And because political confusion appears to be the only constant variable among the indeterminable factors that constantly impact and jolt the Nigerian political scene, one cannot but ask some basic questions on the constitutive nature of our country. What is actually wrong with Nigeria our beloved country? Why is it that this country of ours seems consistently to defy the principles of every science, be it the science of economics, politics or even mathematics? Why is it that one plus one hardly ever equals two in Nigeria? Why is it that even the law of gravity does not often hold true in the Nigerian atmosphere? It is absolutely strange how the Nigerian world completely differs from every other world in the universe.

Perhaps it is not the Nigerian plot on planet earth that is enigmatic but the people of Nigeria themselves. Perhaps the Nigerian conundrum does not ultimately rest with our compatriots but in our perception of our country and our people. It may be that Nigeria's problem is purely epistemological rather than metaphysical or even political. Perhaps the better question should be, what is wrong with us, the self-acclaimed Nigerian punditry class? Why is it that we hardly ever get it right? Why do we insist on analyzing Nigeria with foreign data and categories? Why do we continue to pretend that Nigerian democratic politics is similar to the ones practiced elsewhere, say, in America? What is wrong with out methods of socio-political calculations in Nigeria? Have we truly no access to the right analytical tools and data for understanding our country Nigeria? How can we be helped? Who actually has the skill or even the magic wand to rescue us from our despondent situation?

Having failed woefully to predict or even to anticipate what would become of the Nigerian political scene when and if there were other variables thrown into the mix as we are currently witnessing in Nigeria, do we still have any creditability left to continue our pro bono career of socio-political analyzing of Nigeria? As it has turned out, nobody seems more bewildered by the current turn of events in Nigeria than we, the members of the socio-political commentary club of Nigeria. Perhaps it is a good riddance for our often-presumptuous commentaries, our euphoric prognostications and the often-annoying in-your-face hubris with which we approach some national issues. But whatever it may be, we have to admit that Nigeria is proving ever more difficult for the interpretation of the social sciences.

The case of our column: Home Truths, seems even more pathetic than we will be willing to admit here. We had used this column to anoint the incumbent president the prohibitive favorite for what we had believed would be next year's titanic battle of a presidential election. We had made him our undisputed front-runner in the race to occupy or re-occupy what we had thought would soon become a vacant presidential mansion of Abuja. We had consistently done this despite the repeated warning of Obasanjo's strategist, Tony Anenih, that there is yet no vacancy in Aso Rock. But see what a couple of days have done to our fallible political analyzing. With the monkey wrench being thrown into the political wheels of Nigeria from the different forces that have been in play in the country in the past few days, Obasanjo clearly has ceased to be ours, or anybody's prohibitive favorite for the 2003 elections. In fact, at this very moment, nobody is favored for any elections if there will be anything happening in 2003 in the name of elections at all.

The road to elections 2003 looks far more confusing than ever before. Visibility to Anno Domini 2003 has been reduced to near zero points. What is reigning instead is the ever-growing uncertainty whether the Nigerian nation will be able to complete the short distance trek to 2003 elections in one piece. Some deeply buried stupid hunch of mine urges me to believe that with the way things are unraveling with the so-called 2003 elections, one of two scenarios will sooner than later play itself out to add to the ever-growing stacks of anticlimactic moments in Nigerian politics. Either there will soon emerge a consensus opinion among our politicians that holding free and fair elections within such a narrow space of time between now and 2003 would be totally unfeasible and unrealizable, or, there will be convening sometime early next year in place of elections a sovereign national conference that will decide that Nigeria has to resolve its defective structural problems before embarking on nationwide elections. But as I said, this is all coming from a hunch. And a hunch is a deeply planted feeling that is hardly based on facts or logic.

