|
 Daily
Independent Online.
* Monday,June 14, 2004.
All the President’s men
ByTony
Eluemunor,
ABUJA BUREAU CHIEF.
Squandered Golden Opportunity?
“As I surveyed the canvass of
our national life, I saw little more than confusion, greed, corruption in
high and low places, selfishness, pervasive lawlessness, and cynicism.
The very state itself, to which we were all required to be loyal, had
become a state full of malice and meanness. Public officials appeared to
have forgotten what selfless service meant. Private citizens felt a
profound distrust of, if not hatred for the state.”
It would be difficult to convince
Nigerians that the above quotation is not from a speech made recently by
some critics of President Olusegun Obasanjo who have been mushrooming by
the day. But those words were taken from the President’s 39th
Independence Anniversary national broadcast in 1999. So, has the
President turned things around? Is Nigeria of today a better place than
he found it in 1999? It is hardly so. Almost one year into the second
term of the Obasanjo administration, everyone appears to be groping for
answers to the big question: what went wrong?
As governance is actually a power game,
this series of articles will not be limited to just an examination of the
administration’s policies; it reaches beyond this and gives an insight
into the players as well as the game they have been playing.
On November 3,1998, Obasanjo declared his
intention in Ota, Ogun state, to run for the presidency. In a speech
titled “The Challenge Of Service” he said: “The richness of the
democratic dispensation before us is a golden opportunity which must not
be squandered. It is the chance for a rebirth, a chance to rekindle the
transformation of our country into a land of opportunity and justice for
all. It is an opportunity to create an enabling environment to actualise
the vast potentials which nature and providence had endowed us. Only in a
climate of peace, security, justice and equity can the creative energy of
our citizens be optimally employed in positive pursuits that can benefit
the society at large. We must seize this historic window of opportunity;
we must not let victory elude us, because we may never be this lucky
again.
“Yet, there is a considerable risk that we
may falter again, especially if we allow the attitude of politics as
usual to prevail. I share the view that some fundamental changes have to
take place if the much -awaited political dispensation is to succeed. The
perceived imbalance and lopsided composition of public institutions and
the appointment of public officers have to be corrected to reflect true
Federal Character. No section of the society should be disadvantaged.
“Every Nigerian has a stake in the
survival and prosperity of the country. This stake should be recognised,
no section or group should be made to feel disenfranchised or alienated.
“A legacy of rabid dictatorship of recent
times has been over-concentration of power at the centre. This has been
achieved through the violation of the spirit of federalism enshrined in
our constitutions. But then, dictators are what they are because of the
disregard for constitutions.
“Without doubt, the Nigerian economy
deserves the utmost priority. A state of socio-economic deprivation
cannot but perpetuate a state of political instability in any land.
Democracy and human rights do not thrive in economic adversity...nor can
democracy be internalised, grass-rooted and sustained in a society which
fails to maintain law and order, protect lives and property of the
citizenry, and where corruption and greed are the order of the day.”
If speeches
were all it would take to solve the nation’s problems, Obasanjo would
have excelled. For these past five years, he has been Nigeria’s preacher
man par excellence. He has dissected all the problems, tagged them
accordingly, and filed them in the right compartments. But has he solved
the problems? That is the question to which the series would provide
answers.
Yet, the aim here is to showcase those who
have been running the government from Obasanjo himself to his ministers
and aides. Here in this series of articles those actors are brought alive
as their actions are spiced up with dates and direct quotations. Brought
alive also are their blunders; and blunders they have committed aplenty.
The idea behind the series is that
democracy has tasked every citizen to live up to its responsibilities,
including those of making the leaders accountable to the led. And if an
unexamined life is not worth living, then an unexamined government is not
worth having. And here, Daily Independent examines the Obasanjo
administration as has never before been attempted in Nigeria.
This is an opening of a new frontier in
Nigerian journalism, a landmark political reportage.
As Nigerians grope for answers as the ship
of state begins to falter under the weight of the recent politically
motivated killings too numerous to begin to be counted, as armed robbers
have taken over the nights, the expressways and dusty by-ways of the
villages, as the police seemed to have surrendered in the fight to
maintain law and order, Daily Independent has taken pains to try to
remind the nation about “where the rain began to beat us” as one of our
most illustrious sons, Chinua Achebe, would put it. And this is a
reminder that as Harvard’s Prof. Samuel Huttonton has argued, often
democracy is killed not by the barbarians in military uniform but by the
little unconstitutional acts of the self-confessed politicians.
