Democracy hi-jacked

Since Ken Saro Wiwa’s execution, the situation in Nigeria has worsened. The effect of limited international sanctions is biting, inflation is forever soaring, the price of fuel has gone up and the cost of transport has sky-rocketed along with the price of foodstuffs. So bad is the situation that when Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka arrived in Italy in November 1997 and met with top political leaders including President Scalfaro in his continued effort to urge the western world to impose more sanctions on Nigeria, many of his fellow citizens winced.

But Wole Soyinka is not the only one asking for more sanctions against his country. The main opposition group to Abacha, the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), has two main areas of operation – in Nigeria and in Europe, mainly Britain. Some Nigerians in Europe, like Wole Soyinka, are essentially in self exile, having escaped from Nigeria in disguise to avoid being detained for daring to be different from Abacha.

The sanctions tautology

The main theme of their campaign is expulsion of Nigeria from the Commonwealth and more severe sanctions on the country. Not many Nigerians agree with this position. Among Nigerian residents in Italy, opinions differed on the issue of sanctions after Wole Soyinka’s visit. Those opposed to more sanctions argue that it is a useless, two-edged knife that is sharper on the side that points at ordinary people and the poor. Sanctions would not deprive General Abacha of his accustomed luxury, they argue, but it would certainly take the bread from the table of many citizens. They cited the situation in Libya and Iraq, where the effect of international sanctions has ruined the lives of several ordinary citizens while not affecting the leaders one iota. Dictators, they insisted, are unmoved by the damage done to their countries by sanctions. Were they to be moved, they would not provoke the situations that called for the sanctions in the first place.

It is the people, not the dictators, who crumble under the weight of sanctions. This argument seems plausible in view of the situation in Nigeria. In Lagos, for example, it is so difficult for civil servants to pay their way to work that a secret strategy has been adopted among workers. Colleagues cover-up for one another on the days of their absence, and thus many civil servants go to work only twice (rarely three times) a week.

The real struggle

The situation in Nigeria is dramatic also because, aside from the ineptitude of government, laziness (mental and physical) proliferates like malaria. Agriculture was a major occupation in the colonial era; and before oil was discovered, Nigeria’s main exports were cocoa, palm produce and groundnut. With the discovery of oil, all these were abandoned and oil bunkering became the order of the day.

As one university professor noted in 1993, the struggle for political power in Nigeria is not borne out of any nationalistic calling, it is borne out of a desire to preside over oil revenues. With this mentality, everything else, including industry and agriculture, have been abandoned. In the early 1970s the era many Nigerians refer to as the ‘oil boom years’, the then head of State, Yakubu Gowon, was quoted as saying that the problem of Nigeria was not money but how to spend it.

Perhaps the mad desire to have access to so much wealth is the real reason that there has been a succession of military coups in Nigeria, mainly engineered by northerners who have a majority in the armed forces. Religiously, Nigeria is divided into two sectors – Moslems in the North and Christians in the south. The North is made up of Hausas and Faelanis. The South is made up of the Yorubas in the west, Ibos in the east and several ethnic minorities, all with a distinct culture, language and heritage.

Generally, in the event of an election the North has often won because of its outstanding majority and because the South is too divided and too bedevilled with excess tribal sentiments. In June 1993 however, chief Abiola’s presumed victory at the polls was a deviation from this pattern. History, in short, was being made. Abiola is a Yoruba man from the West.

But beneath the surface, insiders spoke of several unprecedented events that played in Abiola’s favour. One contributing factor was said to be the fact that though he is a Yoruba man from the West, he is a Moslem which made him accessible to the North. The second was that Abiola had grown immensely popular across the length and breath of the country, owing to his cross-tribal philanthropic services.

Divide and rule?

Most important of the factors was that Abiola had no credible opponent. Before the June election, General Babangida, the then head of state, in his chequered political game to create confusion and stay in power, had disqualified some of the strongest candidates from the North, including Shehu, Musa Yar’Adua, the most formidable politician in the country at the time, Malam Adamu Ciroma, a former Central Bank governor who is highly respected in the North and Albayi Anaru Shirkafi, the powerful ex-boss of the dreaded Nigerian Security Organisation, NSO.