However, one fact seems clearly established at this point in time in Nigeria's tortured journey to the 2003 elections. If there will be a presidential election next year, nobody at this very moment appears to be its frontrunner, and nobody is its clear favorite any more, notwithstanding President Obasanjo's most recent boast to the contrary (cf., Nigerian-Tribune, June 26). All this is as a result of the current situation of Nigerian politics, which has been in a total flux recently. As a result of the fluidity of the present situation, both those who had been on their marks and those who had gotten set to sprint into the election contests have all been forced back to the starting point. The cause for this is that both the umpire, in this case, the Independent National Election Commission, [INEC] and the contestants, namely, the president, the executive, the legislators and the politicians in general have all made a false start. And this has in a way scrambled the Nigerian political tracks albeit temporarily. Now, the tracks must be redrawn on a new surface for the race to clearly take off. Leveling the political surface as well as renewing the tracks of its marks will be the tasks politicians would have to face head-on before a credible election can be held next year.

It is therefore safe to say that the scrambling of the Nigerian political world in the past few weeks through the collision of so many forces has returned everybody - aspirants, voters and commentators to the starting block of the 2003 race. While the politicians recline to redraw the maps of their political viability, we, the commentariat class, must start all over again to re-analyze our data, review candidates' winning and losing odds, rethink our previous conclusions and redraw the maps of our speculated alliances. And this is what makes Nigerian politics intriguing. It is unlike anything that happens in any other place in the universe. Nigerian politics is in a class all by itself. When you think you have some grips on its secrets, that's when it tweaks and tumbles to embarrass you with the terrible stupidity of your previous conclusions. All these tend to demonstrate that Nigerian politics as well as every other collective pursuit in Nigeria, is hardly amenable to analytical indices derivable from the social sciences. Nigerian politics is an enterprise more in acquiescence with the voodoo sciences of the unreal and the mythical than the positive sciences that deal with perceptible data and clear logic.

But how did we get this far this fast? First, it was the bombshell that President Obasanjo and his one-time stooge in the house, Senate President Pius Anyim, had parted ways and were headed for each other's juggler. While it was being alleged that Obasanjo had undermined Anyim in his home state of Ebonyi by handing over a very crucial PDP primary election victory to his arch-rival Governor Sam Egwu of Ebonyi, perhaps putting the final death nail on Anyim's senatorial re-election in 2003, Anyim was claimed to have responded by allowing the commencement of an impeachment proceeding against President Obasanjo on a purported "high crime and misdemeanor" of not implementing the budgets as enacted into laws since 1999. Thus began the bare-knuckle and frosty politics that has characterized the relationship of these once best buddies of the fourth republic Nigerian politics. In other words, by the events of last week, the leaders of the two most important parts of our democracy were headed to a state of mutual political annihilation. While the president had used his enormous influence in the PDP to plot the political demise of Anyim, Anyim decided to return the favor in kind by employing his enormous power in the senate to negotiate the president's political extermination through the force of impeachment. Who says that democratic politics is not living up to its billing in Nigeria as dog-eat-dog?

While the standoff between Obasanjo and Anyim had lasted in both the senate floor and at Ebonyi, it was reported that a war had broken out between President Obasanjo and the evil genius himself, the former Nigerian military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida [Newswatch June 24, 2002]. According to press reports, the Nigerian arm-twisting gladiator-in-chief, Babangida, had decided to throw all caution to the winds and come out swinging in his challenge of the Obasanjo presidency. The last straw that had broken the ice of their secret and frosty political relations had been the late pretension of the Obasanjo administration to be speeding ahead with the implementation of the Oputa panel's reports, which had recommended the reopening of the Dele Giwa murder trial, a matter that cuts very close to the chest and destiny of the first military president of Nigeria. Babangida had been fighting since 1986 to put a permanent lid on the unanswered question of who murdered in cold blood the prominent Lagos journalist, Dele Giwa, in October 1986. He has hardly hidden his belief that further digging into Dele Giwa's murder mystery could have a very devastating implication for his personal life, freedom and future political relevance in Nigeria. But the Oputa panel had done the unthinkable by pulling the rug off the ever-protected heels of the stinkingly rich ex-dictator. The panel's recommendation to the government to open the murder case so that the chips may fall wherever they might have seen Babangida spoiling for a very big fight with the government. As a military buff he understands the strategic advantage of taking to an early offensive. As an army general he knows the well-worn military strategy of surprise and multi-frontal attacks. And that is what he has tried to unleash on Obasanjo and his government with outstanding preliminary successes.

