Ihenacho’s Home Truths



The president seems more intent than ever before on making Nigerians credulous about his use of religion to benefit his political ambition.
Saturday, April 6, 2002

David Asonye Ihenacho
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resident Olusegun Obasanjo is not your type of a politician who is shy about wearing his religion on his sleeves. Public brandishing of his personal piety has become his trademark since his second coming as Nigeria's leader in 1999. He is totally at peace with himself parading his Pentecostal and Evangelical faith for the world to notice. And it is gradually becoming less and less a super-nature to him. To think of the president nowadays naturally entails a visualization of his Pentecostal Christianity hanging loose and dangling from his neck area. It is almost indubitable that President Obasanjo has made an enormous progress persuading every one of us that he sincerely believes his religion and would not be cowed away from milking it dry to maximize his political advantage. Even his greatest critics are beginning to concede that his public religion may spring from a source deeper than the barely skin-deep old political instinct of survival. He seems actually not worried by Jesus' own warning that piety must not be practiced publicly for the sheer purpose of winning the approval of people (Matt 6:1). Rather he is consoled by the fact that the same Jesus commands elsewhere; "your light must shine before people that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven" (Matt 5:16). President Obasanjo is vigorously shining the light of his Pentecostal faith on Nigerian politics. Only that it seems awkwardly suspicious the way he is going about it.

Politicians the world over embrace civic religion only when it advances their cause of capturing and retaining power. But Obasanjo's case seems a little different. There are hardly any data proving or suggesting that his public religious display in an ethnically and religiously pluralistic Nigeria will ultimately provide him a leg-up for his political ambitions. But he clings to it any way suggesting at least on a face value some underlying personal conviction in his chosen religious approach to politics. He seems quite comfortable attributing all his accomplishments and perhaps his mistakes to God. This is terribly scary but well within his right and privilege as a free citizen of Nigeria with some religious convictions. However, the jamboree at Ota this past week by the governors and politicians who came storming his farm residence to urge him to run for a second term in office has shown that Obasanjo's religious politics must not only be taken at its face value. It seems to be a well-crafted political maneuver that has hardly been seen before in Nigeria. President Obasanjo seems to be applying his private religion to his politics in a way that has hardly been done before in the world of politics. The governors and politicians might have been a group of prepped actors of a grand political theater the president and his advisers had crafted to retain power after 2003 without working hard for it or even deserving it.

As I have written previously in this column on a number of occasions (cf. A Tale of Two Matthews, 01/30/02; A President that Speaks with God, 01/26/02; Rationalizing Nzeribe's Impeachment Hoax, 04/26/00), the president sees his tenure as Nigeria's leader the second time around as a religious ministry. The fourth republic president of Nigeria behaves every bit like a missionary agent sent by God to the lost world of Nigeria trapped in the barbaric military kingdom of underdevelopment, brutal injustice, poverty and religious fanaticism. The president sees his second coming as Nigeria's president almost in the light of Christ's first coming to liberate his people from the kingdom of darkness. If allowed to choose his title, it would not surprise anyone if President Obasanjo chose to be described as Nigeria's pastor-in-chief instead of her commander-in-chief. He would obviously prefer to be called a presider, preacher or a prophet instead of a president. He might relish to "kampe" rather govern, to discern inspiration rather negotiate, to dictate orders rather than legislate, to declare oracles rather read communiqués. If left to his whims the president's executive meetings might be one intense period of a para-liturgical experience. He would probably prefer to have in his cabinet ministers of hospitality and music rather than ministers of finance and justice. Obviously at the end of his administration, [whenever it will be] Obasanjo would like to be remembered as Nigeria's deliverer from sinful darkness rather than one of her political presidents.

