Analysis on Obj’s presidency (II)
By NONSO OKAFOR, Ph.D.VA, USA
Obasanjo's refusal to correct the unconscionable exploitation of the Niger Deltans and their lands, which exploitation Obasanjo entrenched during his military rule (1976-1979) with his Land Use Decree, is offensive. The Nigerian State, led by president Obasanjo, continues to use various means, such as armed occupation, imprisonment, isolation, harassment, and theft, to deny Niger Deltans their basic human rights of ownership, use, and control of their lands and other properties, as well as self-determination.
Any wonder the region is not peaceful? So, what kind of leader works hard to ensure peace abroad, while working hard to deny it at home?
In addition to his government's oppression of Nigeria's Niger Deltans, Obasanjo's two terms as Nigerian president (1999-2007) are replete with fundamental errors and b
illegalities in the management of other Nigerians' affairs. These transgressions are too numerous to mention here. However, Moses Ochonu ("Celebrating Disaster in New York", SaharaReporters.com, December 22, 2006), in condemning the December USA reception for Obasanjo, has provided a succinct account of the illegalities and contraventions by the Obasanjo presidency. The following is Ochonu's summary:
"… one must ask what the president and his foreign friends were celebrating. Were they celebrating the recent revelations that Mr. Obasanjo and his cronies turned the PTDF [Nigeria's Petroleum Tax Development Fund] into a cash cow for personal projects and profit?
Were they celebrating the Obasanjo-ordered massacres at Odi and Zaki-Biam?
Were they celebrating the unprecedented level and insecurity and the failure of Obasanjo's government to provide basic human security? Were they reveling in the knowledge that basic social infrastructures are in worse shape than they were in 1999 when Obasanjo became president?
Were they celebrating Mr. Obasanjo's selective war on corruption whose most remarkable insignia is the convenient bypassing of corrupt acolytes .
Perhaps they were celebrating Mr. Obasanjo's transformation from a chicken farmer in 1999 to a billionaire in 2006.
Or Mr. Obasanjo's allegedpurchase of 200 million naira shares in his government's favored corporate front, Transcorp.
. Or the rumored acquisition of several "privatized" government corporations and companies by Mr. Obasanjo's late wife.
They may have been celebrating with perverse relish Obasanjo's role in the Anambra political crisis and in the enthronement of Mr. Adolphus Wabara, the ex-president of the senate who never won an election.
They were probably celebrating Obasanjo's undemocratic imposition of [presidential candidate] Mr. Yar'Adua on the PDP. Or the monumental failure of the recent voter registration exercise, which has sparked fears of a botched 2007 election.
Or the failure to intervene in the unconstitutional removal of Oyo state's Governor, Rasheed Ladoja, in deference to a chummy.
Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu. Were they celebrating the fact that under Mr. Obasanjo, Nigeria's aviation sector is in shambles and has taken in its collapse hundreds of promising Nigerian lives? They may have been congratulating Obasanjo for managing to transform the ruling PDP into a personal political estate.
The reader should add to the foregoing account the fact that the grimness of Obasanjo's conducts as president led Chinua Achebe to reject a national honor that Obasanjo awarded to Achebe. Achebe rejected the award to protest the administration's errors in general and Obasanjo's protection of the ruling PDP that has committed numerous illegalities. .
As these highlighted p . In short, Obasanjo has consistently frustrated, emasculated, and debased the rule of law in Nigeria.
In view of the enumerated illegalities and transgressions of the Obasanjo presidency, we are left with no logical conclusion except that the USA president Bush's commendation that Obasanjo has "worked to promote hope and opportunity at home [and has] helped the people of Nigeria understand the blessings of liberty" (Akande, Guardian online, December 21, 2006) is baseless and fictitious.
Implications of the Obasanjo Presidency for Rule of Law and Peace
The implications of Obasanjo's illegalities, transgressions, and other failures for the rule of law in Nigeria are startling. "Rule of law" - the idea that law (good, just, progressive, generally accepted law), not a person or group, should regulate relations in a society - is lacking in Nigeria.
Most of the country's leaders view themselves as the citizens' lords and thus above the law.
Instead of rule of law, these leaders have entrenched rule of personality.
One of the most dangerous aspects of rule of personality is that it is too unpredictable to guarantee social control and stability in a society. Rule of personality standards are subjective and vary with a change in the mood of the personality in charge.
The demise of the personality in charge further highlights the variations because when a new personality takes over from the defunct personality, (fundamental) changes have to be made to suit the new personality.