On its part, the Obasanjo government was strangely inclining towards doing the bidding of the Oputa panel this time around and not the more politically correct bidding of the evil genius. Quite uncharacteristic of President Obasanjo, who earlier on could not even muster the courage to back the subpoenas of the human rights group to bring the larger-than-life ex-military heads of states of Nigeria to appear before it, started showing signs that he might be inclined to implementing some of the radical recommendations of the panel. He promptly instituted what he labeled an implementation committee with one of the former members of the rights panel Elizabeth Pam as its chairman. Perhaps he was doing all those in order to politically arm-twist Babangida into supporting him in 2003. Hardly can anybody say what the president's actual motive is or what political game he intends to play with the Oputa panel recommendations. But what we do know yet is that it has led to an open confrontation between the president and the dreaded Babangida persona and clout. The two generals are now in the trenches planning how to outflank and undo each other.

The moves of the Obasanjo administration to support as well as implement some aspects of the recommendations of the rights' panel were enough to set off the alarm bell in the head of the omniscient evil genius. But rather than fall for what could pass as cheap blackmail by the Obasanjo administration, the Nigerian Maradona man positioned himself to launch a major fight back. As retaliation, Babangida decided to open up two fronts of assault on the Obasanjo government. First, he dragged the government to court challenging the whole basis of the panel and the implementation of the so-called report of the human rights' panel. Second, he decided to formalize the realignment of political forces he had been surreptitiously forging to undermine the political fortunes of the president in 2003. Trust Babandiga, he hardly ever does anything by half. When therefore he set off to bring to an end the reign and regime of Obasanjo, even the president himself knew that he was dead serious. With Babangida lunging forward for a serious fight on two fronts, Obasanjo knew that he had two additional battles in hand over and above the two he had instigated by venturing to nail Anyim to his political coffin.

To counter the attacks from the two dangerous fronts that had been opened against him, the president marshaled out his civilian generals. To lead the war against Babangida in the courts, Obasanjo anointed the attorney general of the nation Godwin Kanu Agabi to lead the counter attack against the take-no-prisoners legal team the evil-genius had assembled to procure the legal destruction of Obasanjo and the Oputa panel. Agabi, finding himself ill-equipped to withstand the legal arsenal that had been amassed against his side by the moneybag-carrying ex-dictator, sought to acquire the only known legal nuclear weapon Babangida fears to death, namely, Gani Fawehinmi. Hearing the name Fawehinmi in connection with the Giwa mystery murder would be enough to cause Babangida to melt in fear. Therefore Babangida promptly detailed his dreadful legal team to file an additional suit challenging the acquisition of Fawehinmi as the libero of the Obasanjo legal team.

But Babangida was not showing an empty bravado. In fact he was playing it safe. Who does not know that the best defense for him would be to keep the dreaded but charismatic Fawehinmi as far away from the case as possible? One thing Nigerian history seems to testify over and over again about General Babangida is that he knows enough of the minimum of what he needs in order to stay alive and relevant in Nigerian affairs. And he always manages to get the needed luck to see his wishes realized. Once again this time around, his lucky star was shining quite brightly. In what may turn out as an early warning to the losses Obasanjo might endure in the battles he has engaged himself in, the president lost his first battle against Babangida when the dreaded radical lawyer, Fawehinmi rebuffed his request to lead the counter-attack against the onslaught of Babangida. Fawehinmi had raised insurmountable conditions under which he would agree to take up the case on behalf of the president and his acquaintances. With these conditions, the president unwittingly revealed how ill-prepared he and his team were to withstand the fireworks the Babangida group would soon unleash against them in the North courts. The default of Fawihinmi proved to be the earliest victory for Babangida in the marathon battles that will be fought before the highly volatile 2003 would come to pass in Nigeria's history. Ever since Fawehinmi declined to lead the counter attack against Babangida, the president and his men have been scrambling to raise a formidable team that could match those Babangida is planning to parade. But up till now, it is the hapless solicitor general and his heart-stricken boss, Agabi, who have been thrust to the line of fire to defend against a general who shows no mercy in fighting to decimate his enemies.

