Obasanjo’s makeover

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo posted an epic shift in political ideology lately when he advised power actors that elections in Nigeria needn’t be a matter of life or death. But you might miss the significance of this counsel if you didn’t know just where he was coming from.

The elder statesman, arguably a legacy ruler of the present republic, admonished that politicians’ pursuit of power through elections ought not be all-consuming as it typically gets, since there are multiple options for rendering service to fatherland. “If you cannot be the chief servant, you can be the assistant chief servant. This is because the chief servant cannot do it on his own, he has to work with others,” he was reported saying.

Speaking in Calabar at the public presentation of a book on the paramount ruler of Obudu, Cross River State, the ex-president enjoined politicians who failed in elections to help winners succeed in office. His striking counsel: “Politics should not be about life or death. Politicians should learn to tread with caution as the 2019 elections draw closer.”

Host state governor at the event, Professor Ben Ayade, backed up what Obasanjo advised by underscoring the transient nature of power, saying: “Power is like the wind that blows away. In (exercising) power, one must do so with the fear of God.”

By all reckoning, the former president has impressive credentials to dish out from personal experience beneficial codes of political behaviour. He had been at the pinnacle of power in this country both as military head of state and a two-term civilian president. But going by the new creed he postulated, his conversion couldn’t be more drastic if he was the biblical Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. What was not too clear is the exact point of his transforming encounter, like what we know of the flashing light that brought feisty Saul down and blinded from his marauding horse on Damascus road.  

It was Obasanjo who vocalized and gave imperial assent of some sort to the deeply ingrained streak of nihilism in Nigerian political culture by declaring the 2007 elections a ‘do-or-die affair’ for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), of which he was at that time standard bearer. Speaking in the heat of electioneering at a parley with party stakeholders in Abeokuta North council area, a couple of months before that year’s general election, the then president had declared: “I will campaign. This election is a do-or-die affair for me and the PDP. This coming election is a matter of life and death for the PDP and Nigeria.”

He made clear though that the poll was ‘do-or-die,’ so to block persons he perceived potentiated to drag the nation backwards from getting into power. In other words, it was beyond contemplation for him to leave that determination to the electorate, who ideally should just be empowered with useful information and allowed ample berth to freely exercise their franchise; and thereafter, whose choice, no matter what, must be respected and given unmediated effect. After all, voters deserve the leaders they freely choose. But all that seemed like idle talk to the then president, who revved up all levers of incumbency to craft the political field in his own image, code-naming the general election ‘operation totality’ and charging party members to snatch victory at all levels.

That was the political ideology the ex-president professed in 2007. And the result? That year’s poll hugged perhaps the lowest point of credibility ever in Nigerian electoral history: an infamy that no one – not even beneficiaries of the outcomes – could in good conscience live with. Wasn’t that the reason the late President Umaru Yar’Adua couldn’t wait to hustle in a programme of electoral reforms after he took office?

‘The bloated returns – licit and illicit – that attend political offices in this country are more than sufficient motivation for the unbridled desperation we see’

Well, it was the same Obasanjo who sang a new and profoundly edifying tune at the Calabar book presentation penultimate week. His words again: “Politics (in Nigeria!) should not be about life or death.” He is, without doubt, reputed for pushing doctrines that sum up to that ideology in his sundry election observation and truce mediation missions across the world as an international statesman, since the time he effluxed from the Nigerian presidency. But thank Heavens we live to see the day he openly recanted on the ruinous world view he elevated to state policy as leader of his home country; and really, we must acknowledge it was gracious of him to have outed with that self-overriding declaration.

Still, it appears that the underlying assumptions in Obasanjo’s articulation of his helpful ideology misses some fundamentals of the bedeviling zero-sum disposition by Nigerian politicians towards electoral contests.

The ex-president seems to presume, for instance, that the political elite, in seeking public office, are keen on rendering service to this country; and as such, he advised that there always would be other openings for service if one loses out on an office being sought in a particular poll. Experience shows however that a negligible few, if at all, among contenders in Nigerian elections seek public office to render service. Hence the idea of ‘chief servant’ or ‘assistant chief servant,’ as the ex-president teased, does not genuinely resonate.

Truth is, the intention of most Nigerian politicians in seeking public office is never to serve, but rather to profiteer from those offices. The bloated returns – licit and illicit – that attend political offices in this country are more than sufficient motivation for the unbridled desperation we see. In the familiar parlance of politics, public offices are ‘captured’ (Obasanjo himself used that word in regard of the 2003 poll), not won by way of uninfringed pleasure of voters. And to a typical politician, electoral contests are concerted heists by another name; against which the election management body must continually wage a counter-battle to the extent of its integrity quotient.

Meanwhile, it isn’t that the governance model we have adopted and the statutory framework for its enactment really help the zero-sum political culture. For instance, the winner-takes-all endgame of the presidential system we run on first-past-the-post track rules cannot but fuel raw desperation in power predators, much unlike the everyone-gets-a-pie outcome of the proportional representation model. You could argue, of course, that the winner-takes-all model works perfectly well in the United States from where it was copied. But also bear in mind the sophistication of that country’s legal architecture and the norms enshrined through centuries of unbroken practice, among other things.

So, what do we make of Obasanjo’s new ideology? My view is: the ex-president did great service by pointing out the path of rectitude for political culture in Nigeria at the cost of tacit self-repudiation. He is like a prodigal returnee speaking out to the following effect: ‘Track back from that ruinous road you are committed to; never mind that I have not myself been a good example of what is right to do!’ He should by all means be heeded and his wise counsel taken to heart by his addressees, that is politicians, like it is scripture.

But the point must also be made that the infamy of our political culture in this country will not end in self-willing morality. There is a crying need to rework the governing statutes, and no time seems more opportune than now, with the ongoing review of the electoral laws. We could well begin by taking out the perks that make political offices so attractive.