The then Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo
AFTER over two months of an unplanned recess, this column resumes just as the nation’s biggest political party, the PDP, convenes today in Jos to pick its presidential candidate. This might turn out to be the biggest — and probably the most acrimonious — party conventions to be held this year, considering the PDP’s size, its candidates and the querrelsomeness of its members. All eyes are on the Jos Township Stadium, venue of the big gathering. All eyes are, indeed, also on how the party will choose the man (yes, there’s no woman in this) who will carry its banner in the 27 February presidential election. Focus is especially on not only how the big man will emerge but who he is. Although there is a coterie of aspirants ranging from the serious, the jokers, the upstarts to the spoilsports, special attention is given to the two leading candidates — Gen. Obasanjo and Dr. Ekwueme. Both men are big and good in their own right. It is up to the party voters to pick out the one they deem qualified enough to beat the aspirants or aspirant the other two parties will table at the polls.
Whatever happens, however, is going to exert a great deal of influence on the fortunes of the PDP as well as on the nation’s polity. Today’s primaries will make or mar the party, sealing its fate. It may even influence the way politics will work — and the future of democracy — in this country. For, from indications, the PDP is well on the way of forming the next government. There is a great prospect in this, as well as a great disadvantage if the party, by today’s event, fails to put its house in order.
One thorny issue the party and the nation have to resolve is the irksome question of the role of retired militarymen in contemporary politics. This matter has been made the refrain of not only the opponents of the PDP but also a great number of its members opposed to the candidature of Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo. The question whether the former head of state has the right to contest election in a democratic setting has been made a national one. The garrulous section of the polity has seized this right from the 63 -year-old general and condemned his decision to run for the land’s highest office.
The war zone has also been expanded to include all retired soldiers, especially those generals said to favour the Obasanjo candidature. Even the Federal Government was accused, without evidence, of lending support to him on the simple basis of his having been in the army. Lately, the other parties issued the threat of an electoral boycott. Although this column is not an all-out defence of Obasanjo as a person, it is an asserveration of real democratic ethos, an affirmation of the right of every citizen to partake of the political process.
To begin with, those that question the propriety of retired soldiers playing politics are understandably suffering from the painful hysteria imposed on the nation by long military rule ·in Nigeria. We are all victims of that illegality. Thus they mistakenly see Obasanjo (and the retired soldiers) as an extension of dictatorship. The process through which he is seeking power is albeit conveniently ignored. Obasanjo, who did not make a coup against any civilian administration but rather fulfilled a promise of ushering one, is touted as the instrument of that attempt.
To those opposed to former soldiers in politics, it doesn’t matter that in all known democracies retired soldiers are part and parcel of the electoral polity. It doesn’t matter to them that both American presidents George Washington (1789-1797) and Willian Henry Harrison (1841), among others, were former army generals who rose through the normal electoral process, upon retirement, to emerge president. In most other working democracies, including Britain, Germany, India, South Africa, Israel and France, retired army generals are neck deep in politics. And no one is crying wolf. Some Nigerians, whose real ideological focus is always difficult to fathom, often relish in playing the giddy goat whenever issues such as this arise.
The iniquitous debate also conveniently ignores the fact that every Nigerian has the right to seek an elective office or help others pursue it. No section of the constitution bars any retired professional – be he a soldier, a banker, an engineer or a journalist — from taking part in politics. What the constitution forbids — and which our soldiers ignored with dizzying abandon — is seizing however by force. If a retired anybody wishes to play politics, they are allowed. It is left to the electorate to decide.
Besides, no soldier in Nigeria is a political atheist. For over three decades soldiers have been in politics in one way or the other, in the process becoming some of the most experienced and astute political handlers and undertakers. They are not as callow or aloof as one might think. As such, to fling them off the political candy mountain so early in the day is clearly one of the serious impossibilities of our time. Ensanguined by their long stay in the corridors of power and money, they would certainly want to be around for a long time yet.
A real political transition from soldiery to democracy in this country ought to begin with an altered form of diarchy in which soldiers wishing to rule should first retire, join a party and work towards a candidature. If the voters want them, fine and good. With their know-how of happenings in the barracks (their former abode) they would prove useful in detecting coup plans. In fact, ambitious soldiers in service may feel intimidated to plan coups knowing that their former ogas in civvy street would reject them, This may sound simplistic, but its possibility cannot be dismissed off-hand. With time, the future generation may get the perfect democracy some of us want to set up overnight, if at all there is ever such a thing. Even if Obasanjo does not win in Jos, his right and that of all other former soldiers to take part in the political transition must be recognised. And if he wins, as he is likely to, Nigerians would do well to let him run on the PDP ticket. After all, securing the party nomination is not the end of the relay. The race begins just then, or it will even start only after winning the presidential election.
* Published in my column, Melting Pot, in the New Nigerian Weekly today
