The country of anything goes.......

The country of anything goes
By Olusegun Obasanjo

FOR over four and a half years - from November 17, 1993 to June 8, 1998 - Nigeria, which had been under military rule since the end of 1983, was reduced to a police state: a big prison with gallows, where intimidation, assassination, and deprivation were the instruments of misgovernance of the state by General Sani Abacha, a sadistic, apparently mentally deranged, corrupt, incompetent, arrogant, and ruthless military dictator. The question on almost everybody's lips was: why? What went wrong in a country of well over one hundred million people which used to take pride in its large educated and cultured population?

The answer lies in the gradual but steady erosion of moral and ethical standards that took place during the earlier military administration of General Ibrahim Babangida, who carried out a military coup at the end of 1984 and ruled between 1985 and 1993. It was at this time that, facing the gun, civilian political leaders acquiesced and abandoned their responsibility.

Some adopted the attitude of "sit down and look on". Others joined in the pillaging of the country by seeking patronage, recognition, and easy money from the ruling military cabal. As a result, the economy was shattered during the 1980s. Whether you were a politician, a businessman, an intellectual, or a retired military man, the seemingly easy avenue for personal economic gain was to accept a job from the military or to seek favour from or support by the military. Some academics abandoned their lecture rooms or research laboratories where they could only make a pittance; they accepted the cozy, cushy embrace of a corrupt, deceitful, and unscrupulous military administration.

Previously, independent and respected intellectuals became the mouthpiece and apologists for the military; they made excuses for General Babangida and his fellow military leaders, and helped them deceive and confuse the people. Respected social critics accepted money from the government and became compromised. To take an independent stand became an exception and an extremely risky one. Many outspoken critics of the government were assassinated. Dele Giwa, the founding editor of the weekly Newswatch, was killed by a letter bomb in 1986.

The Nigerian military men, who once could claim to be officers and gentlemen, became men of double-talk, unkept promises, and devious actions and behaviour inimical to public order and proper military conduct. But what was most deplorable was that with the pillaging of the society and the destruction of moral and ethical standards, those who might have been expected to try to sustain such standards - the by-now bought-up, co-opted, and corrupted members of civil society: politicians, intellectuals, journalists, business people - made excuses. They became defenders of a military administration which consciously or unconsciously embarked on systematic destruction of all that matters in a society - politically, economically, socially, morally, ethically, and culturally. The press and publishers who were not directly under government control were corrupted; they in turn hired and corrupted writers who pretended to be objective and independent, but who vigorously and viciously attacked opponents of the military regime.

In this way Nigeria became a nation of "anything goes", where anything could be rationalised and justified. Babangida shifted his ground and broke his promises so often that he earned the popular nickname "Maradona" for his fancy dribbling; his deceitfulness was widely defended and even praised as political cleverness, dexterity. There was no moral standard left in public life. Corruption and fraud became habits that trickled down to every level of society.

Nonetheless, the citizens of Nigeria persisted in calling for democracy. And Babangida, who had been promising a return to civilian government since September of 1987, and who was also facing increasing pressure to relinquish power, both from the international community and from members of his own divided military regime, finally seemed to be taking steps in that direction late in 1992. In December of that year he replaced his Council of Ministers with a civilian Transitional Council, headed by the businessman Chief Shonekan, which was given the task of monitoring and overseeing a return to democratic government by August 27, 1993. And on June 12, a presidential election was indeed held, although the only parties allowed to compete in it were two that had been created by the military regime in 1989. This election was apparently won by Moshood Abiola, of the Social Democratic Party.

Even though the election was considered a fair one by international observers, however, it was annulled a week later without any plausible excuse being given. Although, both a national commission monitoring the voting and one of the Nigerian courts were involved in the rigmarole of challenging the election, it was General Babangida who acted to invalidate it. Riots broke out in Lagos, and there followed a chaotic summer in which a number of possible solutions to the situation, including promises that the election would be rescheduled, were floated and then quickly cancelled; no one seemed sure what would happen next.
Finally, at the eleventh hour, Babangida decided to relinquish power. On August 26, the day before the deadline he had set himself the previous year, he stepped down, naming Chief Shonekan the head of an Interim National Government. On the same day, General Sani Abacha - who had been intimately associated with the Babangida regime since 1983 - was promoted to minister of defence.

The responsibility of leading Nigeria was too much for Shonekan; he had had power thrust upon him only because he posed no serious threat to the continuing power of the military. The real power in this government belonged to Abacha, and Shonekan had neither the savvy nor the backing to challenge him. Within a month, Abacha had arranged to replace all the chief supporters of Babangida within the new government. Then, on November 10, the High Court pronounced the Interim National Government unconstitutional. A week later Shonekan stepped down, in favour of Abacha.
It had been clear to many discerning observers well before Abacha struck that he had his own ambitions. But even after he took power, there was also a great deal of confusion about his intentions and abilities. Many Nigerians thought him nothing more than a light headed and empty-minded military officer who wanted nothing more than to occupy the presidency long enough to enrich himself and reward his supporters. But in the confusion surrounding the annulled election, some politicians and their followers looked for a "messiah", who, they believed, would proclaim the annulled election valid after all. That was the situation in which Abacha was able to take power. Some of the people who gave him encouragement and support believed that he would act in the public interest; that they could successfully use undemocratic means - the installation of a military government - to attain democracy. They ignored the fact that the man in charge was undemocratic at heart, as his record clearly indicated.

For his part, Abacha showed an unexpected capacity for deception. He brought the key men in the two political parties he had disbanded into the government he appointed, apparently with the promise that he would hand over power to Abiola within three months. But he made sure that he never committed himself to any definite date for the transfer of power, he used the nebulous phrase "brief period". Meanwhile he consolidated his position.

As could be expected, through all this time some people stood firm, un-purchasable, advocates, despite all intimidation and discouragement, of truth, good governance, and the interests of the country. But by November 1993 - when lying and deception of the people by the government, and deprivation of the rights of the people, and pervasive corruption had been made into an art - there was no critical mass, not enough of such men and women of integrity and conscience, to stand solidly against Abacha.

His model, as it soon became clear, was Mobutu of Zaire; it was his ambition to be the richest man in black Africa and the longest-ruling Nigerian leader. He could not achieve these two objectives without silencing the opposition of anyone who might stand in his way. Babangida had tried the tactics of domination through patronage, corruption, acquisition, deceit, and selective elimination of his opposition. Abacha had learned that these methods were insufficient; they had not worked for his tutor and they would be enough for him - and in any case, he did not have his predecessor's knack for subtlety.

So he used those people he thought could help him, and then, particularly if they seemed capable of questioning him, discarded them. His first cabinet, for example, included many important figures from the civilian government of the early 1980s, and even human rights activists; but within a year Abacha felt secure enough in power to replace almost all of these people. After that he embarked on a ruthless campaign of oppression, directed not only against those who opposed him but against those he believed uncompromising enough that they might oppose him. In this way, Abacha stole the property he was meant to guard and prevented the promised rescheduling of the annulled election. In the end he brought about both his own death and that of the presumed winner of that election. But before he died this summer, he managed to become the worst affliction suffered by Nigeria since it became an independent nation in 1960.

I fell into the group of those whom he could not corrupt and who would not make a deal with him. He knew this from my criticism of Babangida for holding on to power through error and intimidation. He decided to take preemptive action, and manufactured claims that I was plotting an impending coup. He used this fiction as a pretext for jailing, in addition to myself, some forty of his potential opponents including my former deputy, Major General Shehu Yar'Adua; Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, head of the Campaign for Democracy; prominent journalists; and some of the most capable middle-level officers of the army.

To be continued