Such unconstitutional acts and failures
would weaken the system bit by bit until it becomes too weak to survive
or correct sub-systems of any ill. Then the government of the day would
loose the trust of the citizenry, who would begin to defy it even as they
get more alienated. The more the government uses force to legitimize its
authority, the more defiance it reaps. Where it cannot win free and fair
elections, it would rig them just to hang on to power. What the military
folks do, usually, is to drive the nails into the coffins of republics
already murdered by such corrupt, inept and misguided politicians.
Come with Daily Independent on this guided
tour of the inner recesses of the Obasanjo administration, and let those
who have been running it come alive right before you. In the series you
will meet Obasanjo “Nigeria’s Own Caesar”, Vice President Atiku Abubakar,
the Enemy Within, who Obasanjo will never allow to succeed him. Why and
how did he become VP? The series will tell you. You will also acquire
first hand information on the debilitating rivalry between Aso Rock’s two
Muhammeds; the Chief of Staff (Obasanjo’s Hatchet Man) and the National
Security Adviser (the One Nobody Trusts).
What about the Super-Ministers - past and
present? The media aides: Remi Oyo, Tunji Oseni and Doyin Okupe? Why were
Okupe and Oseni dropped? And their strengths and weaknesses, who among
them has been working for the security services and Obasanjo’s
disappointing appointments too.
Here, you will learn why Danjuma is angry
with Obasanjo, why Sarumi failed as Information Minister. We will tell
you about the Harvard Circle; Oby Ezekwesili, Nasir el-Rufai and Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala. What does Dr. Pascal Dozie have in common with Alhaji
Ahmed Joda, Dr. Tunji Abayomi, Prof. Emannuel Edozien, or Chief Afe
Babalola? And do they lag behind Otunba Fasewe, the number one friend of
the President? What role did he play in the Malibu Oil and Gas scandal.
You will find this out in the section called Friends of the President, and
even discover other members of this group.
From conception, the idea was to write
about All The President’s Men. Remaining fidel to this, we will mention
every single aide in the presidency - the Special Advisers, Senior
Special Assistants, Special Assistants, Personal Assistants- all the 70
plus of them, at least once.
Then what about Obasanjo’s legacies? His
much talked about reforms? We placed spotlights on them under Due Process
and Value For Money.
Hey, we even went back to when Gen. Sani
Abacha died and how the plot to make Obasanjo President began. Then we
branched off to take a hard look on the Road Not Taken, the report of the
Presidential Policy Advisory Committee. The committee was headed by Gen.
TheophiliusYakubu Danjuma. It produced a road map, which you will be
seeing for the first time in a newspaper publication, so that you can
judge by yourself how much of that was implemented.
Then after you have read Recipe For Disaster,
you can now judge for yourself whether Danjuma was right in his
assessment of the administration, and in the conclusion he reached:
“Clearly, We Failed”.
Beyond all else, the series remains
anchored on real people; we have not just written essays and analyses but
we bring to you the real people within the administration; the good and
the bad, the saintly and the outrageous. Here they are,”All The President’s Men …and women too
(yes, women too for more than any other leader, Obasanjo has appointed
more women into important positions).
1. The Road Not Taken.
“What does Obasanjo need 48 ministers
for”? That was from a discussant during a television programme within the
President’s first term in office. His anger may be justified but his
conclusion that President Olusegun Obasanjo came in with no plans was
decidedly laughable.
A top member of the present administration
once shook his head in resignation and said: “if we have failed, it is
not for want of policies for we have enough to run four different
governments simultaneously”. He was right. Obasanjo seems the
quintessential ideas man, enamoured of conferences, quick to set up
committees on any and everything. He held several retreats also. Even on
Saturdays within his first two years in Abuja, this hardworking man
refused to relax. Instead, he organized “Saturday Forum” every afternoon
to brainstorm with specially selected invitees on diverse topics from
rail transportation, garri and rice production to the ethnic strife in the
Niger Delta. Throw a memo into his hand and he would read it to the end.
While traversing the world, he purrs through a heap of files.
To chart a new direction, he first set up
a high-powered committee, the Presidential Policy Advisory Council (PPAC)
headed by Gen. Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (retd), who was Chief of Army
Staff when Obasanjo was Head of State from 1976 to 1979, and who later
served as Defence Minister in the first term. Divided into
sub-committees, it toiled for two months to re-direct the nation’s
bearings and it produced a copious report. Nigeria had never witnessed so
thorough a preparation for high office.
