Ihenacho’s Home Truths



Only the Islamic political leaders in Nigeria perennially got away with making their private religions a civic issue. But even at that, the whole question of religion as a civic matter in Nigeria is new.
Saturday, January 26, 2002

David Asonye Ihenacho
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A PRESIDENT THAT SPEAKS WITH GOD


"When God shows the way, I will take a decision. When God points the way, you will hear from me. The decision will be made by God. Whatever God decides, you can be sure that I will abide by it. Let us work, watch and pray."

[Obasanjo to PDP Women that called on him on January 21, 2002, to persuade him to stand for a second term in office as Nigeria's president]

here is something very fascinating and profoundly surreal about General Olusegun Obasanjo's second time as Nigeria's president. His whole approach to governance this time around seems overly a spiritual experience for him. And he seems to insist that his governance be perceived by the entire nation as a theological event rather than a political exercise. This is absolutely surreal and may in fact be the original invention of the man Obasanjo who is a Pentecostal born-again Christian. Outside the Islamic world where religion traditionally intermingles with politics it is terribly difficult to find a precedent or a parallel to Obasanjo's type of political mysticism either in the west or in the democratic east and Africa. President George Bush of the US, who most people thought would tend halfway towards that type of political theology when he announced Jesus Christ to be his personal philosopher during the campaigns, has long retreated back to the traditional hideouts of previous American presidents, namely, in the constitutional provision for separation of church and state. So Obasanjo is more or less alone in blazing this new trail that may eventually evolve into a kind of democratic theology or theo-republicanism.

In the brand of mystical politics being espoused by President Obasanjo, the communication and the knowledge that inform his daily policies and decisions seem to spring vertically and inspirationally from the divinity above instead of drawing horizontally from consultations with his political peers and the whole nation as is customary in most democracies. The president seems to spend his time not necessarily working and perfecting strategies of governance but rather on trying, on the one hand, to listen and decipher divine inspiration in religious retreats and worships and, on the other, to insist on persuading the populace to believe that his mission in the 4th republic draws from God, is mandated and informed by God and will perhaps be ultimately consummated in God. In other words, the president in his new approach to politics ceases from political dialogue and consensus building to preaching, prophesying or oracular pronouncements. This is absolutely new for democracy and surreal for all those familiar with and accustomed to democratic cultures.

This type of philosophy of governance has entailed that the president works hard at packaging his politics with the wrap of a divine missionary work. Every now and then he tends to present himself like a redeemer hero whose mandates come from the world above and is perhaps responsible only to the keeper of the world beyond. The whole texture of this initiative is both fascinating and scary. It is very fascinating because this level of commitment and intensity in civic religion has never been associated in Nigeria with any Christian leader before him. Most Christian leaders before President Obasanjo worked hard to mask their religious interests and practices. That had its own advantage because it tended to cast the leaders of a heterodox nation like Nigeria as religiously neutral at least publicly. This benign hypocrisy served the religiously complex Nigeria well at the beginning. Religion was hardly the dominant issue when Nigeria won her independence from Britain in 1960.

Only few Nigerians knew what the generations of Zik and Awo believed in. Most of them publicly separated themselves completely from the religions of their youths if only to cast themselves as nationalists rather than religious bigots. One only saw them participating in some religious rituals during special occasions like the celebration of national independence or weddings and funerals of their relatives and friends. Aguiyi Ironsi in his brief reign as Nigeria's head of state was generally assumed to be a Christian because he was called Johnson Thomas and that was it. But he hardly made a civic religion out of his faith. Yakubu Gowon was believed to have been a Christian because perhaps his wife was Victoria and we saw enough of his Christian wedding pictures. But whatever he believed in while in office he kept largely to himself. But today he has become the pastor of the whole nation leading the people of Nigeria in prayer: Nigeria prays. Ojukwu became an overt Catholic long after the war had ended, in fact when he returned from exile in Ivory Coast. While serving as the leader of the breakaway republic of Biafra, Ojukwu's religion did not quite manifest even though he worked closely with bishops and priests in sourcing relief materials for the poor masses of Biafra. Rather than profess overt religion Ojukwu was in fact suspected by a large segment of the west of tending towards atheistic communism. His Ahiara Declaration, even though given in a church - the present temporary Cathedral of the Catholic Diocese of Ahiara Mbaise, did not help one bit in removing the suspicion that he was a communist or a communist sympathizer. In fact the declaration exacerbated the suspicion and contributed immensely in the pile-up that resulted in the loss of the war on the part of Biafra. That suspicion alone scared the hell out of Britain and America who were paranoid about stemming the spread of communism in Africa and all over the world during the hey-days of the cold war. Of course the old Matthew Olusegun Aremu Obasanjo was largely religiously neutral during his tenure as the military head of state of Nigeria after the tragic demise of the overtly tolerant Murtala Mohammed.