Notwithstanding the fact that he is finding it extremely hard to prepare adequately for the legal fireworks Babangida is intent on unleashing against him, President Obasanjo appears to be in a far pitiable situation with the political fronts the evil genius has opened to undermine his prospects for the 2003 or any other elections in the immediate future of Nigeria. According to press reports, to put teeth into his decision to ensure that Obasanjo served out only one term as Nigeria's democratic president, Babangida is reaching out to the Southeast and South-south so as to bring about a formidable alliance against the incumbent president. According to some strands of the report, Babangida is throwing his weight behind the unannounced candidacy of Alex Ekwueme. But the secretary of the potential presidential candidate has stoutly denied the alleged alliance with or sponsorship of boss by Babangida on the ground that the former vice president of Nigeria is a principled man and would not work with Babangida. However, one can say that we always hear such denials when elections are still months away. Candidates for elective posts always try to bring it across to their potential voters that they are their own persons even when evidence to the contrary abounds. It is absolutely unthinkable to claim that when push comes to shove, Ekwueme will not work with Babangida because of a personal principle. The world is yet to welcome a politician with such a rigid and ironclad principle. Moreover, if Ekwueme indulges in the politics of excluding Babangida or any other Nigerian irrespective of his antecedents on the basis of arcane principles, then he either does not understand modern politics or his style of politics will get him nowhere. Modern democratic politics is all about deals and compromises. That is what gets things done rather than abstract philosophical principles that a priori discriminate and exclude. Democratic politics is about working with the person (people) who disagrees with you the most. Democracy makes it possible for sworn enemies to sit down at a table in search of a way forward on behalf of the nation. In politics, they say, there is no permanent enemy and no permanent friend. There is only permanent interest.

However there has not been any credible denial of the allegation that Babangida has decided to help either the Southeast or South-south mount a credible challenge against Obasanjo's re-election in 2003. Also there is hardly any sign yet that Obasanjo is moving that gingerly to counter this potentially mortal alliance against his candidacy for the 2003 elections. Rather all that we hear is that he is building his strategy for re-election in 2003 around the governors most of whom are ironically engaged in mortal battles for their own political lives. As our people say in their wisdom, he, who is carried on the back of someone else, does not carry another person on his own back. Most of the fourth republic governors of Nigeria are hobbled by their inefficiency and nonperformance. They are therefore carrying their own liabilities on their own backs as they head towards 2003. They do not have the luxury to add the liabilities of Obasanjo on their own backs. Obasanjo cannot hope to be carried across the elections of 2003 by the limping governors of Nigeria. It is almost certainly not going to happen unless the president is banking on the ability of the governors to rig the election in his favor, which will not be out of character in Nigeria. It is safe to say that Obasanjo has not deployed any troupes yet nor mapped out any strategies against the political battlefront Babangida has opened up against him. In other words, while being seriously battled and outflanked in the legal front, Obasanjo is yet to counter the ferocious attack on the political battlefront. He is seriously lagging and may ultimately become irredeemably vulnerable in this regard.

But these appear not to be the only woes facing this president who may at the end of the day remain president even if to a terribly fractured and a mortally wounded nation. Besides Babangida, the president's other adversary of recent appears to be Pius Anyim, the young man he successfully installed senate president some two years ago to run his errands in the once volatile upper chambers of the legislature after he had successfully vanquished his nemesis, the highly educated but propriety-challenged, Dr. Chuba Okadigbo. As has become his custom recently, the general the president placed at the strategic position to man the battlefronts of the new war against his reneged stooge is Audu Ogbeh, the third chairman in as many years for the ruling Obasanjo party, the PDP. Like all good generals serving the interest of their commander with all dedication, Ogbeh threw to the winds the constraints and caution demanded of his position as the chairman of a supposedly large-tent party. He bounced on Anyim with venom, accusing him of everything including inexperience, immaturity, boyishness and lack of skills of the leadership of the senate. Ogbeh cast Anyim as somebody who was not democratic enough, who was masterminding the move to impeach the president in the senate chambers because the later had sided with the majority of Ebonyians by acquiescing to a re-run primary election in Anyim's his Ebonyi State PDP over and against the wishes of the senate president. For at least one full working day, Ogbeh made such a compelling case that made Anyim look petty, greedy and lacking in political sportsmanship.

