In the interest of peace, stability and national
security, it would, perhaps, be interesting to
have a throwback to the United States of
America’s July 11, 1804, when a former
Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander
Hamilton, and a sitting Vice President, Aaron
Burr, engaged in a gun duel to settle their
political differences.
Just as former President Olusegun Obasanjo
wrote an open letter to President Goodluck
Ebele Jonathan accusing him of sundry charges,
so did Hamilton launch assault on Burr
through a letter, defaming the latter;
manipulated the House of Representatives to
vote Thomas Jefferson as president over Burr.
And at a time in America when some states in
the north were outlawing gun duel, both men
took to the Heights of Weehawken in New
Jersey, a popular dueling ground. Burr mortally
wounded Hamilton who died the following day.
In today’s Nigeria, the contest for the
presidency in 2015 has pitched a sitting
President Jonathan, who is constitutionally
guaranteed to seek re-election, against some
members and leaders of his Peoples Democratic
Party, PDP, who insist that he should not run. It
all came to a head, penultimate week, with an
open letter to Jonathan by Obasanjo – the
animosity between Hamilton and Burr also
came to a head because of the former’s
derogatory remarks about the latter. Hamilton
and Burr settled their matter via a gun duel.
Would it not be nice if Obasanjo and Jonathan
settle their problem via a gun duel? No matter.
The problems confronting Nigeria today go
beyond the visceral outburst of two leaders. The
two men can resolve their problems if they
allow good sense to prevail. Just as was
suggested on these pages in 2005 when Obasanjo
and Atiku Abubakar were at each other’s
throat, the continued animosity between
Jonathan and his mentor would lead both men
to ends with unintended consequences.
Therefore, to save their party and whatever is
left of their political life, they must learn to
bury the hatchet and relate with one another as
they did when they started their romance.
However, for President Jonathan, there are
landmines ahead. Some have been placed there
by his detractors while he is also responsible
for laying some. Would it not be better for the
former president and his protégé to settle their
problems now, even if it means employing the
instrumentality of a gun duel, cool off rather
than suffer the consequences ahead for both
men and the polity if they continue on this path
of attrition.
IN THE BEGINNING
That Sunday evening after the presidential
contest of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,
then President Olusegun Obasanjo summoned
Goodluck Jonathan to Aso Rock Presidential
Villa. It was to inform him of his choice as
running mate to Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, the
party’s candidate who emerged earlier in the
morning. Jonathan did not see it coming. Just
before the contest, Obasanjo had invited Rivers
governor, Dr. Peter Odili, to the Villa for
breakfast and morning prayers.
After the prayers, Obasanjo compelled Odili to
drop his presidential ambition insisting he pays
a visit to Yar’Adua. Odili obliged. At Eagle
Square where the contest held, the initial
arrangement was that Odili would be picked as
running mate to Yar’Adua whose path had been
cleared by Obasanjo – it needs mentioning here
that all these, after bruising heads and breaking
limbs in the process. But Odili again became a
victim of highwire, dirty manipulation
Therefore, that evening when Obasanjo
summoned Jonathan, it was to inform him that
he would be the running mate to Yar’Adua.
Mind you, Obasanjo had, in mid-February 1999,
defied his party by unilaterally picking Atiku
Abubakar as his own running mate while
consultations were still on. Therefore, picking
Jonathan was not new. What was, however,
new, was that Obasanjo wanted Jonathan to be
a ‘Yes Man’. Revelations since after the ailment
of Yar’Adua got worse in 2009 and, which led
to his death, suggest that Obasanjo foresaw a
situation whereby Jonathan would finish the
tenure of Yar’Adua, contrary to Obasanjo’s
repeated denial that he deliberately foisted an
‘invalid on the nation as president’.
For Jonathan, who, initially in the third
quarter of 2005, neither believed that he would
become Bayelsa State governor, nor, in January
2007, conceived of the possibility of becoming
Nigeria’s vice president and then president, he
still appears overwhelmed by the reality of
leading a very complex and complicated
country like Nigeria. Between the two leaders,
something gave at some point.
OBASANJO’S PLOT
Sunday Vanguard had reported in March that
Obasanjo was already revving up his campaign
against Jonathan’s second term bid by holding
series of meetings with some northern leaders.
What we can report now is that whereas
Obasanjo had privately attempted to dissuade
Jonathan from seeking a second term, his open
letter of penultimate week was meant to
demonstrate to a section of Nigeria that since
private discussions were not yielding results, a
frontal attack would jolt the Presidency. It did.
Jonathan has since responded. There have been
mixed reactions to the tone and language of the
response from the presidency. Consultations are
on-going regarding the agenda to ensure that
Jonathan does not secure a second term. But
Obasanjo’s manipulative involvement in the
political ascendancy of Jonathan should not
become a magna charter for the former to
engage in malicious and demagogic domination
of the latter’s political space. Therefore, rather
than create unnecessary heat for the system
and in the system, those opposed to Jonathan’s
second term should simply mobilize Nigerians
and ensure that they vote massively against
him.
That way, the votes of Nigerians would
determine who would be elected president in
2015. The open letter from Obasanjo is just one
in a series of plots. The visit, penultimate
Saturday, of the leadership of the APC to
Obasanjo’s Abeokuta residence was another.
The former president is also said to be
intensifying his consultations with political and
religious leaders in the country.
POLITICAL SPACE ENDANGERED
Because politicians refuse to learn from other
peoples’ mistake, they serially commit the same
mistake as those before them. When Sunday
Vanguard broke the story on the crisis of
loyalty between Obasanjo and Atiku, his deputy,
in August 2002, while also warning of the
consequences of such a confrontation, it was
waved aside. The effect was that, from that
moment until 2007 when Obasanjo’s tenure was
completed, Nigeria’s political space suffered
from undue overheating.