Only the Islamic political leaders in Nigeria perennially got away with making their private religions a civic issue. But even at that, the whole question of religion as a civic matter in Nigeria is new. Tafawa Balewa, Ahmadu Bello and the host of the Islamic leaders of the first republic up to the second republic of Shehu Shagari did quite an impressive work in not making their private religious practices a civic matter for all Nigerians. Those leaders were the principal authors of the secularity of the Nigerian nation. Nigeria's secularity and legal neutrality survived a constitutional crisis in 1978 when radical Muslims led by Shehu Shagari vehemently objected to article 10 of the 1979 constitution that stipulated secularity and neutrality in religion as an essential nature of the Nigerian state. But to the credit of Shagari he did not seek to amend this all-important part of the 1979 constitution when he became president of Nigeria. He allowed Nigeria to operate at least in principle as a secular state. That is a perennial credit to him.

But that ended with the coup of 1983 against the administration of Shagari. The neo-fanatical duo of Muhammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbo seemed to have had a serious religious agenda of not only making their Islamic religion mandatory and a visible civic matter for all Nigerians but they perhaps intended to carry out a systematic program that they thought would lead ultimately to the islamization of the entire nation. So in their time the civic Islam reached its apogee in Nigeria.

Perhaps the only achievement of Babangida that I can easily recall is his not heading the fanatical route begun by Buhari and Idiagbon. However, Babangida was the man that announced the surreptitious membership of Nigeria in the conference of Islamic countries OIC despite the protestation of Christians that Nigeria was entitatively a secular state. Babangida remained adamant claiming that the membership was for Nigeria's economic interest and not necessarily for religious expansionism. More than a decade after, Nigeria is still waiting for the economic windfall from her OIC membership. However despite his flip-flops and left-and-right dribbles, Babangida remained largely a moderate Muslim who was satisfied with only a prominent civic face for Islam in Nigeria. Also Abacha, despite all his flaws, was a moderate Muslim. He had his religious agenda nonetheless. But the much we saw of him was largely moderate. His flaws had been mainly along the lines of greed and roguery dictatorship than religious fanaticism. However in line with the belief of most traditional Muslims that Islam has to be civic or risk dying entirely, both Babaginda and Abacha ensured a civic place for Islam in the Nigerian politics by erecting mosques in all the presidential fortresses that Nigeria has ever owned.

Though Abubakar, the last Muslim leader of Nigeria before Obasanjo cannot be said to have been as fanatical as the Idiagbon and Buhari, he seemed far less moderate than Babangida and Abacha. He produced a dubious 1999 constitution that made problematic once again all the agreed religious issues of the 1950's and 60's. Since the Abubakar constitution of 1999 all the issues that were long settled in the 1960 and 1979 constitutions have reared up their ugly and disruptive heads once again. Today Nigeria is embroiled in a cycle of violence with the dangerous issue of Sharia, which the legendary Saduana of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello, Tafawa Balewa, etc., thought they had settled once and for all for all Nigerians. But Abubakar and his clique made them a destructive issue once again. The clique that sowed the seeds of the current disruptive Sharia in the 1999 constitution cannot in any way be described as moderate Muslims.

But Obasanjo is blazing a completely new trail being the first Nigerian Christian leader to attempt giving a civic place for Christianity in Nigeria. He has not only built a Christian chapel in the Aso Rock presidential palace at Abuja for his personal worship and/or to counterbalance the presence of Islamic mosques there, he goes about talking freely and publicly about his personal religion which is other than Islam. That in and of itself is a daring achievement for him personally and for Nigeria as a whole in view of the fact that from time immemorial it had been politically incorrect for a Christian leader of Nigeria to speak publicly of his Christian faith how much more build a place of Christian worship at the residence of the president of Nigeria. This privilege was until Obasanjo the permanent prerogative of Nigerian leaders of the Islamic faith. Moreover, his recent statement that he would rely on divine revelation to make up his mind to run for a second term as president takes the issue of a civic Christian religion to a whole new level. Curious and perceptive Nigerians cannot escape asking the questions, what is Obasanjo up to and what are the consequences of his civic Christianity in light of Nigeria's fledgling democracy?