As the countdown to 2003 elections begins, the president 's religious politics seems to have escalated to its highest crescendo. To the ever-growing crowd of supporters urging him to seek a second term of office he had insisted that he would have to wait for God's instructions before deciding one way or the other. He has often announced to his admirers that he would make his intention on the bid for a re-election known only after God had spoken to him. Some of us have been criticizing him severely for this. But he has continued to persevere in his claim of a direct communication with God in spite of us. In fact over the past few months he has not missed any opportunity to present himself as a politician who enjoys a privileged hotline communication with God. Hence he has methodically been leading people towards a frenzied moment when the president of Nigeria would announce to the whole nation: "Fellow Nigerians, the call I made to God a few months ago has finally been returned. In a chat I had with God last night, He finally gave me the green light to contest the 2003 election. God almighty has spoken, and every knee including mine must bend in obeisance." Though he will certainly not adopt my favored dramatic format, the president seems completely poised to say something like it about the status of his potential bid for a second term in the next couple of days. He seems to have successfully manipulated every one of us to be looking anxiously forward for that surreal occasion, and subsequently, to believe completely whatever he eventually tells us as coming from God. And this is a dangerously portent political tool whose envelope the president and his men have continued to push with stunning successes since his coming to power. The president seems more intent than ever before on making Nigerians credulous about his use of religion to benefit his political ambition.

For the past two weeks or so, the president has been gleefully declaring to everyone that cared to listen that he had begun a two-week fasting and prayer that will precede his long-expected announcement on the status of his re-election. Since then the world has been holding its breath anxiously waiting for the end of the president's two-week-long fasting and prayer that would usher in a major political announcement. What an ingenious religious and political manipulator the president of Nigeria has become! For the past few months he has been preparing us for this cliffhanger of a moment in his political career. All of us have shared in the anxiety of waiting for what God might eventually tell the leader of the most populous black nation on earth. But now the president has also decided that we must be part of the frenzied period of fasting and prayer that will precede the in-breaking of his celestial encounter with God, which will culminate in the declaration of God's oracle about his second-term prospects. And like a perfectly hypnotized people that we are unfortunately at the moment, we have obliged him. We are therefore anxiously waiting for the great announcement from God via the president of Nigeria.

But this is hardly the only plane being plied by this supreme political manipulator in a Pentecostal cloak. Like Jesus leading his three beloved disciples to the mountain of his transfiguration for a special revelation, "God's anointed" Matthew Aremu selected his beloved acolytes and led them to Mount Ota for a revelation. Hardly had he begun his holy season of fasting and prayer in a joyful Easter Week did the voice of God thunder from the blue skies of Mount Ota: "You are my beloved son, Matthew Aremu. In you I am well pleased. Go you therefore and claim the kingdom of a second term on Aso Rock, which has been prepared for you before the foundation of the fourth republic." However the crowd that was at the foot of Mount Ota had not featured Moses and Elijah neither did it include Peter, James and John. It was made up of the 26 (or 21) governors, the 40 ministers and a mammoth crowd of political heavy weights from across Nigeria. They were a very symbolic group representing every nook and cranny of Nigeria. In their group the 120 million Nigerians were spiritually and symbolically present. Like Moses and Elijah they had come to Ota Farms Retreat to discuss the future of their "anointed politician " and the kingdom of Nigeria he had inherited from the dark forces of the military. And after conferring with him on the "high mountains" of Ota, they announced with one voice that it was the mind and decision of God that Obasanjo, the "anointed savior" of the fourth republic Nigeria should seek a second term in office.

There was nothing wrong in reaching the conclusion the Ota pilgrim politicians did. They could have been faster if they chose to. Obasanjo and his men did their homework perfectly. The governors and their colleagues were playing a role and reading an already prepared script. Obasanjo's arrowheads had prepared a script, which the Ota politicians read gleefully as if they were acting on their own accord. However what was important was not the script they read but their collective voice. They were being used as props to deliver the long-awaited God's voice to President Obasanjo. The governors and politicians across Nigeria had been gathered at Ota to lend a voice to God. That voice was in fact the voice of God, which the President has been promising us for quite sometime now. It was the voice that we have been waiting for since the past two months. Yes, that voice did come eventually via the governors and the politicians. And it announced that Obasanjo should run for a second term because he is the chosen one, the "anointed leader" of Nigeria. The governors' coming to Ota was actually the frenzied moment of oracular pronouncement Obasanjo had been leading us to embrace. The president had skillfully guided us to embrace that special hour of God's revelation about his future. What he wanted us to believe was that God had spoken on Mount Ota in Ogun State. The oracle had been delivered to the hearing of all Nigerians. And we have no other choice but to believe and to obey the voice of God. The long and short of it being that the president had been manipulating both God and us so as to perhaps declare himself unopposed in the forthcoming elections. Isn't his method ingenious?

