These days I have been spending more time in Nigeria.’East or west’, ‘home’, as they say, is indeed the best. But for most Nigerians it must be tough love . It is often difficult to tell if things are getting better or one is just getting used to it and lowering one’s standards while increasing one’s tolerance levels of unfair situations and injustices on the many fronts of the serial obstacle race that the country has become. Just when you think things are never going to get worse Nigeria and Nigerians combine their unique capacity to find ways of digging deeper and sinking further.

The general insecurity across the country has proven so insurmountable that Nigerians seemed to have resigned themselves to it and put themselves on a permanent state of alert hoping pure luck and prayers will see them through. Armed robbery, hired killers,political killings, and other forms of gratuitous violence are perpetrated both privately and officially by the police and other security agencies charged with public safety. The Inspector General of Police recently publicly apologised and promised to take action about a number of serving police men accused of‘hiring’ their guns to gangs of armed robbers. A few months ago I was travelling home to Funtua, at around 8:00pm about 75 kilometres north of the university town of Samaru, Zaria, in north-western Nigeria. At a small town called Giwa we saw huge crowds of people lined up on the road and a row of different vehicles parked by the roadside. Everybody was shouting that we should stop. We did and we were told that there was ‘an operation’ ahead of us. This operation was not a security sweep or road checks, armed robbers had mounted road blocs and were taking whatever they could find on their victims.

Confidently we were told the ‘operation’ was going to be over in about an hour. We were advised that once there were cars coming from the opposite direction it meant the road was clear. And within an hour as we were advised ‘the road opened’ and we drove home safely. You will be forgiven to ask: where are the police? If everybody knew where they operated and even the time and also the days (usually market days in surrounding trading towns) why are the police not doing anything about it? Very legitimate questions but only a stranger will ask these kinds of questions in Nigeria. Everybody knows that the police and the army, if they are not doing the ‘operations’ themselves, are aiding and abetting the crimes because they share in the booty. It is not only their guns that they rent out, but they also regularly parcel out sections of the highways so that these nefarious ‘operations’ can take place with impunity. Once they are done you will see sirens-blaring police vehicles rushing to the scene after their comrades in crime have bolted with their loot!

Yet this a country in which Obasanjo and his acolytes delude themselves into believing we have never had it so good and that is why they are orchestrating a constitutional reform that will make it possible for OBJ to stand for a Third Term like his good friend, ex-Comrade Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda.

Obasanjo does not seem to have learnt anything from his previous experience as a military head of state, his stint in civil society as the founder of Africa Leadership Forum and his horrible prison term under Abacha.

A friend who was present at a meeting between General Ibrahim Badmasi Babangida (IBB) when he was Head of State and General Obasanjo as a coup-plotter-turned CSO activist, narrated an interesting exchange to me that is relevant for this matter. Obasanjo had fallen into an armed-robbery ambush on his way to see IBB. Being the cautious General he was, he did not play any hero. He knew he was outgunned and saw no rationality in resisting so did as he was told, surrendered the money he had and they let him go. They did not know and could not have cared who he was. He was just a victim like any other innocent Nigerian whose only crimes was driving on the road when operations are on. Obasanjo told IBB that he knew there was no political motivation to the crime but if it had leaked out then many would have jumped to the conclusion that because Obasanjo had been openly very critical of IBB’s SAP policies that the government had a hand in it. Therefore he asked IBB to take the issues of public safety and security seriously.

It is a shame that the same Obasanjo cannot allow himself similar wisdom.

As the tussles for power intensify at all levels of government from local through state to the ultimate prize, the Presidency, a spate of killings and fear of more violence has gripped the country.

By no means is all of the violence politically motivated, but so bad are things now and so polarised has the country become that even if there is no sunshine it will be blamed on Obasanjo and his government. The recent slaughter of the wife of the former radical governor of Kano State, Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi, was immediately suspected to be politically motivated because Rimi is one of the most brutal critics of OBJ’s third term bid. It may turn out that to the extent that politics was involved in the murder it had local dynamics rather than anything to do with Aso Rock.

It is not only killings that are blamed on Aso Rock. Anybody being investigated for corruption now claims that it is because they are opposed to Obasanjo’s third term bid or because they are supporters of Obasanjo’s estranged Deputy, Atiku Abubakar.

The whole governance system is grinding to a halt so that even the good things that Obasanjo’s regime is doing are lost in the controversies. He is losing control of the machinery of the state and on his way to becoming a rogue President with no respect for law and order, the constitution, or elected institutions in a precipitate slide towards becoming not just an incompetent government, but a failed state. Yet he can retreat from the abyss and leave a more positive legacy by making a broadcast to the nation renouncing any intention of amending the constitutionto facilitate his self-succession in 2007. This will immediately reduce drastically the over-charged political atmosphere of the country. It will also destabilise his many enemies who have built a coalition of convenience around anti–third term campaigns. More than that it will give him the opportunity to regain credibility for a lasting legacy in the areas of public safety, economic reform, the war against corruption and even leverage in deciding who succeeds him. Failing this he will just be a lame-duck president with everything imploding around him.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 12:29 pm and is filed under Thursday Postcard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.