It seems undeniable that since the advent of human society, with its attendant interpersonal and inter-group interactions, which led to the building of modern States, the idea that objective, widely accepted law, not a person's or few people's wishes, should regulate a society is one of the most important theses formulated. A society that lacks good law - along with the stability and peace that would result from its proper application and enforcement - will not make significant progress.
Obasanjo's declarations prior to 1999 and his criticisms of the General Sani Abacha regime (1993-1998), together with Obasanjo's imprisonment and near-death experience under Abacha, fooled many people in Nigeria and other parts of the world into thinking that Obasanjo, on returning as Nigerian leader in 1999, would take definitive and positive steps to move Nigeria from a country of personalities to a nation of laws. Instead, as Nigerian president (1999-present) Obasanjo has sought to entrench, and has succeeded in many ways in entrenching, himself as Nigeria's civilian dictator in the present and the future.
Even as an advertised elected civilian democrat, Obasanjo has taken numerous steps, some of which I have highlighted in this paper, to destroy or emasculate Nigerian laws that he finds inconvenient or as obstacles to his wishes. One of the most egregious displays of lawlessness is his brazen,
"third term" project by which he sought to illegally change the 1999 Constitution so as to remain in office as Nigerian president in spite of the Constitution's two-term limit for a president.
His elongation scheme did not work out as he planned, but he continues to devise alternative ways to realize his goal. President Obasanjo has appropriated the ruling PDP into his personal estate to be run as and by whom he desires.
As if the president Obasanjo "third term" plot was not destructive enough of the rule of law in Nigeria, the festering conflicts between Obasanjo and his deputy, Vice-President (VP) Atiku Abubakar, recently culminated in president Obasanjo and the ruling PDP announcing that they had removed Abubakar from his VP position.
It is worth noting that neither the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria nor any other law gives the president or the PDP the power to remove the VP from office. President Obasanjo's and the PDP's purported removal of VP Abubakar from office is another show of naked power without any legal foundation whatsoever.
As in other instances, such presidential brazenness has no regard for the fact that the purported removal of the VP without legal authority would undermine peace and stability in Nigeria.
This presidential and party action deserves strong condemnation. The Guardian newspaper recognized this when in its January 7, 2007 editorial comment titled "The Purported Removal Of Vice President And Abia Governor" it stated as follows:
"That the PDP and the President not only plotted the removal, but actually pronounced the removal (impeachment) of, the Vice-President and the Governor of Abia State is the height of illegality and smacks of bad judgment, arbitrary rule and miscarriage of justice, verging on criminality, if not on a coup d'etat…the purported removal of the nation's Vice-President and an elected Governor of one of the federating units of the Nigerian Federation represents arrant illegality and a reckless flight from due process and constitutionality.
It also represents a common thread of illegality and dictatorial tendencies that has run through the behavioural pattern of the Federal Government and the ruling party, the PDP, almost since the inception of the Fourth Republic…In the interest of peace, order and good government in this nation-space, the PDP and the President should tread warily and on the path of justice, the rule of law and due process."
The reader must also consider this. In the spirit of independence of the three arms of government in Nigeria (Executive, Judiciary, and Legislature), it is rare for a court judge to openly chastise the president or his office for attempting to destroy the rule of law. Lawal Uwais, during his tenure as the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) and since retiring from office in 2006, has warned the Obasanjo presidency against its shows of lawlessness by ignoring court orders that the regime does not like and enforcing those that advance its partisan interests and for generally taking the law into its own hands.
Notwithstanding, the Obasanjo regime's disregard for the rule of law has persisted. This has prompted the current CJN, Alfa Belgore, to follow former CJN Uwais by again warning the Obasanjo government against its illegal and lawless acts and omissions, because of their implications for law and order in Nigeria.
Conclusion: Nobel Peace Prize for a Lawless President?
Are president George Bush, Andrew Young, Carlton Masters, and the other "American enablers of dictatorship, corruption, and incompetence" (Moses Ochonu, "Celebrating Disaster in New York", SaharaReporters.com, December 22, 2006) blind to these Obasanjo's atrocious assaults on the rule of law and peace? How dare they even suggest that this president deserves a Nobel Peace Prize?
In Akande's report (cited earlier in this paper), Young seeks to strengthen his case for awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to Obasanjo by stating that Obasanjo was in the class of such past winners of the award as Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Jimmy Carter. Considering Obasanjo's record as Nigerian president, to cite him as belonging with Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, and co. and their great contributions to humanity is to downgrade these distinguished men and trivialize what they have contributed and continue to contribute to human development.