Nigeria and the world have watched, with studied silence and stupefaction, the macabre political and electoral dance on a circus trampoline going on in the country. The nation had performed similar dances of death before, from 1963 - 1965, from 1981-1983, from 1991-1993 and now the continuing current dance that started in 2001. The players, many of whom were there as major actors from 1963 through 1970, seem to have learned nothing from history and gained less from experience. Power is transient and corrupting and absolute power not only corrupts absolutely but vanishes like a meteor leaving in its stead disaster and regrets. The same processus has started.

Negative Bonds of Union

Our nationalistic leaders and heroes who were united in their fight against the common enemy, colonialism, soon fell apart when the goal of independence appeared to have been achieved and treated each other like villains: Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Mbonu Ojike of the N.C.N.C. (National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons); Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief S. L. Akintola of Nigeria's Action Group; Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Sir Ahmadu Bello, joint architects of Nigeria's independence. This phenomenon was not Nigerian alone. It was the same in every country: Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Dr. Busia in Ghana; Léopold Sedar Senghor and Mamadou Dia in Senegal; Houari Boumedienne and Ahmed ben Bella in Algeria; Milton Obote and the Kabaka of Buganda in Uganda; Jomo Kenyatta and Oginga Odinga in Kenya; Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasavubu in Congo (Kinshasa). The list is not meant to be comprehensive or exhaustive. Even within various sections of the same country, and within even political parties, such dissensions often assumed the proportions of mortal rivalry. A power struggle led to the victimization, imprisonment or death of political opponents, in fact, of former political colleagues and even comrades-in-arms.

Government of the Few by the Few for the Few

In spite of all the misgivings that followed the election of, and assumption of office by, Olusegun Obasanjo in 1999, there was relief that the Army was no longer in power and for politicians and civilians alike, the common enemy (the Army) - even though they could conceivably be more patriotic that some politicians - was gone and the scales were turned. The Army was no longer in power. The politicians and retired army officers, lying in wait for years, now controlled the local, state and federal governments as well as the councils, houses of Assembly and the National Assembly. It was inevitable that these leaders would fall apart like the old politicians when the negative bond of union was broken and removed. Personal rivalry and power struggle within the ranks of political parties and formations would again lead to imprisonment, victimization, death, retirement in the Army, private execution squads that would eliminate comrades-in-arms who jointly "liberated" the nation from the "tyranny of corrupt and arbitrary" Army Officers. Periodic parliamentary coups would un-sit or try to un-sit existing civilian State and National Assembly Speakers, Governors, and even the President instead of regular elections to effect a peaceful, democratic and constitutional change giving rise to a redefinition of Democracy in Nigeria as a government of the few, by the few for the sole benefit of the few.

Nigeria'S election 2003

In order to self-perpetuate oneself in office, the Constitution is manipulated, subverted and surreptitiously rewritten by the present regime. The Executive branch of Government bribes the Legislative arm to subvert the Constitution; the Legislative arm blackmails the executive into submission and collusion. The Judiciary stands defenceless and helpless in between. Local Government Elections in a studied collusion of disparate interests are postponed against the provisions of the Nation's Constitution. The people and the Government knew four years in advance that State and National elections were scheduled for 2003, yet no effort was made to revise the Electoral Register, order the ballot boxes and prepare for the inevitable. When eventually voter registration started, many who registered could not find their names in the new revised Register now peopled with names from Harry Porter and Geoffrey Chaucer. The macabre dance of death continued and when elections came it was an inter-party and intra-party selection of the highest bidders as candidates hopped from one party to the other in search of undue advantages. The nomination in a majority of the parties was neither free nor fair. When elections did come, there was no voting in many places. Where votes were cast, they were never counted and where "stupidly" votes were counted, they were never recorded, and where they were recorded, they were never released and where they were released, losers were sometimes substituted as winners or depending on the position of the moon, people who were not nominated, who did not campaign, and who even were not on the ballot were brazenly declared and certified winners and Honourable members. This rape of democracy must not be allowed to stand for accepting this is tolling the death knell for Democracy not only in Nigeria but in the rest of black Africa. And now who is afraid of Local Government Elections in Nigeria?

