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ojukwu@frontlineafrica.org

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THIRD TERM: THE FAILURE OF THE NIGERIAN REVOLUTIONARIES

oday, you come across a good number of people that when you tell them you are from Nigeria, they will subject you to bullets of questions. Questions like why are Nigerians poor despite the richness in resources and the high rate of literacy? Why is the government so corrupt? Why don't you guys have a stable supply of electricity even though you have oil wealth? Nigeria is the sixth largest supplier of fuel and fuel-related products in the world, yet Nigerians do not enjoy constant supply of power. In fact, "no light" is the rule rather than the exception. Some of these inquisitive people a Nigerian runs into continue to barrage him with questions. There are those that want to know if you are a "drug dealer" or what.

Do I feel embarrassed? No! I do not suffer an atom of embarrassment because I am not responsible for the mess we have in Nigeria. Am I an onlooker? No! Why is because I am not one of those that worship bad and corrupt leadership because of what they can do for me. It may interest you to know that I have once been a casualty in the struggle of the Nigeria people for freedom and justice. It is not about beating my trumpet or drum but stating history as it is. I was one of those expelled from different universities around Nigerian in the nineties as a result of involvement in the struggle for democracy. During that period in the degradation of Nigeria into a "stateless" state, I also suffered imprisonment as well as torture.

In the whole picture above, the point I believe I have dug out is the fact that I cannot accept the blame as a Nigerian for the rot our nation has become. I have also spoken to many soundly educated Nigerians who believe the solution to the Nigerian problem is to first of all have a strong leader who can deal with Nigerians. Some of them even suggest that the late Tunde Idiagbon could have made a good change if he was allowed the chance. The dictatorship of Tunde Idiagbon, a military man lasted for a few months as Ibrahim Babangida overthrew it in a military coup to install the dictatorship of Ibrahim Babangida. What these intellectual are telling me is that "raw dictatorship" is the solution to the problems of the problem called Nigeria. They want a leader who will use guns and other weapons of mass destruction to coerce people to do their duties. They are obviously calling for an absolute king that no one can question. The kind of leader they are calling for can never lose in an election as no one can dare go against him on any matter. In fact, their king is the one who is meant to die on the throne and there they say lay the solution to the "mess" called Nigeria.

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I have met many Nigerians and talked to them about the issue of the third term for Obasanjo. Many of them aver that they do not see any suitable person to take over from Obasanjo. Since then I have connected their position with that of the other group of Nigerian intellectuals who are calling for a dictatorship and there you can see where the Nigerian democracy is heading.

I do not believe that President Obasanjo woke up one morning and said the constitution must be amended so that he would go for a third term in office. I believe there are some people around him who have whipped up some strange fantasies in him about glory and glorious legacies. What glorious legacies? President Obasanjo has learnt a lot since he assumed office. He improved in many things after sometime in office and you can see that the way he conducts himself now is better than he used to act when he first came in. I can say that he wasted about six years trying to master the art of politics and appreciate its intricacies. Now, he feels very confident both at local and international front and with the debt cancellation issue and that of the repatriation of some of the Abacha loot, he believes he must finish the job of nation building and take the credit. Why must Atiku or IBB or Kalu come in and receive the glory of what another man did, the people around the President would ask. Those around Obasanjo have now cast a spell on him that the President seems now to be daydreaming. Just recently, it was reported that Obasanjo was ready to give his life to save Nigeria. That Nigerians die in their thousands daily for Nigeria is well known so what difference will it make if the President dies for Nigeria? They have made him believe that his ordination is straight from God and no man can question it. Such is the spell our dear President is under that his reflexes are reflected on the side of the third term ambition. It is now patently clear that the President sees the third term issue as a mission going by recent developments around the nation. At the time of this writing, Obasanjo's party, The Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) have agreed at its NEC meeting that the party will be supporting the term third plot. Now, it's no longer a secret that the Nigerian President is drunk with power that he is becoming blind to commonsense. If the PDP succeeds, President Obasanjo will be going to Nigerians to ask for their votes for the third consecutive time and with what observers call the "Nigerian factor", Obasanjo is sure to retain his mantle.

However, the important point from the above is that there are millions of Nigerians that support the third term agenda. They believe that President Obasanjo has no good replacement and want him to continue in power until a true replacement is found. This is an indictment on the popular movements in Nigeria. In this kind of condition as we have in Nigeria, what one expects is a very strong pro-people movement that will emerge to wrestle power from the anti-people regimes that we see in Nigeria. Why can't the Nigerian progressives come up with a national liberation movement that can win the current war in Nigeria for the Nigerian people? It is logical that in any society where every system is a caricature of what it should be, a drastic solution is needed and from that situation a popular movement will be born to dictate the pace of movement. In Nigeria, that logic has failed. Instead of arising a great pro-people movement, those who pretended to be revolutionaries before the "war" have now become reporters for Newspapers and volunteers at Amnesty International Offices. They now report the events to local and international audience instead of assuming their historic role in the events for the benefit of the entire Nigerian people. They also occasionally organize some protests of sorts in order to attract more funding for their NGOs.

