As he went to bed, peace was the only thing he wanted that night. It was the only thing that eluded him. So, in his underwear, he heard a noise. It jolted him. Before he turned, they had broken into his room. He couldn’t ask a question. He couldn’t dress up. They swept him, underwear and all, from his home onto the back of a truck and zoomed off under that blanket of night.
He thought the end had come for him. No one knew about the horror except his captors and himself whether they were taking him to a hideout to beat him to pulp and dump him for dead? If that happened, no one would know who did it and why?
After what seemed an eternity on the truck with only the sky as witness and the wind in ominous whisper, they stopped at a building. A few moments later, he was in a jail cell. What a relief that he was in the company of armed robbers, murderers and other never-do-wells in society. At least, he was not dying that night.
No one spoke to him. No one told him why he was there. He lived in that sty and suspenseful fear for 48 days. What happened on the 48th day? Gen. Sani Abacha died. For the goggled tyrant’s death, he had life and freedom.
This was not in Southern Nigeria, or in the Southwest or Lagos. It happened in Kaduna and to Uba Sani, now governor of the same state where he might have been gaoled to extinction.
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It was Abacha’s goons, soldiers with cargoes of death and foreboding, who came that night. They hated the June 12 struggle. Uba Sani was a June 12 soldier, and he emblematized the northern dimension of the democracy struggle often ignored and downplayed in the narrative of that era. He also typified what we termed NADECO at home. That part of NADECO was not headlined like the NADECO Abroad, but they kept the firelight and fury alive to defy a soldier elite who forswore any promise of democracy. They brandished the temperament of Bashorun Ga’a, the Old Oyo empire tyrant who equated himself to God on earth until he met his vanquisher. What happened to Governor Sani and he survived was similar to what happened to Bagauda Kaltho, also from the North and a reporter, who did not survive to tell his story.
This perspective is piquant against the background of the recent protests that have turned out to be the hand of Esau but the voice of Jacob. The two voices that questioned the conscience of the protests were two top-tier figures in government today in the June 12 struggle, the most consequential wave of protests in this generation. They are President Bola Tinubu and Governor Sani. The knit of democracy has bonded both men over the years. It is significant that one is the president and the other is a governor, and they have tried to show that these protests did not represent the lofty and sacrificial spirit for which they could have died.
The revelation at the Council of State meeting last week tells of $37 million and N60 billion linked with the protests. While we await the facts and the persons in the shadows of this potential treason, the protests reflect what happens when we get a democracy without a proper groundwork.
We cannot forget that by 1999 when the soldiers abdicated, they gave us a democracy chockful of military apologists. Such persons know nothing but democracy by fiat. At the forefront was the Owu chief, Olusegun Obasanjo, who ran the country with a soldier’s hubris and bred lieutenants who knew no other logic. The third-term agenda and the impunity of electoral heists have continued to haunt the country. Nor was Muhammadu Buhari immune to the rapine of liberty in spite of his advertisement of Pauline conversion to a democrat. In the Niger Delta, we witnessed the mutation of an ethnic war as a recruiting ground for militants as we saw in the Northeast the birth of Boko Haram after an elite created an alternative society to embed a new tribe of militants. Five-year-olds twirled Russian flags even if they could not read or write. They were asked to be the face of hunger when they never knew anything about exchange rates nor went to market to buy anything. That told us that the almajiris became a metaphor for a devious political class that instrumentalized a mob to upturn a democracy they did not, in the first place, believe in. The mob was not the first in this republic. It may not be the last. Ignorance is tinder for tumult. The big men lolling in their plush abodes knew a good tool for a putsch.
That could have happened if the NADECO group did not turn onlookers when the military apologists took centre stage. When NADECO Abroad held a meeting in London on how to respond to a new era, they dithered and waited while the apologists became the “authentic” voice. They had probably grown war-weary. The current president tried to dissuade them from their somnolence. They prevaricated and temporised. Then Tinubu advanced a sentimental caveat. He said, “Ok, mo fe lori maami.” Translation. “I want to see my mother.” With that excuse, he left London and dived into the trenches at home. It turned out he saw things ahead of the others. He became a lone voice from Lagos trying to set fire to their thatched houses of the so-called new democrats. He might not have done it alone, if they all coalesced while the iron was hot enough to reshape a democratic force for the future. Instead, he had to build it piecemeal.
The call for a new constitution is a consequence of NADECO pussyfooting. So, if we are going to have a new constitution, on whose authority are we going to pursue it? There is no basis in this constitution to do it. If the president does it, on whose authority other than that of a president who is bound by the 1999 constitution. There is no provision that empowers him to dump the law that made him. To do it will make him a despot. How will a National Assembly finagle its way between birthing a new document and annulling itself with a referendum? The Patriots may mean well, but how do we overthrow a Constitution to build a new one? There are three models of constitution-making in the modern era. They are the American, French and British. The French have their fifth constitution, but they have a basis in one constitution to move to another. The British thrive on conventions and will invite anarchy to call for a constitution. The American is over 200 years old, but it has no basis for a new constitution. So, they have 27 amendments already. It is the American model that can work for us. Or else, we court disaster. We lost the opportunity in 1999 and the great elements of NADECO prevaricated away the opportunity to do so. As Henry Thoureau noted, “you can’t kill time without injuring eternity.”
Some of the so-called NADECO at home had become cosy with the soldiers. This point was made by Governor Sani when he and a few others, including Shehu Sani, looked askance at the soldiers as they tried to implant a new constitution and republican age.
But nothing is wrong in our constitution that we cannot change with amendments. Or else, we topple democracy and earn chaos. That is why top men in government like the president and Gov. Sani who were in the trenches have seen through the bogus men who, through partisan malice, want to play Samson and bring down the system. They are like the soldiers who came for Sani. They were habitues of the night of our country. Shakespeare in his Hamlet says, they are “doomed for a certain term to walk the night.” That term for the army has long expired, just as Gov. Sani’s 48 days ended.