On the Edge of a precipice

The present Civilian Governments of Nigeria on the Local, State and National levels have failed the people woefully. The hope that Nigeria's civilian leaders would accomplish for the nation what military rulers hungry for adulation at home and meteoric respect abroad failed to achieve has been dashed.... Nigeria, once again is being buffeted by the very same pressures and centrifugal forces that led to the demise of the regimes of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, General Aguiyi Ironsi, General Gowon, General Murtala Muhamed, Alhaji Shehu Shagari, Generals Buhari and Idiagbon, General Babangida and General Sanni Abacha. Any Government that comes to power without the will and concurrence of the people is doomed to failure and for such a Government or collusion of State Governments to aspire unilaterally (outside a national conference) to rewrite the Nigerian constitution, abolish or review the Local Government System, drastically change the fundamental, directive principles of governance and abiding way of life of the Nigerian people, is a dismal exercise in futility doomed to quintessential failure.

We Should Learn From History

General Olusegun Obasanjo and the Peoples Democratic Party should learn from history, Nigeria's short history. What is done cannot be undone said Shakespeare once. The elections or selections have come and appear to have gone but not quite. General Obasanjo had the singular privilege of ruling Nigeria against his own will from 1975 to 1979, and again from 1999 to 2003 by the grace of God (a total of eight years of Nigeria's forty-three years of pseudo-independent existence). He would be tempting destiny and providence by now struggling to rule Nigeria against the will, and without the mandate, of the people from 2003 to 2007. There is for him a very narrow exit strategy, a window of opportunity that will forever immortalize his memory in the annals of Nigerian, African and black history.

A Narrow Exit Strategy

1. General Obasanjo should allow the Election Tribunals which his government appointed and controls to freely declare the recent electoral exercise null and void thus conferring a veneer of legality or necessity to the establishment of a provisional caretaker government.

    

2. General Obasanjo should stay in office provisionally until September 30, 2003, likewise the newly selected Governors on the State level.

    

3. General Obasanjo or any Governor who stays as caretaker ruler during the interim, should abstain from running for office as President or State Governor again; furthermore, should the President or any State Governor decide to run for Office again, he or she should hand over power immediately - to the Chief Justice of the Federation on the National Level and to the respective Chief Judge of the State on the state level.

    

4. Then the interim President, General Obasanjo or the Chief Justice of the Federation, should immediately sack the Chairman and Members of the Independent National Electoral Commission, convene beginning July 2003 a National Conference of all Political Parties and zonal stakeholders with a view to revising the Electoral Register and holding Local Government, State and National Elections before December 2003. Any major Constitutional Review should be the work of the elected representatives of the people in a new National Assembly issuing from the December 2003 elections subject, of course, to the approval as provided for in the Constitution by the newly elected State Houses of Assembly.

This is a sacrifice, I know, that General Obasanjo can make for the nation and for future generations.

Four More Years of Obasanjo Will not Solve Nigeria's Problems

Truly, the problems of Nigeria cannot be solved in four years. This has been the erroneous miscalculation of a generation of military rulers, coup plotters and civilian politicians. In a dash of undue candour, an American analyst, on the eve of the Nigeria/Biafra war as General Odumegwu Ojukwu squared it off with General Gowon , had this to say: "Now basically the Nigerian hasn't much sense. They cherish the fact they are running Nigeria, when, of course they are not. No country of this size and financial structure has much to say about its operation. The big money-men of the world who decide whether to invest or not; and the big governments of the world who decide whether or not to give aid, run just as much of Nigeria (or maybe more) than the Nigerians. You see, we quit colonizing by force but we colonize by money. If you will notice very carefully, all black countries are in this circumstance. They yelp wildly about their freedom and actually they have less freedom with domination by money than they had with colonial status." Consequent on this, smiling from the comfort of their distant chair and manipulation, foreign economic and political potentates help sow in Africa the seeds of discord where there is relative peace, and the flames of civil war where there is a misunderstanding. Naturally, this facilitates the cheap exploitation of Africa's natural resources: the oil of Nigeria, the uranium of the Congo, the diamond mines of Sierra Leone, the rubber in Liberia, the gold of Ghana and the vast riches of Angola. Thus Nigeria that sold her Bonny Light crude oil for thirty-five dollars a barrel in 1975 and flooded the country with 504 Peugeot Cars at five thousand Naira a unit was obligated, twenty-four years later, to give to its former colonial masters its oil, in January 1999, at ten dollars a barrel while paying four million Naira for a unit of almost the same 504 Peugeot Car. General Obasanjo, after four years in office, has probably realized that he could not solve the nation's problems in four years. Neither can he solve those problems in another four years. He will only compound them. After all, there must at least be one other Nigerian even in the Peoples Democratic Party who could run for the office of President instead of General Obasanjo.

