The Fourth Republic came into being in a profound crisis of the Nigerian post-colonial state. Otherwise known as the Obasanjo Settlement of 1998, it was designed to placate a major section of the country which felt aggrieved about the way Abiola’s electoral victory was handled. But it was also designed to reassure another section that its interest will not be jeopardised as a result of its role in the national tragedy.
Described by one of his most brilliant sector commanders during the civil war as a man with a unique sense of history, Obasanjo’s choice and particularly the purpose could hardly be faulted: he was a safe pair of hands who could not be pressurised into taking wrong decisions or panicked into premature hostilities. Above all, he was regarded as a political orphan among his people and was not expected to unduly favour them with contentious preferment or undue patronage.
The Fourth Republic was thus conjured into existence through a deliberate and delicate balancing of elite sensitivities and geo-political affinities. Twice, during the civil war and the NADECO insurrection, Nigeria had almost disappeared in a maelstrom of ethnic hostilities. As it was to be expected, the Nigerian kingmakers were more concerned about elite cooperation and national stability rather than justice or equality. Hence the foisting on the polity of a big, all-inclusive party to act as national umbrella just as it was the case in the earlier republics.
It will be recalled that upon the demise of General Sani Abacha, his successor, General Abdulsalaam Abubakar, actually wanted to continue with the discredited transition programme before he was swiftly countermanded by those who had put him there. An unambitious and apolitical officer who quickly wanted to hand over to civilian and head home, it was obvious that Abubakar was unaware of the damage done to the Nigerian political fabric by General Abacha’s draconian crackdown.
Now eighteen years down the line and despite the remarkable elite pacting, it should be obvious that the Fourth Republic is beginning to fray at the edges and frazzle at the folds as new realities and unforeseen circumstances settle in which require urgent reconceptualization and a possible re-invention of the nation. Elite spoil-sharing can never address the hierarchy of needs of the average individual, nor can it foresee potent flashpoints in unitarist contentions.
The greatest threat of military rule to the democratic evolution of society is the rupture of civil institutions and their normal pattern of growth. Of the three arms of government, the legislature is usually the worst hit. While the two other arms manage to function even under the most despotic military rule, the legislature is completely truncated. You cannot legislate from your bedroom.
Consequently each time civil rule resumes, the old rules and procedures have to be relearnt and mastered all over again. The situation is not helped by a sudden shift of templates such as happened when Nigeria adopted the American presidential system over the British parliamentary model that was in place before independence and civil war. In a swift genetic modification, the parliamentary primus inter pares was expected to mutate into an omnipotent presidential Caesar.
Yet despite their political grandstanding, not a single one of Nigeria’s past military leaders was so politically radicalised as to sacrifice his professional career for deep social engineering and political reconfiguration such as happened with the Nassers, the Mengitsus, the Ghaddafis, the Sankaras and ,nearer home, the Rawlings.
None of them had the courage, the confidence and the deep conviction to exchange their military boots for civilian shoes. Even while relentlessly upstaging the civilian class and psychologically undermining them, they considered themselves first and foremost as professional soldiers on civil posting.
But while holding the country by the political jugular, their professional hustling and foray into military politics was to lead to a fracture of military cohesion on more than one occasion. It was a situation of double jeopardy for the nation. The militarization of the polity has eventuated in the politicization of the military institution itself.
A polity and its political parties are not made forever. In a multi-ethnic society still shedding the garb of prolonged and prohibitive military rule, hegemonic party formations are said to be in crisis when none of the dominant political parties in contention can gain nation-wide traction in terms of its mastery of urgent national issues or the ability to secure an emotional identification of the people with its programme through sustained surrender to its authority or universal endorsement of its legitimacy.
When viewed from this perspective, there can be no doubt that Nigeria is in the grip of a major crisis of hegemonic party formation. This in itself may be a symptom of a more fundamental crisis of political leadership or even a manifestation of an endemic crisis of nationhood and the post-colonial state itself.
Whatever it is, the pan-Nigerian electoral momentum which carried General Mohammadu Buhari to the gates of the presidency has all but evaporated. Indeed, were elections to be held at this moment, it is possible that the Daura-born retired general may still prevail but with the wild enthusiasm that marked his first coming now restricted to his far north ethnic stronghold.
The smell of elephantine decay is in the air and last week as distressed elephants began roaming the Nigerian political forests in number, there was widespread feeling that another endgame was approaching. One did not have to wait for long. The world shook and trembled as the main elephant or major mammoth delivered himself of a bombshell which tore through the land. General Olusegun Obasanjo has struck again. The Fourth Republic will never be the same again.