But like the way the Obasanjo's political misfortune has been spiraling out of control recently, as party Chairman Ogbeh pushed ahead in his wide-mouth efforts to make Anyim look small and unaccomplished, Anyim hunkered down searching for answers. He knew that he had a terrible weapon against the man who was leading the Obasanjo fight to procure his permanent destruction in Nigerian politics. Though generally regarded as under-aged, inexperienced and puerile for his office as senate president, especially as Ogbeh had become fond of recounting to the worldwide in the recent times, Anyim had a nuclear weapon of his own against the president's political general. As he indulged his self-righteous orgy of painting the senate president with the bleakest of colors, Anyim reached down his files and produced a devastating letter in which Chairman Ogbeh had sought his cooperation to bilk the senate chambers of 120 million Naira earlier this month in order to host his three-day phony partisan retreat in Calabar. And just like that, the status and credibility of Ogbeh vanished. Rather than become small and inexperienced, which Anyim could be in comparison to the experience of Ogbeh and his master Obasanjo, it was PDP Chairman Ogbeh that became instantly small and morally challenged. Ogbeh had spent a lot of words accusing Anyim of not being a good leader. When his dubious letter was made public, it became clear that his definition of good leadership in Nigeria is one's ability to steal and redirect Nigeria's wealth for the benefit of the few elite. In going after Anyim with venom, Ogbeh succeeded only in shooting himself in the foot. He clearly exposed himself as a politician of the old era who should be banned from participating in partisan politics in Nigeria. And that was not a loss to Ogbeh alone. It was even a major loss to the president who had tapped him to go after the boyish senate president. Making Ogbeh's criminal letter known to the world press effectively handed the president's men their second loss in as many days.

But what in my view has effectively destroyed the Obasanjo inevitability in the 2003 elections, if we ever get there, is INEC's registration of three more political parties to vie for political positions on equal basis with the three old parties. That singular action completely scrambled the Nigerian political scene for a long time to come. According to my provisional reading of the event from far away America, the registrations of All Progressives Grand Alliance, National Democratic Party and United Nigeria Peoples Party as full-fledged political parties have very unpredictable implications for President Obasanjo personally and for our country Nigeria as a whole. We have hardly gotten any little gist on the expected serious consequences of that exercise. But even now, some implications are a little clearer. First, those registrations effectively reduced PDP to PDM. With the emergence of the three new political parties, the PDP has become what it has been denying for three years, that it remains essentially the late Yar'Adua's party. The ghost of Yar'Adua henceforward manifests itself very clearly in order to direct the affairs of the PDP more personally. And every politician in the PDP who did not belong to that group originally will sooner than later find that he or she is what the Americans call a "journey man" and Nigerians describe as "a passenger." INEC's recent registration of new parties will undoubtedly facilitate the execution of the law of natural selection in the PDP. That is to say, INEC did help to cut the flabby PDP to size. This became very clear immediately INEC released the names of the registered new parties. There were numerous reports in the press that many of the PDP members of the lower and upper chambers of the house had made up their minds to abandon their old party in search of greener pastures in some of the new parties. Prominent among those political journey men were those described as the Umar Ghali Na'Abba and Anyim Pius Anyim groups. The exodus from PDP is likely to continue from now till the eve of 2003 elections, if we ever get there. The hemorrhage in PDP will dangerously affect the fortunes of Obasanjo and his cohorts in the elections. And if this pans out as has been reported and we are speculating that it will, there is no doubt that Nigeria's political face will be changed for quite a long time to come.

Second, INEC, perhaps inadvertently succeeded in assigning each geographical zone a political party. In the final analysis, the current six political parties represent the current six geographical zones that are working in the present-day Nigeria. This is a very significant development in Nigerian politics. It is both scary and dangerous. I do not think there is anybody who has come to a full grasp of how these zone-based parties will operate with regard to national elections. Are we going to have an election in which there will be six presidential candidates with each winning in his/her own zone? When and if this becomes the case, shall we have a collegial presidency or what? How will a collegial presidency work in view of the presidential democracy our country claims to be operating? Shall the parties go into alliances in order to acquire the needed majority and mandate to rule Nigeria? What is the history of post-election alliances in Nigeria? There are real tasks left unresolved for the future of Nigeria. In other words, the registration of the new parties completely scrambled Nigerian political scene. It will take weeks and months for the coast to clear and the new alliances to form. But for now, Nigerian political arena is completely scrambled and turned upside down. We are groping along trying to make a sense out of what seems yet incomprehensible.

