Last 100 Days of Abacha
Wonderful: It is amazing how Nigerians hardly learn from history, how the history of our politics is that of opportunism, and violations of the people's sovereignty.
After the exit of British colonialism, a new set of local imperialists in military uniform and civilian garb assumed power and have consistently proven to be worse than those they succeeded. These new vetoists are not driven by any love of country, but rather by the love of self, and the preservation of the narrow interests of the power-class that they represent. They do not see leadership as an opportunity to serve, but as an avenue to loot the public treasury; they do not see politics as a platform for development, but as something to be captured by any means possible.
One after the other, these hunters of fortune in public life have ended up as victims of their own ambitions; they are either eliminated by other forces also seeking power, or they run into a dead-end.
In the face of this leadership deficit, it is the people of Nigeria that have suffered; it is society itself that pays the price for the imposition of deranged values on the public space; much tension is created, the country is polarized, growth is truncated.
In this book, Olusegun Adeniyi, one of Nigeria's leading newspaper columnists, editor of a newspaper and a gifted reporter with an eye for details has captured this dilemma in a style that is instructive for its simplicity and freshness. He focuses on the difficult season of General Sani Abacha's misrule as Nigeria's Head of State, particularly his plans to perpetuate himself in power and office. General Abacha is the arch-villain of Nigeria's contemporary history. He summed up, in Abacha's personality and the style of his government, the totality of the evil that was represented by military incursion into Nigerian politics.
It is not surprising that apart from the civil war (1967-70), no other event has fired the Nigerian literary imagination in recent times more than military tyranny and the crisis of democratization. The political transition programme of General Sani Abacha, as examined in this book, has been used by the author to expose the key fault lines in Nigerian politics. What we are dealing with invariably are the following issues:
The nature of the Nigerian state: It is a state in perpetual transition, with underdeveloped institutions. The failure of the political party system: under General Abacha and since then and even before then, political parties in Nigeria have been used to serve purposes that are far from being democratic; politicians speak the language of war.
The role of civil society: This book documents the resilience of civil society under General Abacha, and places a special accent on the value of protest in the face of tyranny.
The crisis of leadership at the heart of the Nigerian question: The characters that feature in this account are the same characters who continue to parade themselves as Nigerian leaders, but whose motivation is the opportunism of their choices. The author raises the question of how Nigeria is still in search of leaders and how those who get into the more influential corridors of power are the same persons without principles or progressive ideas.
The need to expand the political space to allow the freedom of choice: Tyrants often begin their careers by closing the space against others through a combination of devious tactics supported by hired agents. And finally, the long absence of good governance: this has had grave implications for the growth human capital in Nigeria.
The author's style is in turns entertaining and amusing: This is the work of a reporter and commentator, and effortlessly, the author's strengths shine through. Combining the techniques of a diarist, reporter and commentator, he reporst the events as they unfolded under General Sani Abacha, he allows the actors of that drama to speak in their own words, he constructs the narrative in a chronological sequence and guides us to the climatic and sudden end of the Abacha misadventure.
He provides strong entertainment in recording the statements of those pro-Abachaists, those willing agents of dictatorship who handed over the initiative to Abacha and his paid agents, but who ironically today are occupying positions of authority as democrats; the author mentions their names directly and confronts us with the fickleness of the human mind and the dangers of the personal factor in Nigerian politics.
But this is the work of a moralist, with a touch of melodrama: The author is essentially interested in the lessons that can be learnt from the failures of the past; the characters in his account are either villains or charlatans, democrats or political mercenaries, men of principles or hired thugs. Without calling anyone names, he allows their deeds to place a judgment of history upon their heads. But these are men without ears, even without shame.
The author advertises the power of the written word, indeed of journalism as a weapon of political intervention. He has put this book together at an auspicious moment in Nigerian history. After two terms in power, supporters of President Olusegun Obasanjo, one of General Abacha's victims to whom providence has been most kind, are engineering a campaign of self-perpetuation in power for the General turned civilian ruler. They are saying that there is no alternative to President Obasanjo, and that he should remain in office beyond 2007 in order to consolidate his achievements. The interesting thing is that they are adopting exactly the same methods as General Abacha's supporters, and President Obasanjo, in his responses sounds very much like the late dictator.
Even the 'Obasanjo-must-stay campaigners' include persons who worked for Abacha and learnt their trade under Daniel Kanu. It is a bizarre form of imitation. What is signposted again are the failures of the Nigerian state, made worse at a personal level considering the otherwise more impressive credentials of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The author raises a lament and a protest: his recollections remind us of the repetitiveness of history; how so little has changed in the lives of the average Nigerian and in Nigerian politics. To the power-mongers in authority, he presents before their eyes, the story of General Abacha after the fashion of classical Greek tragedies. But the ultimate owner of the game is civil society. The task of defending the people's right to choose, which is at the heart of democracy, should remain sacrosanct.
Dr. Reuben Abati
Lagos
6th August, 2005
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