FEATURE ARTICLE


Leburah GanagoTuesday, April 27, 2004
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Atlanta, GA, USA

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FROM ABACHA TO ''ABACHA''


"We are not as stupid as the Nigerian government".
-- A Western Activist
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e were driving in a car on a Port Harcourt street under the cover of darkness, with a British Human and Environmental Rights activist, on a sleek-in fact-finding visit to Nigeria, in 1997. And I confronted our guest visitor with this question: "What do you people in the western world make of the propaganda blitz by the ruling Nigerian military junta?". The above quotation was his straight- jacket response.

Soon after the United Nations fact-finding mission visited Nigeria in April 1996, and published a report detailing gross human rights violations in the country and particularly declaring the hanging of Minority and Environmental Rights campaigner, Ken Saro Wiwa, and eight of his fellow Ogoni campaigners illegal, the Abacha military junta assembled a crop of morally bankrupt, soulless and heartless mercenaries in Nigeria, some of who are now key players in the present Obasanjo dictatorship, and dispatched them to the United States, United Kingdom and other western nations on a multi-million dollar image laundry campaign. The thrust of the campaign was to convince the "uncooperative" western world that Ken Saro Wiwa and his kinsmen deserved to hang. And that pacification of Ogoni was in order. Beside the home-! grown Nigeria mercenaries, some western mercenaries were also contracted in a multi-million dollar deal to further launder the blood-drenched image of the Abacha military junta. However, their ill-fated mission failed to convince the civilized world outside. Of course, those idiots were pelted with raw eggs wherever they went .

Interestingly, Dr. Reuben Abati in one of his recent write-ups in the Guardian made the point that the Nigerian government is now belatedly complaining about Shell's lies and the racist company's other sharp practices in the country, an issue which he noted, the late Ken Saro Wiwa was campaigning against but they did not listen to him. Not only that they did not listen to him, they conspired with Shell to murder him!

Nick Ashton-Jones, a British Environmentalist wrote of Shell:"Since my earlier visits( to the Niger delta), Shell has proclaimed that things have got better. Depressingly, my 2001 visit confirmed that the company culture is fixed in a negative and arrogant attitude towards its host communities. That is: a lack of cultural and ecological awareness and sensitivity; a willingness to encourage armed attacks on defenseless communities and to resort to the repression of civil rights in preference to negotiation; poor maintenance of its extraction infrastructure and low engineering standards; ignorance of environmental and social impacts; a tendency to tolerate the inefficient management of its compensation and social programme processes; and to lie repeatedly when challenged until the evidence is irrefutable".

Soon after the 2003 grand fraud called general elections in Nigeria, someone wrote rather frustratingly, that should that fraud be allowed to stand, the ruling PDP, would in 2007 not bother to conduct even a stage-managed poll. They would simply go ahead and declare results. Of course, the fraud was allowed to stand. And it is being consolidated. The March 27 local government elections saw the ruling PDP improving on its open robbery of the electoral mandates of the Nigerian people.

Commenting on that charade of a democratic process, the Guardian (Nigeria) in its April 8, 2004 editorial states: " Blighted by violence, voter apathy and party boycott in some cases, the local council elections that were held in most states of the federation on March 27 bear the hallmarks of a farce. That this is the outcome of a much -delayed process is sad. The Guardian went on to submit : " Ultimately, events such as the recent council elections provoke the question of just how much progress the country's five-year old democracy is making. While it is true that elections alone do not constitute democracy, they are nevertheless a vital part of the process. In any event, the rule of law, which is the other rampart of democracy, has been under repeated assaults in recent years with the result that stakeholder! s have begun warning of a civilian dictatorship.".

My own state, Rivers, maintained its position as the show case of election fraud in Nigeria. It posted a repeat performance of the 2003 grand fraud. I just read in the papers the other day that the election tribunal gave its rulings, upholding the victory of Dr. Peter Odili as the "re-elected" Governor of the state. And I burst into laughter. Governor Peter Odili, you will recall, was allocated over 2 million votes in that election, the highest figure and arguably a record in that country, in an election that booms of gunshots exploded by party thugs reportedly kept almost all potential voters indoors throughout the day.

Today, deadly cult groups impose curfews in the city of Port Harcourt as they openly engage in gun battles on the streets in broad daylight, driving residents behind closed doors. The state government has been reportedly implicated in the sponsorship of some of the cult groups terrorizing the state. It is little surprising that Rivers State has recorded the greatest number of high profile politically motivated assassinations in the country so far. This include, Dr. Marshall Harry, Chief A.K. Dikibo. But does it not bother the state government that Rivers state with its peaceful disposition the ever alluring Port Harcourt, the Garden City of Nigeria, hitherto a dreamed place to be for every Nigerian, has now become "Rivers of blood"?

A couple of days after reading the report of the election tribunal verdict on Governor Peter Odili I read the encounter between Comrades Sam Amadi and Uche Onyeagucha in Amadi's piece in ThisDay of April 17, 2004: Amadi wrote :" Hon. Uche Onyeagucha, the only APGA candidate who retrieved his mandate from the PDP rigging machine in Imo State called me to sound out on the next line of action in defense of democracy and peace in Owerri. I urged that we challenge the `results` at the Election Tribunal. Hon. Onyeagucha could not contain his anger. He lashed at me, " Amadi, are you a fool?" What will tribunal do for you? Are you still thinking of electoral tribunals that have been hijacked by the murderers?"