With the declaration of support for his second term in office by the governors and prominent politicians across the spectrum, Obasanjo had proved himself to be a political genius. He successfully and cleverly maneuvered his Christian belief into an unassailable political weapon. And this might have been his strategy all along especially since his second coming. Having become a committed believer in his Pentecostal sect, he might have wanted to apply some of his evangelical ministerial strategies and skills into the presidency of Nigeria right from the start. The recent jamboree at Ota could convince even the most skeptical that the president did in fact hit a political jack port. Twenty six governors, forty federal ministers, uncountable number of federal and state legislators, political heavy weights are all now tucked in his corner. The jamboree showed that he has all corners of Nigeria behind him. The six stillborn geo-political expressions have been sealed and delivered to him. There would be no more reason to fear the insatiable and greedy Arewa, the envious and grumbling Ohaneze, the confused and ungrateful Afenifere, the scattered and disoriented AD and the impotent and sleepy APP. The landscape is cleared and scrubbed for a monumental landslide come 2003. Like the miracle of 1999, the president's Pentecostal faith has delivered once again!

By his ingenious manipulation of Nigerians to buy into his religious politics, Obasanjo has shown himself to be perhaps part and parcel of the new age Pentecostal and evangelical ministers and believers who peddle religion for some higher or should I say, lower goals. For the wealth-seeking and power-hungry neo-Pentecostal and evangelical movements of Nigeria and America, religion is more of a means rather than an end. Religion is as good as the goodies it can practically deliver along the lines of wealth, health and power. For them wealth is grace, and God's miracle subsists in social prestige or political power. Like the Lagos and Abuja pastors who are peddling religion to amass wealth, Obasanjo seems clearly to be peddling religion to retain power. He successfully groomed and goaded everybody into believing that he had no personal preferences in the decision to run or not to run. Everything depended on God, he claimed. Nigerians bought into his political piety. He masterfully duped every one into believing that there was an oracle in the offing concerning his political future. In fact he in a way had acted like Moses. He took us to the mountain of Ota where we anxiously waited for God to speak to him. Then like an ingenious politician that he has proved to be, he gathered a crowd of prominent Nigerians to publicly plead with him to run for a second term. He programmed all these so that they would occur long before he would deliver the oracle from God. In other words, what he will announce to us in the next couple of days is what we already knew: God has spoken in his people gathered at Ota. The proclamation and argument now is, Obasanjo deserves a second term because vox populi vox Dei. Obasanjo, the master of religious politics, had raised expectation that God would speak to humans on his behalf. The huge crowd gathered to listen. But he manipulated them into assuming the role of the voice of God. When therefore he finishes his fasting and praying, he will claim that God has actually spoken through his people. What a crafty politician he is! This is ingenious. While the people waited to hear God speak, they were manipulated in a classic new-age religious revival way to turn around and speak on behalf of God because we are after all God's voice. The game was so crafted so that Obasanjo would be the winner both ways. He is the only beneficiary either way. If God spoke directly to him, he would declare victory. If God spoke through the people as it has turned to be the case he would declare victory because the voice of the masses is the voice of God. Only a clever politician would have conceived such a journey that led straight into a labyrinth. In actuality we have been duped by another religious minister we thought we could trust. This is usually the story of Nigeria. New age pastors are always getting the better part of us. They have been having a field day with our meager wealth. While they grew richer we grew poorer. Obasanjo has brought that methodology into politics and we have been duped again. He has ingeniously substituted our voice for the voice of God and made us believe that God has spoken through us for his own favor. That is the state of our wretchedness.