As a national political gadfly, General Obasanjo is used to a level of public opprobrium and scathing indignation. This is not the first time he is attracting considerable odium and revulsion from sections of the populace as a result of his opinion. His book on Major Nzeogwu was burnt in public places in the north and mildly ticked off even by a loyal subordinate like the late Shehu YarÁdua.
But since last week, something is beginning to happen to the Owu born war-lord which may presage a momentous change of tide in Nigeria’s post-military politics. In most controversies that he has been embroiled, there has always been a fine equilibrium between Obasanjo’s die-hard adversaries and his avid enthusiasts.
This time around, the balance of forces has evened up in such a way that makes Obasanjo appear very vulnerable and subject to complete demystification. The bombardment has been relentless. The way many have pounced on Obasanjo suggested a bi-partisan initiative that is well-rehearsed and well-oiled.
By midweek, what would have been Obasanjo’s talisman against invectives and political adversity, the launch of the new Coalition for Change, arrived with a thundering whimper. It was a damp squib from Ota. As far as launching a new political initiative goes, this was a catastrophic miscue. To seal its fate as a visionary and progressive initiative as well as Obasanjo’s career as a political messiah, the great soldier went and conscripted a blue-eyed boy of military autocracy to front for him as the putative commander in chief. The party and parade were dead on arrival.
The Coalition for Change may yet be galvanized into a mass movement as events unfold and the unforced errors of the ruling party become more and more pronounced with each passing day. But for now, it appears the main aim of its sponsors is to de-market and delegitimize the dominant parties in a way that could lead to a major state convulsion.
While the APC’s flip flop and opportunistic floundering on the issue of restructuring do not portray it as a party with a sense of mission and destiny, the PDP remains a burnt-out case of moral leprosy without any possibility of redemption in the nearest future. Unfortunately, events of last Friday also compel the conclusion that Obasanjo’s considerable talents do not include mass mobilization.
This is where Obasanjo’s bombshell begins to assume a negative importance for reasons other than what he has to tell us. No matter the merciless excoriation, one thing no one can take away from Obasanjo is his uncanny ability to connect with the political pulse and temperature of the nation particularly in moments of grave political adversity. How he deploys this uncanny ability, whether for opportunistic self-monumentalization or for genuine state empowerment and nation-building is entirely a different matter.
What Obasanjo has handed down to us is a glimpse of a society in deep political trauma; a nation slouching its way towards Apocalypse itself. No matter the merciless excoriation, no one can take away Obasanjo’s political clairvoyance. The political prophet is often a combination of shrewd judgement and merciless deduction from circumstantial evidence and privileged information.
As the first military and civilian ruler of the nation, Obasanjo has access to confidential briefings from national and international “spook” circuits. Those who are asking us to ignore Obasanjo as a vexatious nuisance and concentrate on the forthcoming elections should ask themselves whether elections are possible or even realistic in the face of continuing mishandling of the National Question. Elections, as this column has repeated ad nauseam, do not solve fundamental issues of nationhood such as the current conundrum between farming and animal husbandry.
Since you cannot give what you don’t have, Obasanjo’s prescription for the national malaise has shown him at his politically weakest and intellectually most vulnerable. It is like prescribing Aspirin for deep brains injury. At the lunch of Coalition for Change in Nigeria, there was no deep reflection on the National Question, no fundamental interrogation of the crisis of nationhood that hobbles Nigeria, no message of hope based on a rigorous intellectual dissection of the astonishing wealth and biodiversity of the nation. The occasion was entirely taken up by theatrics and empty grandstanding.
It is a measure of the grave enormity of the crisis that around the time this political tomfoolery was going on, the Ghanaian president was delivering a brilliant and moving tribute in the home of the South African musical legend the recently departed Hugh Masakela. Up till this moment, there has been no comparable tribute from Nigeria. In a country that measures progress by rice pyramids and yam tubers, matters of culture must take a back seat.
It is just as well that by the end of the week, Obasanjo had backed away for now from the formation of a new party describing the putative coalition as a movement rather than a political party. But judging by the performance of the two hegemonic parties and their miserable failure to address the fundamental structural deficiencies of the nation in a forthright manner, it will take exemplary political skills and statesmanship to head off a crisis of the state arising from a meltdown of existing party formations.