Third, the registration of the new parties seems to have rehabilitated some of the ex-military generals and political veterans who felt marginalized by the former three parties. The UNPP, APGA and NDP have given them a new platform to challenge with some success the incumbent government. And that is not good news to Obasanjo and his cohorts - the governors who are salivating for an easy ride into a second term of office. I do not see any group that has benefited more than the ex-generals with the recent registrations of new parties. They had gotten back a political platform, which they lost when they handed power over to the civilians in 1999. The groups that handed over power as generals to the democratically elected civilians almost immediately transformed themselves into politically active civilians to wait for the opportune moment to grab back power as democrats. Ladies and gentle, here they come! However their acquiring a political platform is both welcome and scary. They are desperately in search of power and relevance. And they will get it and more. Unfortunately the playing field will henceforth not be level again between them and the purely civilian politicians. The ex-generals have more than half of Nigeria's wealth stashed away in their private accounts across the world. They can buy anybody. They can buy the whole of Nigeria if they so desire. They have reserved for themselves all the advantages God bequeathed to Nigeria. They are coming to totally transform Nigerian elections into buying and selling. They will compete against one another against the whole nation. We had lamented that money and bribery had been characteristic of the past Nigerian elections, now we will have to witness and deal with votes' auction and bazaar to be conducted by the ex-military politicians. These guys have the deep pockets. They are coming to the Nigerian elections with their moneybags. It is certainly going to be excitingly bizarre. But one good thing will come out of it all. For once, Nigeria's money will circulate, and foreign currencies will make a homeward drift from frozen bank accounts overseas. That much is welcome. But we will pay a dear price for it. Nigerians should get ready for a season of election bazaar that has not been seen in our land since the British called the nation to being in 1914.

However, a wild card in all this is the danger posed by some of the parties who did not win registration with INEC. Shortly after Gani Fawehinmi had found out that his party, the National Conscience Party, had failed again to win registration from INEC, he threatened to make Nigeria ungovernable. Even though such a threat may not rise to the level of a national security issue, they represent the level of political angst and frustration in Nigeria, which the new parties and their politicians will exploit to the fullest. Out of the 24 political associations that had applied for formal registrations INEC chose only three. It is the duty of INEC to promptly publish for the world to see the criteria that had informed her choice of three out of 24 political associations. It is understandable that INEC could not have registered all 24 applicants. But it is a duty that the disqualified associations get to know promptly why they had not scaled through the registration process. On what basis did some qualify and some did not? It is our national interest to know. There is no doubt that those whose associations had not been registered as political parties would like to throw a monkey wrench into the whole political process. INEC must work closely with the government to find a way to prevent the sporadic angst of the unqualified associations from snowballing into a national trauma as Fawehinmi has promised. Also INEC erred tragically in her refusal to inform the world how and why it decided to give the old parties a clean bill of health? How did parties like AD and APP manage to avoid de-registration? This adds another layer of sour taste to the whole process of registration of parties in Nigeria.