Wait a minute! Am I saying that those politicians that made the pilgrimage to Ota were that foolish as to be so hypnotized? Actually I am not saying that. The people who were completely hypnotized in the Ota jamboree were the Nigerian public. The whole game was directed at us, hoi polloi of Nigeria. The politicians were mainly props in the grand act conceived and executed by the Obasanjo political machine. The governors and the other politicians knowingly attended the Ota charade because they were playing their own games. They had not gone there to proclaim Obasanjo the 'anointed one' because they believed in his "messianic anointing." They had gone there to enlist in what they believed would be a processional bandwagon that would ultimately see all of them re-elected in 2003. It was just like joining the messianic procession. A participant would have to feed fat from the largesse of the messiah. That was what the governors and the other politicians had gone to Ota to accomplish. While they conveyed the message that Obasanjo had become the popular unopposed candidate for the 2003 election, each of them was implicitly saying "me too," I should also be considered unopposed in my own corner of Nigeria. And that is the tragedy of that event in Ota. It has a monumental implication for Nigeria's democracy. It demonstrated very clearly that we have not moved an inch from where we were in 1964. That Ota jamboree tells us that Nigeria is a country that has been standing still since October 2, 1960. In 1964 we had told the world that we were not ripe for independence, that we could not successfully organize an election. In Ota this past week we reiterated our position. We are saying that even after forty years we are still not confident in ourselves that we could organize a successful election. Our problem has remained the same since 1964 and we have done practically nothing to change it. The problem of Nigeria, which the Ota jamboree had clearly highlighted, is that we are not yet sure that we could organize an honest and responsible election without the prying and jaundiced eye of the military. Nigeria is looking every inch like a spoilt child that cannot accomplish anything for himself. Hence the election is coming again and the whole nation is fretting. Even as a forty-plus adult, Nigeria is showing that she is rather a baby that needs all the help she can get to procure a clean bath. This is the home truth, which the Ota gathering must drive home to all Nigerians. Despite our pride as the giant of Africa and the most populous black nation on earth, we must tell ourselves the home truth that there are only very few things that we can accomplish for ourselves. A free and fair democratic election is absolutely not one of these few.

Also there is another revelation from the jamboree at Ota this past week. By that gathering the politicians were inadvertently announcing the complete failure of the Obasanjo administration to deliver a true atmosphere for a democratic election to hold. They were saying it loud and clear that this guy they were urging to run again in 2003 has in fact failed as an administrator for he has not delivered the peace, security and confidence that would be necessary for our democracy to test itself out in a free and fair election. The terribly ironic message the politicians gave by their gathering at Obasanjo's Farms was that collectively they were a tragic failure. They have failed in the last three years to begin the foundation of a solid democratic culture in Nigeria. They had not prepared the civilian administration very well to be able to execute a free and fair election, which is the sole corner stone of any lasting democracy. They had therefore gathered at Ota to indulge a patch-up work. They had figured that the only way they could avoid the chaos and uproar, which 2003 elections had been shaping up to become was to initiate a tidal bandwagon effect by which Obasanjo and all incumbents would be returned unopposed. They had calculated that a chaotic election might provide the military the excuse they have been craving for to seize power once again. To avoid all that and also to ensure their own political survival, the politicians decided to gather at Ota to draft the president to run for the second time perhaps unopposed as the first fruits to the many unopposed candidates we are likely to see from now to 2003. They figured that such a move would help them save face, buy time and perhaps postpone the chaos for a few more years. In fact they had considered the president the lesser of the two major evils. They had calculated that the evil of having him rule for another four years would not in any way equal the tragedy of chaos that might ensue if an unsuccessful attempt was made to organize a truly democratic election.