Electoral tribunals hijacked by the murderers? Yes. Look round the states, how many of those sitting governors who rigged the elections to be there have had their elections nullified by the tribunals? The case of Adamawa state where the tribunal nullified the election of Governor Boni Haruna of the ruling PDP is an exceptional one where the tribunal chairman has shown extraordinary courage in dispensing justice. Yet, it was after that landmark ruling that we began to hear the story of the Nigerian Vice president Abubakar Atiku, who happens to come from that state ,threatening to beat- up any judge who gives such " embarrassing" verdicts. The Vice president later denied this. But no one expects him to own up.

The conference of Nigerian political parties, CNPP, has served notice of a mass action to protest the massive electoral fraud committed by the PDP, between April 2003 and March 2004. It does not matter that a crack is appearing in the ranks of the CNPP, as some of its members have reportedly opted out of the protest march, the Obasanjo dictatorship is already panicking and threatening to treat the action as treasonable offense. Tafa Balogun, Obasanjo's Police Inspector-General who in the first place used the police to effect the election rigging is readying his men to shoot at the protesters. Obasanjo even after subverting the electoral mandates of the Nigerian people has never hidden his disdain for opposition. In fact, he relishes a one-party dictatorship wh! ere no one would query his misrule having succeeded in installing a rubber stamp National Assembly with no voice of its own.

However, the mass action being packaged by the CNPP, had better been handled by civil society groups- the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Student Union, Pro-democracy activists etal. Career politicians are not known to be good organizers of events like this, as their political differences are likely to tear them apart. This is already happening even before the planned action.

The Obasanjo government recently banned radio and television stations in the country from taking news live from foreign stations. Apparently they do not want the Nigerian people to hear what the world outside is saying about them. This government has a lot to hide. So much atrocities committed. This reminds one of Abacha's days when foreign reporters who sleeked into the country to report the despot's atrocities were arrested, detained and tortured. I have made the point in my earlier write-up that Abacha, Babangida and Obasanjo belong to the same school. And this would sound incredible but that is the story, that in Obasanjo's five year old democracy more people have been killed than the much villified Abacha's military dictatorship within the same lenght of time.

The final stage of General Sani Abacha's evil plot to succeed himself included his purported adoption by all the political parties he created as a consensus candidate. It is very likely that a mock election would have been arranged and Abacha declared the unopposed president. Unfolding events in Nigeria today indicate that Obasanjo is on his way to doing just that, may be only changing tactics as it is highly speculated that he is scheming to go for a third term. From the way things are going, there may be no other party left to contest elections with Obasanjo's PDP in 2007. By then, Nigeria would have effectively be operating a full blown one-party dictatorship. Again, with the spate of assassinations going on even within the PDP, there may be no one left with enough big heart to challenge Obasanjo for the rulership of Nigeria which he has come to assume as a birth right.

Coming to the hydra-headed issue of treasury looting, Olusegun Obasanjo may end up being richer than Sani Abacha by the time he is through with his 8, 12 or 13 year reign. This has nothing to do with the proceeds of his Temperance Farms or Obasanjo Farms Otta. Note even from cocoa. Only the Niger delta oil would make this possible .

Even as light-fingered as Abacha later proved to be, he was still "generous" enough to appoint a petroleum minister who helped keep track of the nation's oil sales. Obasanjo does this himself, with the effect that only the president and his men at the N.N.P.C know how much they make from the Niger delta oil sales. They disclose to us whatever figure they deem fit. But the fact remains that Obasanjo is now making more money from oil sale than any other rogue who has led that accursed land .

It is absolutely wrong for anyone to refer to Nigeria as a democracy at a time the people are being denied their democratic rights to elect candidates of their choice.

It is fraudulent in the first place for Obasanjo and his gang to call the body they set up to manufacture electoral fraud, Independent Electoral Commission, INEC. This is a criminal attempt to dress the body in the garb of an impartial arbiter. The Nigerian electoral commission is not independent and it will never be.

The other day Tafa Balogun, the Nigerian Inspector-General of police held a press that the assassinated Vice chairman (South-South) of the PDP. Chief A.K. Dikibo was killed by stray bullets from armed robbers. No one expected him to say something different from what President Olusegun Obasanjo has said. For one, Tafa Balogun is only being valued for the dirty jobs he is doing for his kinsman Obasanjo- declaring clear cases of politically motivated assassinations as armed robbery and using the police force to rig elections for him. But the rest of the civilized world out there is not as stupid as the Nigerian government.

That the Nigerian government is still being stupid six years after the fall of that brutal military dictatorship shows just how much nothing has changed in that country. Of course, a military dictatorship has simply been replaced with a pseudo- civilian dictatorship.

Even if a military coup as a means of sacking the organized banditry that is going on in Nigeria may not be desirable, only members of the gang of and those benefiting from the looting and killings would wish Obasanjo to remain in power a day from today. Yet, talking of coups, what Obasanjo and his PDP gang have been doing from 1999 to 2004-subverting the electoral mandates of the Nigerian people is their own version of coups. Who cares if an illegitimate government such as the one Obasanjo is now heading is being sacked ?

Meantime, if President George Bush of the United States and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair are now reducing the very serious business of invading Iraq, with its attendant grave consequences, to the "mere' presence of Saddam's mass graves, ( they seem to have tactically dropped the more compelling charge of Saddam's alleged link to 9/11 and possession of weapons of mass destruction, WMD) then they need to also visit other countries like Nigeria. There, they would see Babangida, Abacha and Obasanjo's mass graves in Ogoni, Odi and other parts of the Niger delta.