Political Realism and Economic Exigency

No Nigerian, no matter how intelligent should have any illusions about solving the country's problems during his or her regime or even during one's life time. Nigeria's elastic needs like its population and problems expand with time. General Obasanjo, more than any Nigerian leader should bear witness to this fact. After all, General Obasanjo handed over to the civilian President of Nigeria Alhaji Shehu Shagari in 1979. Shehu Shagari ruled for four years and one Nigerian Naira was exchanging for US One Dollar fifty cents. General Buhari and General Idiagbon overthrew President Shagari again in 1983 accusing the government of ineptitude, corruption, and abysmal mismanagement of the economy. General Ibrahim Babangida overthrew his comrades-in-arms (Generals Buhari and Idiagbon) on August 27, 1985 accusing them of high-handedness, rudderless economic policies, draconian military decrees and inability to turn the economy and the nation around. Under Buhari and Idiagbon, one US Dollar exchanged for Six Nigerian Naira. General Babaginda ruled until he stepped aside unconquered, "unoverthrown" and unwanted in August 1993 and confessing his inability to comprehend why the Nigerian economy had not collapsed. Under him, the economy that was about picking up under Buhari/Idiagbon regime went from bad to worse and one US Dollar exchanged for Forty Naira. General Sanni Abacha skillfully hop-stepped and jumped and succeeded General Babangida five months later after the Interim Government of the civilian Chief Ernest Shonekan in order to give a sense of direction to the nation and the economy. The thick-headed Nigerian economy went from being worse to downright chaotic (from bad to mbadamba) as one United States Dollar exchanged for one hundred and ten Naira. The end was not yet in sight.

General Abacha and his team skillfully and energetically struggled and succeeded in pegging the Naira exchange rate at Eighty-three Naira to a Dollar at a time crude oil was selling at less than twelve dollars a barrel. Recently, under General Obasanjo, at a time crude oil, sold for between twenty-five dollars and thirty-two dollars a barrell, the Naira now exchanges for one hundred and forty Naira to a dollar with a negative growth in all the indices of the economy, and negative improvement in road infrastructure, with dwindling electricity generation, diminishing employment opportunities, problematic individual and collective security, troubling probity and accountability in government and parastatals, outright conversion of national assets into privatised domains; nationwide. The classrooms are empty with teachers and professors on strike, students helpless, graduates; there are decreasing educational opportunities, lower manpower utilization, increasing religious and social strife and for the few employed by the governments - unpaid salaries on the local, state and federal levels.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund

Unfortunately for Nigeria and of course for Africa, the era of foreign aid has practically gone now replaced by foreign loans. Where before the US Agency for International Development under President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and under Secretary Williams provided the bulk of aid for the development of infrastructure and social services in Africa, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund stepped in with loans for projects battered by mismanagement and excessive corruption. Economically the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, to "salvage" these economies, imposed structural adjustment programs on Nigeria and Africa, declared all African currencies overvalued and insisted on the devaluation of the currencies of countries. These countries had little or nothing to export abroad and had to import basically all machinery and reprocessed raw materials for the manufacture of the few basic goods they produce. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund further insisted that the African economies throw their markets open at a time African rural farmers can not compete with the mechanized farms and the over-productive capacity of Europe and America. Likewise, the cottage mini-industries of the black world could not compete with the automated production lines of the Western world.

Democracy like Austerity Should Have a Human Face

Nigeria today has one of the world's most vibrant economies and also one of the world's richest group of individuals but alas ranks as one of the world's lowest per capita income. The problems of Nigeria today are therefore not merely economic. It stems from the inability of the leadership to manage Nigeria's economy for the good of the majority of people. Legitimate and popular quest for democratization sowed the seeds of anarchy, endless strikes, social disruption and disintegration, and sometimes inordinate struggle by the elite for democratic power through undemocratic means. Meanwhile the common people in Nigeria and Africa face a slow death as some of their leaders grow fat with overseas personal and corporate accounts running into billions of dollars emanating from brazenly selective expropriation of the collective mineral wealth of the many by the few to the detriment of landowners and inhabitants. Democracy like Austerity should have a human face.