The issue of the intentions of Obasanjo in this situation is absolutely necessary considering the fact that his second-coming's modus operandi contrasted starkly with his first as a military head of state. His first reign lacked all the sublimity and solemnity of the second: the constant invocation of the divine, the obsequious public piety, the retreats, the camping, the aura of a divine mandate, the sense of mission against evil and evil doers in Nigeria, the titanic struggle against the Satan of corruption, poor infrastructure, societal upheaval, etc. If anything, Obasanjo's first coming was marked by a false air of confidence that bordered on arrogance springing from the assumed military invincibility that made such military brats as Obasanjo believe that they could always have their way with the "idle civilians" of Nigeria. Basking in the awe of military strength Obasanjo barked orders and churned out repressive decrees without any interest whatsoever on whose ox was being gored among the different segments of the Nigerian peoples.

As everything that has a beginning must have an end, Obasanjo left office in 1979 handing over power to the Shehu Shagari administration. But he only received the acclaim of the international community who saw him as a hero of Nigeria's second attempt at democracy. Back home he received a tongue-in-cheek cheer of the people who were relieved to see him and his military establishment go after decades of wanton repression of the ordinary people. In fact he remained almost a villain and a pariah among his kith and kin in Yoruba land that insisted that he had denied their icon and kinsman Awo the presidency of Nigeria through a "fuzzy math" that favored Shehu Shagari, a Northerner. He was generally looked upon as a Northern stooge and hardly ever got rehabilitated among his people. Even though a former head of state he hardly was accorded a national platform as such. The Igbo remembered his total indifference and even hostility towards their plights and remained lukewarm towards him. The North felt that he had outlived his usefulness to them and therefore felt unconcerned about his status. So Obasanjo remained somehow a celebrity for foreigners even in his own land. He became an African icon for the Euro-American press but a tragic disappointment for the Awo-loyalist press in western Nigeria.

Back to his former constituency the military, the Buhari-Idiagbon diarchy overlooked and was in fact contemptuous of him. The Babangida military monarchy used him but only when it was convenient and would advance the personal interest of the military monarch himself. The Abacha dictatorship hated him, accusing him of treason and ultimately jailing him for decades to come. In fact right from the day he left office as a military head of state, things seemed to progressively get worse for Obasanjo up to the fact that when he was victimized and jailed unnecessarily by the ultimate dictator Abacha, not many outside his immediate family gave a hoot. Everybody thought that he was on his own with Abacha his tormentor. And unlike his friend Nelson Mandela who personally attracted a worldwide outcry and large movements for his release from jail, the world and the western press once his favorable stable talked about him impersonally as a member of the group Abacha had incarcerated and was torturing. Obasanjo hardly had that kind of a personal clout that he deserved as a patriotic military head of state that freely and peacefully turned over the reins of his government to a civilian administration. Part of the reason for that was that Awo hardly ever forgave him and therefore his Yoruba people who normally saw Awo as the father of the modern western Nigeria never forgave him either.

Ironically the prison yard became a redemptive event in the life of the soon-to-become second-time president of Nigeria. There he had the opportunity to rethink the fundamentals of his life. As most of us would do under similar circumstances he made a choice to identify more with his faith in case he would not be able to see the light of the day again. As a Baptist Christian by birth, the choice of which Christian tradition to identify with was quite easy. He became a Pentecostal born-again Christian. Though there are some historical, doctrinal and theological differences between the Baptist denomination dating from Zwingli and the Pentecostal tradition originating from the works of the evangelical John Calvin, both started in the same historical time frame in Germany and Switzerland respectively. In fact both soon forged a common alliance in their fight against their former mentor-turned competitor Martin Luther and their ultimate enemy the pope and the Catholic Church. As it was common in the 16th and 17th centuries, ordinary people easily jumped from the Baptist tradition to Presbyterianism/Pentecostalism and vice versa. So it was no big deal that Obasanjo made a choice to become a Pentecostal born again from his Baptist roots. The borderline between the two traditions in our time has been terribly blurred. In fact, Pentecostalism has permeated nearly every Christian tradition including the usually conservative Catholic tradition. Obasanjo's becoming a Pentecostal Born-again Christian seems to have resolved at least on a personal level the lingering differences between the Baptist faith and Calvinism. While Pentecostalism had originated from the traditions of Evangelical Calvinism, Born-againism originated from the Anabaptist traditions of Zwingli.