By June 12, 1993, chief Abiola was left to contest the election with a political lightweight named Bashir Tofa who was so unknown that he lost even in his native Kano State, usually a stronghold of northern candidates. The seeming political soap opera with all its favourable factors ended when the election was annulled. That it was annulled by Babangida was the surprise. He was Abiola’s very dear friend. Rumours had been rife in Nigeria once that their friendship started even before the 1985 palace coup which brought Babangida to power.

In fact, Abiola was said to have flirted with practically every military regime since General Mustafa Mohammed who was assassinated six months into his rule in 1976. And Abiola had benefited enormously in terms of lucrative government contracts. Many Nigerians still blame him for the erratic telecommunications system in the country whose contract he won and executed poorly.

Riding the tiger

One of Abiola’s critics, Dr. Umaru Dikko, once a well known Nigerian fugitive, described the annulment of the election this way: He who rides on the back of a tiger will one day end up in the belly of the tiger when there is no one else to consume. Umaru Dikko was not the only one to suggest that Abiola is not the best alternative to military profligacy in Nigeria. Former head of State, Olusegun Obasanjo who is from Abiola’s Yoruba tribe and now in jail for his alleged knowledge of the 1995 coup plot against Abacha, had said that Abiola was not the messiah Nigerians were waiting for. What makes these statements difficult to dismiss is that Abiola is believed to have made the bulk of his money from government contracts through his friendship with successive military dictators.

And, aside from his newspapers and his philanthropic donations, Abiola has not established any major industry that contributes directly to the Nigerian economy. He owns an airline business called Concord Airlines which many see as one of the worst private airlines in Nigeria in terms of service. He owns Abiola Farms but their products have never appeared in the Nigerian market in any distinct or identifiable form.

Beyond Abiola, the political class in Nigeria has not demonstrated, over the years, any superior knowledge of government. They, like the military, are greedy and bereft of ideas. A huge chunk of the members of Abacha’s opposition group, NADECO, has served military regimes in several capacities, they have had their opportunities to demonstrate whatever superior and alternative ideas they have about governance and they have, in the opinion of most Nigerians, failed woefully. Most of them have in the past served as ministers, chairmen of public corporations or state governors, and none has ever resigned as a result of government interference with ‘revolutionary’ ideas, meaning there haven’t been any. None of them has brought any significant change or improvement to their offices. As many Nigerians have observed, these opposition figures were happy to sing the sweet tunes of government while they enjoyed the benefits of public office, but once they were replaced, either in a cabinet reshuffle or a coup, they would conveniently remember democracy and start making statements against military rule.

A human rights swindle

The plain truth is that most of the opposition figures who have been detained in Nigeria, were detained on the basis of their hypocrisy. One salient point worth bearing in mind is that it is lucrative to be a human rights activist in Nigeria. International donor agencies regularly finance human rights movements with U.S. dollars and in Nigeria, where the local currency – Naira – is forever collapsing, this translates to wealth. A newspaper editor in Nigeria once noted that some of these so-called opposition figures own luxury homes in Europe where they take refuge when the effects of the international sanctions they call for start to bite at home. He said that, incredible as it might sound, the problem of Nigeria is not military rule, neither is it lack of democracy. In his opinion the loud campaign for democratic rule is only a fine rhetoric for those who feel they have been cheated out of what Nigerians jocularly refer to as the ‘National Cake’.

But who is to blame?

The irony of the Nigerian situation is that no military regime would have succeeded in the first place without the acquiescence of the civilian elite. If the ‘educated classes’ did not accept positions as ministers, chairmen of corporations, governors of financial institutions including the Central Bank, military dictator would be like a blind boxer roaming and throwing punches in the land of nowhere. Not having the wherewithal to run the affairs of state, these dictators have to rely on the education and wit of the civilian elite.

It is therefore remarkable that the members of this same elite, which constitutes the opposition body today, are indeed the ones who feverishly lobby for appointments to lucrative public offices whenever a new military dictator stages a successful coup and takes power. Greed and hypocrisy are the canker worms eating both the political class and the military leaders they once served and then opposed.

It is sad but true, said one Nigerian graduate in Italy, that no member of the opposition group today, including Abiola, can stand before the people of Nigeria with clean hands. In other words Nigeria does not have a viable alternative to Abacha today, whether democratic rule is restored or not. And that is the sad truth of the matter.