A New Wind of Change

This new inhuman face of government and democracy has exacerbated the inhumanity of men and women to one another. Today, Nigerian tribes have risen against tribes, clans against clans, and beliefs against beliefs, in pogroms no longer with matchets and arrows but with grenades and machine guns often sponsored by the so-called leaders and economic and political buccaneers . As it gradually now becomes apparent to all that the problem of Liberia was not alone the "villainy" of Samuel Doe or the "crude heroism" of Charles Taylor just as the problem of Nigeria was not solely the ineptitude of its leaders from Shehu Shagari through Buhari and Idiagbon, Babangida and Shonekan, Sanni Abacha and General Abubakar .... The problem of Chad was not Hissene Habre or Goukouni Weddeye, nor that of Burkina Faso the immaturity of Captain Thomas Sankara or his betrayal by his bosom friend and confidant Captain Blaise Campaore. Poverty would continue to stare the common citizen in the face whether Nicephore Soglo or Colonel Mathieu Kerekou ruled Benin Republic and whether Konan Bedie or someone else replaced Houphouet Boigny in Cote d'Ivoire or Etienne Tshisikedi or Kabila took over from General Mobutu in Zaire. The villain, Idi Amin and the hero, Milton Obote have come and gone and Uganda is no closer to Uhuru. The absence of President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo may not improve the lot of the citizens of Equatorial Guinea nor would that of Albert Bernard Bongo guarantee democracy in Gabon. Nigeria and Africa need new not necessarily young leaders, leaders that understand and share the philosophy of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who speaking to his nation on January 23, 1966, on the occasion of the sad death of the former Prime Minister of Nigeria, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, said: "The unhappy disputes which occurred from time to time between Nigeria and Ghana arose through Ghana's insistence on the immediate need for African unity as a necessary instrument for carrying forward Africa's struggle against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism. The tragedy of Sir Abubakar was that he never realized that for Nigeria, the choice was either immediate political unification of Africa or Nigeria's disintegration. He scoffed at the idea of Africa unity. Thus he was destroyed by those very pressures and forces which only a continental government could have erased." Even today, the problems of Nigeria and other African States can only be solved within the context of a black African Government.

Time For New Leadership

The tide of economic and political progress in Africa has turned to the extent that today Africa pays more back to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund through debt servicing than it receives from those organizations for new programs even in repayable loans. Economic problems and the democratization process have brought several African countries to the verge of anarchy which is not a good substitute for inept leadership. Political vacuum should not be an alternative for a failed democracy. Some democratically elected governments in Africa have been just as repressive as the military dictatorships. A very thin and porous line separates for the common citizen the thirty years of Houphouet Boigny's civilian administration in Cote d'Ivoire and General Mobutu's thirty years of military government in Zaire. Democracy can only triumph and succeed where people are educated on the choices available, where people have access to the basic necessities of life. Talks of democracy and democratization are bound to fall on deaf ears in nations where eighty per cent of the people (mostly the young even when educated) are unemployed, unclothed, hungry, have no drinking water, poor housing, poorer schools, bad roads, no electricity, no fuel, no cooking gas or kerosine in the face of depleted woodlands, no drugs for the sick or money even to bury the dead and where eighty percent of the national wealth is spent on the emolument, fringe benefits and direct and indirect remuneration of a governing class comprising less than one percent of the population.

The needs of Nigeria today are basic and elemental

The fact is that Nigeria like Africa is today impoverished. To survive, Nigeria and Africa must have to guard jealously its economic and political independence while remaining a part and parcel of the international community. Innocent peasants must not be punished because of the ineptitude and greed of their supposed leaders. The outside world if they are sincere in helping Africa must look beyond Africa's leaders and help promote those policies that will improve the education, health and the well-being of the common citizen. Foreign governments should concentrate less on supporting those governments that facilitate their continued exploitation of developing economies because a serious crisis in Nigeria today will impact not just Africa as a whole but the entire world. Finally, General Obasanjo, the PDP State Governors and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should not be afraid of local government elections. Power eventually belongs to the people and emanates from them. The power of truth when it erupts like a volcano, tends to engulf all who seek to mask it and unfortunately some of those who seek to unmask it..

Dr. S. Okechukwu Mezu, a graduate of Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.), The Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland) and Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris), was formerly the Biafran Ambassador to Ivory Coast during the Nigerian Civil War.