Obasanjo strove hard to put the lousy jail period into dynamic and positive use. If God would not bring about a miracle to free him from the iron grips of Abacha, Obasanjo wanted to employ the time of his confinement as a period at least to prepare for a holy death. In such a situation religion would be an obvious choice. And like many people who find themselves in life-threatening situations, Obasanjo seemed to have made several commitments to his God bordering on the fact that if his life were preserved, if he could have a life after the jail period, he would do some good work for God's people in whatever capacity his God might place him.

Also while in jail Obasanjo had ample time to rethink his time as the head of state, the accomplishments he believed he made and the mistakes people thought he brought about in the Nigerian polity. Obviously he might have thought that if he could go back to do things over again he would do some of them a little differently. As nearly every one of us would do in such a situation, he might have thought that if he had the opportunity to go through his alleged mistakes again, he would prefer to enlist with the popular aspirations of the common people rather than the aspirations of the few like the top military class that was his former constituency.

As most Born-again Pentecostals would interpret natural events, the sudden death of Abacha in 1998 became a great miracle for Obasanjo, his family and the many Nigerians who had loathed the Abacha era. For them God had intervened on behalf of Obasanjo, the rest of the Abacha prisoners and all the repressed Nigerians as a whole. The jailer himself had died in obedience to the verdict of God, so claimed those Nigerians with Obasanjo's mindset. The new head of state Abubakar promptly granted amnesty to Obasanjo and the many others languishing in Abacha jail across the country. Obasanjo became a free man with a new hope for what he could still do for God and the people of Nigeria.

But despite the new hope and vision, which his free status offered him, Obasanjo was apparently not looking forward to an opportunity to become Nigeria's president again. He was building on being able to do some charity works for the poor in Nigeria and abroad in appreciation for the miracles God had done for him in seeing him freed alive from jail. But the Northern army boys led by Babangida and Abubakar had other plans for him. They had perfected a plan to use him a little like the way Ojukwu had planned and failed to use Awolowo in the wee hours of the Nigerian civil war, and Babangida had used Ernest Shonekan in the stillborn interim administration that midwifed the terrible administration of Abacha, namely as a political wedge pending the arrival of a settlement that would not disfavor the North and the military.

The most dominant political party had become the PDP which was under the firm grips of an Igbo man, Alex Ekwueme, who, in the mind of Babangida and Abubakar, would be the most undesirable person to succeed a Northerner as the president of Nigeria under the new dispensation which had become irreversible following the democratic clamor of many Nigerians and the international community. An Igbo man as Nigeria's president was still unthinkable in the Nigeria Abubakar and his mentor Babangida were planning to leave as a legacy. So the northern clique had to seek out and cultivate another candidate from the southwest that would be acceptable to them. Among the few options they had at their disposal, Falae and Jakande included, this clique judged Obasanjo to be the safest choice both for the North and for the military establishment whose back must be perennially watched in Nigeria against a very adversarial press establishment and against the hostile public that did not wish them well.

When those power brokers reached an agreement to settle on Obasanjo as their only choice for Nigeria's presidency, the next task became how to convince the man himself to run. No body was sure that Obasanjo who had spoken loudly several times that he had left nothing in the state house that he wanted to take back would ever agree to eat his word and run for the presidency again. But some people who believed that Obasanjo was naturally fickle and would cave in under an enormous pressure contracted the assignment of convincing him to run. There began the frantic work that culminated in the Obasanjo reversing himself to run in order to become Nigeria's president for the second time. To quell his rioting conscience and perhaps give Nigerians reasons to forgive his reversal, Obasanjo claimed that God had prompted and inspired him to run for the second time. Who would dare check with God to find out the true situation? Once Obasanjo's consent in this regard was obtained the military power brokers bank-rolled his election and shoved Alex Ekwueme aside from the party he had put together thereby handing Obasanjo an electoral victory that was contrived from the word go.

