a bad thing that the people of Nigeria get a government which is trusted by the military. After all, the wealthy generals are quite capable of scuttling the march to democracy if they perceive it as a direct threat to their interests. Indeed, there are already allegations that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) favours Obasanjo's PDP and is set to rig the elections to its benefit.
Even if Obasanjo does win, fair elections or not, he still has to show he can lift Africa's slumbering giant once and for all out of the traumatic history that has impoverished this oil-rich nation. The real contest is the one that begins on 28 February.