Characteristically, Obasanjo, a
fanfare-enchanted President, received the report amidst great ceremonies
in April 1999 at the International Conference Centre. He announced that
day that a new dawn was just over the horizon, waiting for him to be
sworn into office. Then he vowed he would have no First Lady but just a
wife, that there would be no indiscriminate use of sirens, so his wife was
barred from going with a convoy and using sirens. Same too for his
ministers, he said.
That the Office of the First Lady now
exists and Obasanjo’s wife, Stella, has actually issued orders to the
state governors’ wives to desist forthwith from going to the airports to
welcome the Vice President’s wife but must send the Deputy Governors’
wives instead, may not have any direct effect on the economy but merely
serve as an example of pettiness on a grand scale. This may really not
have a telling effect on the economy, but it lowered the people’s
expectations about his government. But more on this later in the Wrong
Signals section. That siren-blaring motorcades of local government
chairmen or even of private individuals who are close to the seat of
power constitute continual nuisance on the city highways and village
dusty by ways may not be a pointer to the performance of any
administration, yet…
It is still a cause for worry to many who
followed the pre-inauguration ceremonies and pronouncements that the
well-thought out plans contained in that PPAC report were simply
abandoned.
Lean
Government
For starters, PPAC recommended a drastic
reduction in the size of governance. This would entail fewer personnel
and therefore reduce overhead costs. Specifically, it recommended a lean
Federal Cabinet of 24 ministers as a means of reducing the cost of sheer
governance. What about the constitutional requirement of at least a
minister for each state? To take care of that, it provided for eight
ministers of state. Then it spent several paragraphs to explain why the
useless but money wasting pomp and ceremonies that have come to be
associated with public offices must be banished. The idea was for a lean
government of few persons, with large social conscience, ready to work and
not prove a burden to the society.
Instead of implementing such
recommendations, Obasanjo appointed about 52 ministers and even a larger
number of personal assistants and advisers. For his second term, he has
even increased the number; though he apparently reduced the number of
real ministers from 52 to 40, but in real terms he actually increased it
by appointing an additional 13 Special Advisers who are of ministerial
rank and enjoy the same perks of office. Thus the effect on the nation’s
coffers is now that of 53 ministers.
Other such recommendations include:
1. Make (Universal
Primary Education) UPE compulsory and secondary and technical schools
tuition-free.
2. Review curricular.
3. Refurbish
educational structures and facilities.
4. Expand schools and their
facilities
5. Improve
salaries/conditions of service of teachers
6. Reduce cost of books
and other teaching materials.
Of the six items, Obasanjo has only
bothered with the fifth, as teachers joined the other government
employees to benefit from a wage increase. In the health sector, there
was to be free health-care for women during pregnancy and up to
post-natal care. A few state governors have introduced this, but not the
Federal Government.
On power and steel:
• Enhance generating capacity
by 2,494 megawatts to reach 4,675 megawatts.
• Refurbish
power-generating units, privatize power plants and distribution to
compete with NEPA.
• Vigorously pursue
rural electrification.
• Encourage private
sector participation.
• Retrain and re-orientate
staff.
• Ensure the linking of
all Local Government headquarters to the national grid.
• Re-equip Shiroro
National Control Centre.
Briefly, power-generating capacity climbed
beyond the 3,000 megawatts mark. Then it sank below it and returned to
the former scandalous level. On privatization of NEPA it has been the
blowing of hot winds all through, nothing concrete.
On Defence/Law Enforcement.
• Give Top priority to
public safety and security of life and property.
• Rationalise strength
of armed forces, and increase police strength from 130,000 to 250,000.
• Revamp military
hardware and refurbish equipment.
• Seek friendly
external help in training troops.
• Reduce duty
overlap/duplication and rivalry between security agencies via external
coordination and reorganization.
.Address problems of
counter-intelligence, technical data collection, VIP protection, security
education, training and re-orientation.
Yes, the President has increased police
strength from 130, 000 to about 300,000. But life and property have
become more insecure than they were before he was sworn in as President.
Not even the murder of the nation’s Justice Minister and Attorney General
has been solved. Military hardware has not been revamped such that
Nigeria would be unable to fight against Cameroun today were hostilities
to break out. To guide against this, the National Assembly rushed through
a supplementary budget in 2002, with all secrecy, providing N300 billion
for armaments, to keep the military in fighting shape. Not a penny was
spent for the purpose though, prodding Danjuma to say what the National
Assembly had been saying all through the first term, that Obasanjo had no
respect for budgets.