Why then has the Nigerian revolutionary been incapable of organizing his movement? Without any form of endless meandering around the issue, the truth is that in the structure of the "soul" of the Nigerian revolutionary, ethnic and religious chauvinism is deeper than any other political ideology. It is then not surprising that a spokesperson of President Obasanjo, Chief Fani-Kayode once called Prof. Wole Soyinka an Atheist. There is to be found the apogee of religious fundamentalism. When does the issue of the governance of a "secular state" become an issue of faith and religion? At this juncture, I must confess that I am indeed struggling with words. I want to make this issue as simple as possible. Let me try like this, if a Yoruba man goes to an Igbo man and say, "brother, come let us unite and fight the government together for our common good", the Igbo man will call him a coward and a "basket mouth" who will desert him at time "T" of action. If an Igbo man goes to a Yoruba man and say, "brother join me, let us build a mass movement to get power for the masses", the Yoruba man will want to lead the movement and if not allowed, he will not be part of it. What of the northerner? He wants the entire Nigeria to become a theocratic state. Are these tribal assumptions correct? Of course, they cannot be right. In that short scenario above, you find the answer to why the Nigerian revolutionaries cannot come together instead what you see is ethnic movements like MEND, OPC, MASSAB, MOSOP among others.

Let us analyze those names and their meanings.

1. MEND - Stands for the Movement for the Emancipation of The Niger Delta. Most of the Nigeria Oil wealth is based in the Niger Delta region and the Oil companies have colluded with the Nigerian government to "pauperize" the Niger Delta people despite taking billions of Dollars of Oil wealth from their land. MEND is the organization in the forefront for the active participation of the local people in the production of the wealth basing their struggle on the demand that they must get more allocations from the federal government. Their struggle is noble indeed and very popular in the Niger Delta region. However, sometimes I think that the entire Nigeria needs emancipation and not just the Niger Delta. So, why can't we have a movement called the Movement for the Emancipation of Nigeria (MEN)?

2. OPC - Stands for the Odua Peoples' Congress. This is an organization that calls itself revolutionary yet it has an ethnic agenda. An OPC Activist would not be shy to tell you that it would be good if we could have an Oduduwa Republic. But, if Nigerian revolutionaries can come together, we could have a popular movement called the Nigerian Peoples' Congress and together fight for justice and freedom for every Nigerian.

3. MASSOB - Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra. Between 1967 and 1970, Nigeria battled to prevent a part of it, which had decided to secede from it on the account of injustices targeted at the people from the area they refer to Biafra - the erstwhile Eastern Region of Nigeria. The then Biafran soldiers failed to achieve their mission through the barrel of the gun and today, MASSOB believes it has a messianic duty to free the people from the area they call Biafra. Isn't their struggle noble? Of course, any struggle to enthrone justice and freedom should indeed be saluted but the irony is that the entire people of Nigeria are suffering in the hands of a few individuals that run Nigeria like their private company. That is, every Nigerian needs a MASSOB, but MASSOB itself is ethnic. We should then try a name like the Movement for the Actualisation of Justice and Freedom in Nigeria for our popular Nigerian Movement.

4. MOSOP - Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People. The story of MOSOP is similar to that of MEND. Ironically Ogoni is part of the Niger Delta and one could mistakenly think that the Ogoni Activists are actively involved in MEND. The "Ijaw" tribe mainly champions MEND while the "Ogoni" community dominated by the "Ogoni" tribe champions MOSOP. Is their struggle different from that of the other Nigerian groups? No! So, why don't we name our popular Nigerian Movement, the Movement for the Survival of Nigerian People and work together as Africans?

We all know from the historical, theoretical and practical milestones in the evolution of man that only a popular and a united movement can give life back to a dead state. Any struggle based on tribal identity in a society that houses myriad tribes will dissipate in no time without having a far-reaching effect. Such a struggle, instead of awakening the masses from their slumber of inaction will promote tribal antagonism and lead to distortions and disunity.

My Submission

I hereby submit that the Nigerian revolutionaries against the demons of ethnic jingoism and religious fundamentalism must first of all wage a concerted and conscious struggle in order to lay the foundation for a popular movement that will build a true democracy in Nigeria. Without doing this, the unity of the Nigerian revolutionaries is impossible. What I am saying is that people must come out and speak out against any form of tribal chauvinism and religious fundamentalism no matter who is championing it.

At this time of globalization, everyone is now realizing that for Africa to escape another colonialism, Africans must unite and build a common market where Africans are working together as brothers and sisters without discriminations, the tendencies on the display in Nigeria must be worrisome to every true pan-Africanist.

Do not forget that once we have that popular movement, it can snatch power from our feuding corrupt leaders at a time like this when they are busy nailing the coffin of a dead state by fighting to control its further slide into recession.