Sometime in 2004, if Hardball is not mistaken, Hassan Jallo, a former chairman of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in Kaduna State, was credited with an exuberant but galling appreciation of succession politics. “We don’t know who will succeed President Olusegun Obasanjo,” he had said glibly at the time, “only God knows. But we know all those who will not succeed him.” Alhaji Jallo was referring to the dilemma Nigerians were to face in choosing a successor to President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007. But shortly before Obasanjo’s successor was chosen in the dramatic fashion Nigerians will hate to remember, Tony Anenih, now chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Board of Trustees (BoT), but at the time acting chairman, was quoted as saying that Obasanjo, not his party, would pick his successor. Chief Anenih, like most top Nigerian politicians, was merely acting true to type. Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, both former military heads of state, performed the same feat of rendering the balloting process a barren exercise.
If the statement attributed to Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State on Monday is anything to go by, the culture of talking presumptuously about successors won’t go away in a hurry. While receiving a group of religious leaders who visited him at his lodge in Amawbia, Obi had announced that he was already praying that Anambra’s next governor would be someone with character, someone better than he (Obi). He had not yet found one, he said ruefully, but he was still searching anyway. Then he went on to describe the kind of person he would want to succeed him. Hear the governor in his own words: “He (the next governor) must not be a professional politician that sees politics not as a vocation to advance the progress of civilisation, but as an avenue to steal the people’s money.”
As proof that the awkward culture of influencing succession has so permeated the populace that they even expect it and are prepared to accept it, the priest who led the delegation to Obi, Rev. Innocent Obumneme, told the governor unabashedly that rich men were after the post, and the governor must not make the mistake of leaving the choice of his successor to the people alone. In other words, the priests have no faith in classical democracy. Directing his gaze at Obi, Obumneme said gravely with the catholic simplicity he is accustomed to: “You have a part to play, and posterity will not forgive you if after eight years, you allow a fool to take over the state because of his ability to buy everybody.”
Given the recent history of Anambra, both the governor and the visiting priests demonstrated thoughtfulness to be worried about who becomes governor next year. The state, it will be recalled, was traumatised by the Uba brothers, acting directly or through proxies, when they attempted to hijack the governorship of the state. It took the gregarious and charismatic Chris Ngige to free the state from the claws of Chris Uba, and the sedate and technocratic Obi to prise the state loose from the jaws of the younger Uba, Andy. Also recall that even the highly educated Chinwoke Mbadinuju had his governorship hamstrung by the unwholesome influence of his wealthy sponsor, Emeka Offor. Perhaps reminded of the presence and activities of a few powerful businessmen gawking at the coveted office, the priests and the governor have reasons to be anxious about who rules Anambra next.
The problem, however, is not that right-thinking Anambrarians worry about the future of their state. More than that, they ought to be worried that if they inadvertently turn Obi himself into a kingmaker by ceding the rights of the electorate to him, it both defeats the purpose of democracy and calls into question the collective wisdom of the people. Obi’s choice can turn out to be wrong, as Babangida, Abdulsalami and Obasanjo were hopelessly wrong in imposing successors. Indeed, out of the more than 20 governorship impositions Nigeria has had to contend with, the public can recall barely three or four that turned out right.
But if the visiting priests were indiscrete in publicly recommending to their host some form of imposition or guided democracy, the governor on his own should have known better than to endorse patronising views. And even if he was prepared to subscribe to the priests’ suggestions, he still owed his state and the country as a whole the obligation to talk diplomatically, disguise his intentions, or pretend he thought it objectionable for the electorate to have such an unpalatable view of the Nigerian electoral process.