In fact, the military even lost money in
that failed deal because it sent several trade missions to many countries
such as the USA and Russia in search of arms. The missions returned with
several recommendations that must be gathering dust on the shelves now.
There were even yearly targets. Thus, in
1999, government was “to restore, improve and expand Federal Urban Mass
Transits (FUMT), vigorously address the poverty question and with speedy
and radical measures”. Five years after, the FUMT headquarters is in
ruins, the project very, very dead. Did Obasanjo address poverty with
speedy and radical measures? His project, Poverty Alleviation would have
been a cause for laughter had it not made available N10 billion for it.
His then Works minister, Chief Tony Anenih, hit on the mighty idea of job
creation for university graduates and promptly ordered for some shovels.
It proved a disaster for the nation.
Year 2000 was to witness “aggressive
development of Federal Roads and Highways,” “revitalization of the Nigerian Rail Transport
system”, “speeding up of process of converting gas to major source of
industrial input and foreign exchange earner”. Instead, across the
nation, leprosy further attacked the roads that were never repaired
despite hundreds of billions of Naira given to the works ministry. To have been achieved was the
“exploitation of bitumen and coal”, public safety and security and the
establishment of special city patrols” and Nigeria Airways would have
been made commercially viable. It is only within this year that the
police began talking about community policing as though it was a gloriously
novel idea.
In all, the Danjuma-led PPAC drew up a
“Philosophical Guide and Focus was the
Need for a broad-based government for lesser government and more private
initiatives in the economy and public affairs.”
• The urgency for de-militarisation
of the polity and the restoration of constitutionality and legality in
the conduct of government; to ensure the principle of morality and
accountability in government.
• Restoration of
individual rights, freedom, security of life and property.
• Solution of the Niger
Delta and other oil area problems”.
The PPAC report was so comprehensive and detailed that
any fool would have been hailed as a genius if he did nothing extra but
just remained faithful to its implementation. It was not just a road map
to be followed, but a means to frog-jump the nation decades into the
future thus regaining the decades lost owing to inefficient leadership.
Somebody said that to Danjuma, when the committee began its work, it was
like 1975 all over again; a new set of leaders, young and idealistic, had
seized the once rudderless ship of state and were determined to give it
direction, and steer it with a sense of purpose and very deliberate haste.
The recommendations were all plans for
Obasanjo’s first four years. He did increase civil servants’ salaries in
year 2000 but he has so far breached the agreement on the subsequent ones
that were to follow. But he has been increasing price of fuel ever since,
thus wiping away any benefits that could have accrued from the salary
increment. Thus last year, the Social Science Association of Nigeria
organized a four-day seminar in Abuja at which participants drawn from
universities within and outside the country unanimously lamented that the
wage increments had no positive impact on the living conditions of
Nigerian workers.
Obasanjo’s flagship project, for which he
is justifiably proud, the introduction of the GSM cellular phones, was
proposed under the telecommunications plan: “Extend telecommunications to
rural areas and expand cellular system. Deregulate the system and
privatize NITEL”. According to the plan, the first act on that sector was
to come in year 2000, “Total reorganization of the postal system for
greater efficiency”. Then in 2001 would come “Improved Telecommunication
and GSM, Modernisation and Improvement of Postal Services”. The GSM came
according to the timetable. Its effect on communications was
revolutionary. Yet, the GSM was supposed to, owing to the high cost of its
airtime, be for getting somebody on the move. Instead, it has supplanted
the fixed telephones, and it has increased living costs, especially in
the rural areas as it remains the only means of voice communication there.
There were many more recommendations in
that PPAC report: to end fuel scarcity, “service refineries properly and
privatize them”. Neither has been done; instead petrol pump price has
been hiked several times, so that it has doubled from what it was when
Obasanjo was sworn in. Then: “Reduce gas flaring, seek new markets in
West Africa, Commercialise pipeline segment, Competitive bidding before
authorization to export.” Work has commenced on the West African gas
pipeline project but gas flaring has received scant attention.
Promise
flouted
In his speech at Nigeria’s 39th
Independence Anniversary on October 1, 1999, Obasanjo solemnly promised
thus: “I have presented to you my humble view of the moral foundations of
our administration, what we have done, why and what we propose to do, and
the responsibilities of every citizen have been made clear, what remains
is to indicate how our actual conduct can be measured and judged. To this
end, I have recently approved a White Paper, based on the recommendations
of the Presidential Policy Advisory Committee. This paper will soon be
made public and shall constitute our operational guidelines. Furthermore,
I will establish a Policy Analysis and Monitoring Unit in the Presidency
that will serve as an internal ombudsman to assess continuously the
performance of government departments and the efficacy of government
policies.”