As reported last week, whenever Obasanjo
openly confronts a sitting leader, consequences
arise. What makes the present circumstance less
dangerous for Jonathan, an Aso Rock insider
told Sunday Vanguard, “is that the governors
who defected from our party have only cleared
the coast for Mr. President to seek re-election”.
The insider added, “Mr President is as good as
having the party’s ticket. The president has also
been consulting widely and is relating to
developments with keen attention”. The problem
generated by Obasanjo’s open letter is that it
has divided the polity – those for Obasanjo and
those for Jonathan.
As the months roll by before the 2015 contest,
sympathizers and supporters alike would dig in
and become more entrenched in their positions.
Perhaps the most damaging aspect of Obasanjo’s
letter to Jonathan was the allegation that a
sniper squad was being trained. According to
Obasanjo, “Allegation of keeping over 1,000
people on political watch list rather than
criminal or security watch list and training
snipers and other armed personnel secretly and
clandestinely acquiring weapons to match for
political purposes like Abacha and training
them where Abacha trained his own killers, if
it is true, it cannot augur well for the nation,
the government and the people of Nigeria”.
Obasanjo also alleged that Jonathan was not a
trustworthy leader. Well, the president’s
response had its own fair share of vitriol and
vituperation. For instance, Jonathan said
Obasanjo lied barefacedly: The president’s
words: “The issue of Buruji Kashamu is one of
those lies that should not be associated with a
former president.
The allegation that I am imposing Kashamu on
the South-west is most unfortunate and
regrettable. I do not even impose party officials
in my home state of Bayelsa and there is no
zone in this country where I have imposed
officials. So why would I do so in the South-
west? Baba, in the light of Buruji’s detailed
public response to your “open letter”, it will be
charitable for you to render an apology to
Nigerians and I. In closing, let me state that you
have done me grave injustice with your public
letter in which you wrongfully accused me of
deceit, deception, dishonesty, incompetence,
clannishness, divisiveness and insincerity,
amongst other ills”.
Meanwhile, as the All Progressive Congress,
APC, chided the Villa for engaging in a show of
shame by the tone of the response to Obasanjo,
the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF, added its
voice by accusing the Presidency of shirking in
its responsibility of judicially dealing with its
accusations against the Obasanjo regime.
JONATHAN’S GAMBIT
Whereas calling Obasanjo’s bluff may not
entirely amount to political sagacity on the part
of Jonathan, relying solely on the same Nigerian
politicians he has warned not to assume that
they own Nigeria for his own survival may also
not work for him. While those in the Jonathan
administration can claim to be making steady
progress, the massive gambit that they have
chosen to undertake is the disconnection with
the average Nigerian. There is the perception
that Jonathan is disconnected from the masses
of Nigeria just as his PDP continues to issue
statements that suggest that the grouse of the
governors who defected is true. What all these
translate into is that Nigerians may not really
matter.
For, were Nigerians to matter, the primary
concern of leaders of PDP would be the urgent
need to win the confidence of the people more
and dwell less on the distraction of the bitter
politics that it has needlessly created for itself.
A clear example of this was the six-month
industrial action by the Academic Staff Union
of Nigerian Universities, ASUU. Before ASUU
embarked on the action, notices were given.
During the strike, malady set in on the part of
government with the provocative threat to sack
tens of thousands of lecturers.
The government was forced to eat a humble pie.
Already, the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior
Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, and
the National Union of Petroleum and Natural
Gas Union, NUPENG, have issued an ultimatum
to government that they would work against the
proposed privatization of the nation’s
refineries. They plan to go on strike and ground
the economy to make their case.
Before the ink on the paper of the statement of
the two main unions in the oil sector dried,
Jonathan set up a committee to engage the
process of selling the refineries. Meanwhile,
barring any last-minute negotiations, Nigerians
would again be in for a new year’s crisis
should the strike go ahead – just as it happened
in January 2012. Yet, here was a president who
enjoyed massive goodwill between February
2010 and October 2011.
His rating, if truth be told, is plummeting fast.
Still, rather than package a set of people-
friendly initiatives that can buy back some of
the lost goodwill, the bitter politics and quest
for 2015 is the only news. Conversely, there are
those who insist that the conduct and carriage
of the band of opportunists around and inside
the Presidential Villa should be interrogated
vigorously lest they reduce – as they are doing –
the administration of Jonathan to one that
celebrates tokenism and cluelessness as standard
practice of political administration. THE GUN
DUEL TO COME Between Obasanjo and
Jonathan, can they spare Nigerians the hostility
they have brewed? Already, any support for
Obasanjo’s confrontation is inversely termed to
be an act of aggression against Jonathan.
Therefore, the hemlock that is being tended in
the political space is enough to replicate a
Guyana tragedy – in a manner of speaking.
Nigeria’s law forbids a gun duel. Even the gun
duel that saw the killing of Hamilton was in the
process of being outlawed in America by 1804
when it happened. (Read how US Vice President
killed former Secretary of the Treasury in a gun
duel) The civilized gun duel that would serve
Nigeria in the present circumstance would be
for Jonathan to woo Nigerians afresh with
people-friendly initiatives while, for Obasanjo,
he should mobilize campaigners against the
president’s second term. That way, the needless
overheating of the polity would be laid to rest –
as was the bitterness between the former
Secretary of the Treasury and the sitting Vice
President of America in 1804.