However, whether the Ota politicians saw it that way or not, what they had accomplished in their gathering at Obasanjo Farms was the indictment of both themselves and the president they claimed to be rooting for. By their euphoric endorsements, they had portrayed both themselves and the Obasanjo administration as incompetent if not an outright failure. The test of a democracy is on the ability to conduct an election effectively and fairly. We do not yet have a democracy until it has been tested and seen to be successful in organizing an election that injected new blood into the governing system of the nation. But where the president and his colleagues scheme to avoid conducting a true election, they are admitting failure. Since our independence in 1960 organizing an election has been the stumbling block of Nigeria's democracies. The nation would wobble along its bumpy democratic path until it arrives at a checkpoint called election where it stalls and dies. This has been the usual ritual of Nigeria's democracy. Civilian organized elections have always proved the dead ends of our experiments in democracy. And the fourth republic is shaping up to be well on its path to join its ancestors thanks to the usual nemesis of Nigeria's democracies.

But the only tragedy this time is rather than address the issue of a lack of a successful election in the resume of Nigeria's democracies, the fourth republic politicians seem to be scheming their way to avoid the 2003 elections altogether. If not for the fear of being booed by the international community the fourth republic politicians of Nigeria would have introduced a bill in the legislature to abolish elections and run our democracy through patronages and political appointments. That is how scared the politicians are today with regard to the forthcoming elections. They are searching for ways to get around having an open election in 2003. Their popular acclamation of Obasanjo to run for a second term despite the numerous problems he has had getting his acts together in his first term seems only a tip of the iceberg of what our politicians are willing to do to avoid a competitive election in 2003. Our politicians love democracy by name but they are terribly scared of practicing it.

But how can we describe our nation as a democracy if we cannot organize a successful election? How can Obasanjo claim to have been a successful president in his second coming if he does not succeed in organizing a credible election in which neither he nor his surrogate is predetermined to win through rigging and bribery? To organize a successful election is the greatest challenge facing President Obasanjo as a person in his second coming. He had it very easy in 1979 because he was backed by a military fiat. But the game is up for him this time around to prove himself as a great leader of Nigeria. Will he or will he not be able to midwife a free and fair election? That is the billion-dollar question, which he must answer from now till next year. He is clearly under pressure to abbreviate the 2003 election and declare himself the winner even when no ballots have been cast. He should learn from the misadventures and tragedies of Shehu Shagari in 1983. The jamboree at Ota is undoubtedly a major temptation to him. He might prefer the easy way out by joining the Ota bandwagon that will surely bring him and his sycophants across the bridge to 2003 while leaving all Nigerians behind. The president should think about his religion and his legacy and not succumb to such a temptation. His best bet lies in organizing a free and fair election and let the chips fall wherever they may.

President Obasanjo likes to present himself in the image of a religious minister serving a community of God's people in Nigeria. I believe that if our publicly religious president could successfully exorcise Nigeria of the demons of rigged elections he would go down in history as the deliverer of Nigeria from the kingdom of darkness. We would urge the president and his men to discountenance and disown the last week charade at Ota. God had not spoken through those politicians. In fact their appearance may have seen like that of the children of God, their voice was most likely that of the devil. They neither had the interest of the nation nor that of the president at heart. They had come for one single reason, namely their own selfish interest, their own political survival. The president should concentrate all his energy in giving Nigeria one credible democratic election in our lifetime. Whether he should be part of that election or not should not be his main pre-occupation. His whole focus should be to lead us across the bridge where we have always stumbled. If the president insists on taking care of his own political future, if his whole interest is directed at ensuring that he remains the president of Nigeria after the forthcoming elections, he might cross the 2003 bridge all alone and remain a president as long as he wishes but Nigeria and all Nigerians will remain where we have been stuck since 1964. But if he focuses on giving Nigeria a free and fair election this time around, though he might not continue to lead Nigeria after 2003 but he would have carved a niche for himself as the Moses that pointed out the way that led us across the Jordan river into a brand new world of democratic politics.