Unfortunately, the promised White Paper
was never made public, neither were Nigerians given a glimpse of its
content. Thus, with no known targets with which to measure his
performance, Obasanjo simply muddled through, focusing mainly on events
that caught his fancy, especially if they focused international spotlight
on him.
Again and again, this reporter has asked
his top aides for the White Paper or even the report itself. Again and
again, none could produce it. When someone was asked to approach a
certain member of the panel, he refused to make a copy available on the
excuse that its source could be traced. Was it a crime to give out a
paper containing policy roadmap, especially one released (or was supposed
to have been released) as a White Paper and which availability, the
President had promised on a nation-wide radio and TV broadcast? No, that
answer is symptomatic of a more terrible affliction; everybody has become
afraid as the government is using carrot and sticks against public
officials, and the extent of an official’s stay in office has no
relationship with how effective he could be but on his perceived
eye-service loyalty to the man in power.
So the reporter took the demand for the
policy road map to Obasanjo himself, after asking the presidential
librarian for it over ten times. Obasanjo was flagging off his
re-election campaign at the International Conference Centre, Abuja in May
2002, before embarking on his first rally in Benue state. The result was
this exchange:
Daily Independent: “You are set to begin
campaign rallies for your re-election. You and several top PDP members
have said you have performed wonderfully well. But to really assess you,
do you not think that one needs to see the road map prepared by that
Committee headed by Gen. T. Y. Danjuma. In your 1999 Independence Anniversary speech, you
promised to publicise it”.
Obasanjo:”“You mean the PPAC?”
The Reporter: “Yes Sir”.
Obasanjo:”“You mean you have not seen it”
The Reporter: “Put together, I have spent
over three months of my life searching for it”.
Obasanjo: “Then look for it. It is there,
somewhere.”
At this point, a large part of the
audience began to murmur its support for the reporter as he was waving
off the physical attempts from several persons in the campaign and
security groups to snatch the microphone from him.
Reporter: “Mr. President could you please
say exactly where I may find it for I have been searching for it without
success.”
Obasanjo: (As the support for the reporter
continued to grow, especially as several correspondents began to ask the
security agents not to snatch the microphone from the reporter, an
impatient Obasanjo turned to his spokesman, Tunji Oseni). “Okay, collect
it from Tunji Oseni”. Then unable to mask his anger any further, he
turned to the head of his campaign publicity team, Dr. Akin Oshuntokun
and said,“whether you are a chief, Dr. or whatever you call yourself, I
don’t want to take any more questions. This is the last question”.
Throughout that campaign period, the PPAC
report was never an issue. Up till now, it has not become one. But this
is an example of another way in which the mass media, that have been
acerbic to other leaders, have treated Obasanjo with unusually soft
gloves. The PPAC report was designed to jump-start the economy, enhance
the rule of law, and supremacy of the constitution. It was a signpost
drawn up by many reputable personalities. Oh, did Oseni (then Obasanjo’s
spokesman) give the report to the reporter? Until Oseni was dropped, he
NEVER saw a copy of it.
Danjuma’s Verdict: “Clearly, We
Failed…
In 1999, Obasanjo did not show a
misunderstanding of the people’s expectations from him. Addressing the
inaugural meeting of Council of State on 29 June that year, he said:’“We
should understand the clear message of the Nigerian people. In giving us
their mandate, they want us to revitalize our political institutions and
reinvigourate the economy. They want us to alleviate their poverty, and
reduce corruption in our body polity. They want us to ensure security of
lives and property. They want justice and equity in a country they can
truly call their own. They want improvement in the quality of their
lives. They want much more.”
Yet, as the last Federal Executive Council
meeting of Obasanjo’s first term ended, effectively marking the end of
that administration, just as he and his ministers had taken a group
photograph and emotion still ran high, State House Correspondents
approached several ministers for their parting shots. Amidst their
expected’“we did our best” and other one-liners, Danjuma proved
different. He scored the government in which he was Defence Minister a
failure. He said: “we have failed to create any jobs, we have failed to
grow the economy”. Ironically, Danjuma said this barely a month after
Obasanjo had been re-elected by a landslide margin of votes.
Was Obasanjo concerned that a large number
of those votes may have been fictitious? Perhaps yes, for as he walked
into that council meeting, the then Aviation Minister, Mrs. Kema Chikwe
introduced a song to welcome him: “winner oh! oh! winner, winner oh! oh
To be continued tomorrow
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