All these terrible situations tend to indicate that the Nigerian political scene is scrambled, shaken up and totally confused. Obasanjo has his hands full. He has many wars at hand: the Babangida wars, the Buhari wars, the Anyim Wars, the Na'abba wars, the Southeast-South south coalition wars, the Arewa wars, the resource control wars, the Niger Delta wars, the OPC wars, the MASSOB wars, etc., etc. His war strategy of assigning generals to particular fronts is simply not working. His assigned generals have all fallen apart. Those who went after Babangida and Anyim lost at the first shot. The reality is that the Obasanjo enemies appear to be winning and gaining more power and ground. And his once solid PDP is shrinking. Having lost his powerful military constituency, Obasanjo is having a very hard time finding a base for his re-election. The base he thought he had in the South-west is going, going, and about to be gone as Alliance for Democracy has embarked on a serious rebuilding following the registration of its like-minded parties. The new political parties have in fact compounded Obasanjo's multiple problems. By default the three new political parties gave the Alliance for Democracy new life. INEC's decision to localize the parties has made Nigerian politics a local and regional issue. And AD is the leading expert in regionalized politics. It will not allow itself to be outdone in the new dispensation ushered in by INEC's regionalization efforts. While the old PDP may survive in a way as a Nigerian utopia, the new PDP, which is in fact PDM, is going to be as local and regional as any of the five other parties. When this happens Obasanjo will be hanging in the air, as his party is not in conjunction with his region. The new reality created by the registrations of these regionalized parties is that political survival will henceforward derive from regional power base. If you do not have it you do not have a bargaining chip and you lose out in the long run.

Where do all these leave Obasanjo and his vaunted ambition to have a second term? I will say nowhere, or, perhaps at the middle of the air. The rapidly changed Nigerian political arena has completely upset the Obasanjo grand plan to have an easy re-election. And he knows it. He is wise enough to know that things have changed in Nigeria rapidly. With Nigerian political parties officially regionalized by our electoral body, the person who has the upper hand is the one who can muster the biggest alliance across the region. And that person may not be Obasanjo for he has used his first term of office to upset so many regions. His life support today in most of the six zones of Nigeria is made up of some governors. But since of some of these governors are themselves very vulnerable because of the changed landscape of Nigerian politics, there is no solace for the president in hanging onto the aprons of those wobbly governors who are fighting for their own political lives. The president appears way behind in the new alliances mandated by the new parties. The Babangida's, the Arewas, the Igbo and the South-south are not looking his way at all for any immediate alliance. But he is not toast. The rumor of his political demise is overly premature.

As a student politician who has been gradually growing in confidence, Obasanjo appears to have his own trump card ready to play. Seeing that he may have been completely outflanked in the alliances that will ensure victory for the elections of 2003 if we ever get there, Obasanjo played his last card recently. And that was quite ingenious. He showed himself as somebody who has mastered the dynamics of Nigerian politics. He knows that there is one phrase Babangida and the core Arewa North do not want to hear in this fourth republic. It is Sovereign National Conference. Perhaps to prevent the Babangida and his Arewa brothers from joining an alliance that could ultimately endanger his candidacy for 2003, Obasanjo recently made a one-hundred-eighty-degree u-turn over the Sovereign National Conference. Addressing the Ohaneze Youth who had paid him a courtesy call, Obasanjo indicated that he would support a sovereign national conference if the house gave authorization for that. That was an under reported bombshell in the president's political life. When he declared his favor for the sovereign national conference, he instantly got the attention of the Northern elite. They understood the implication of Obasanjo's statement more than those from the south who were gleefully celebrating the president's conversion to sovereign national conference advocacy. But Obasanjo's advocacy for a national conference was so earthshaking in the North that the defacto political leader of the North, Ibrahim Babangida came scurrying down to Aso Rock the next day to pledge allegiance and disavow himself of the rally that was holding in Minna to "force" him to join the presidential race. For once Obasanjo applied some arm-twisting on Babangida and it did work miracle. The ex-military president who had spent most of the last three years presenting himself as a fear-no-devil kingmaker of Nigerian politics was forced to race down to Abuja to recite the pledge of allegiance to the Obasanjo political game plan. That was quite an accomplishment for the Obasanjo political machine. But whether it settles the whole issue of Obasanjo versus the North, and restores his political inevitability for the elections of 2003 is another matter altogether, especially with the rising profiles of populists like Muhammadu Buhari. Only time will tell how much he did succeed in browbeating the Northern elite back to his political fold through the threat of a Sovereign National Conference, which they fear to death. But when Obasanjo made his statement, its full implication was not lost on the elite of the North. His statement on sovereign national conference was a subtle warning to the North. He was in fact telling them "if you play hardball with my second term of office by seeking alliances elsewhere to my exclusion and my political ruin, I will play hardball with you by getting your regions technically excised from Nigeria through a sovereign national conference before I leave office." This is politics of arm-twisting at its best!