But unknown to the Northern military cabal who were viewing the Ota man from the lenses of the past, the man from the Abacha jail was a "new man", a born-again Christian who had a new vision of life altogether and who claimed to have a far greater obligation to a higher being than that dictated and necessitated by political connivance and patronage. In their minute calculations of Nigerian political probabilities, the Northern ex-military gang had failed to take notice of the fact that Obasanjo had transformed from what he was as a figurehead military head of state in the 70's. They did not realize that he was now a Pentecostal Christian who usually claimed a hotline communication with God that had become his sole adviser. In that case he would not need any human advice, which the Babangida's and the Abubakar's were standing by to provide him. They thought they had their man of the 70's in place at Aso Rock who they usually manipulated in the Dodan Barracks to achieve their selfish goals. But Obasanjo had repented, converted and transformed. The new Obasanjo had an alliance with God and not with the North. When the northern military cabal realized that they had been fooled, that they had surrendered power to a different Obasanjo who would not readily dance to their tune in everything, frustration and anger followed. The clamor became deafening for the omniscient Babangida to come back and wrest power from him. And that is the genesis of the North-sponsored name-calling and threats on Obasanjo in his second coming as Nigeria's president.

But the current overt political mysticism of our president has taken political relationships in Nigeria to an uncharted territory. Though Obasanjo seems to be legitimately responding to his prison experiences and commitments, which he is entitled to, his brand of civic Christianity, his interest in using divine oracles in place of democratic consultations may in fact have serious implications for the Nigerian nation. Though his political theology may give Christianity the needed civic lift it has never had since the foundation of Nigeria, it runs the risk of completely alienating the northern cabal that claims to have brought him to power in the first place. While this may be desirable to us and the many other Nigerians, it has the inherent propensity to cause social unrest in the whole country. Every Nigerian knows that religion is a veritable tinderbox in Nigeria. By tradition Nigerian Christians manage religious marginalization better than Muslims. Over the years Nigerian Christians have been putting up quite well with civic Islam up to the level of fanaticism that the Buhari administration wanted to take it. But it has not been tested how Muslims would react to a civic Christianity along the lines Obasanjo is carrying it. All that we can say for now is that since the second administration of Obasanjo tragic religious issues like the Sharia have been on the rise in the North. There have been many religiously inspired riots across Nigeria. And these have been leading to civil unrests and wanton destruction of human lives and essential property of people. The culture of a civic Christianity, which the president seems to be pushing is not going to help the tense situation any bit. If the president wanted to play smart politics he would refrain from highlighting such issues that could signal to the short-tempered Muslims that they were being marginalized in the current dispensation of Nigeria. An issue like the overtly civic Christianity would surely give that impression of marginalization to some Muslims and before you know it, they have reached for their swords and blood will flow across the land. This cannot be desirable by a president who is intent on correcting some of the mistakes of his former era as well as laying the foundations for new positive legacies. What Nigeria needs now in my view is finding a way to stop the random bloodletting in all corners of our nation in the name of religion. If a little check put on public religious practices by her leaders could do it for the entire nation, why not we try it? Nigeria is a terribly heterodox society. Religion must be seen as having the greatest propensity to cause upheaval. Leaders must refrain from conveying the impression either through deeds or symbols that they are advertising any particular religion to the detriment of the others. Such careless attitudes, which in essence do not serve the living God, do lead to wanton destruction of innocent lives.

Second, by advertising his reliance on divine oracles for his decision to run for a second term in Nigeria's presidency Obasanjo is showing both poor judgment and limited knowledge of democratic ethos. In place of a firm anchorage on the constitution which is the normal place for governments whose legitimacy is founded on social contracts, the president now prefers to hearken to a sublime voice that tells him when or when not to act for the good of himself and that of the people. His presidency now finds its legitimacy in God rather than on the expressed will of the electorate. In other words, he is on his way towards abandoning our cherished constitutional democracy for a theocracy. Such an unnecessary religious zeal is very scary indeed and may have serious implications when not properly structured, compartmentalized or completely put in check. Even if the president may harbor some religious feelings concerning his continued participation in a political process, it smacks of a terrible imprudence to make it a news item. Every religious person makes some critical decisions with some inputs from religious inspirations but such are not usually for a public consumption. The situation is even far more critical for a prominent political personality say the president of a constitutional government. In developed democracies people who opt for or out of political processes due to some reasons bordering on religion, family, or health, claim to do so due to personal reasons. No cultured person comes out in the open to say that God or the divinity has told him/her to contest a specific election or to get out of it. That may make a better case to have a person's head examined. Life in general, talk less of politics, is not run in this manner. The president needs to exemplify more sophistication in his speeches. There is obviously time for the president to talk and exalt God, in his church, private chapel and among his friends. But God should not be unfairly dragged into the murky waters of the Nigerian politics. It is neither fair to God nor to the president whose office entails that he becomes a unifier rather than a divider of the nation. The easiest way to implode the nation and cause many innocent casualties is for the president to continue the business of marketing his religion and relaying to the world his conversations with God.