Sylvester Asoya and Lanre Babalola
Among opponents of the third term plot, there is sufficient evidence of a growing concern and fear, especially by those in the National Assembly. This fear stems from the increasing number of senators and members of the House of Representatives who are in support of tenure extension. At the last count, 64 Senators and 200 House of Representatives members were believed to be working for the realization of the third term agenda.
Speaking with TheNEWS on the chances of the third term bill scaling through at the National Assembly, Senator Olorunnimbe Mamora, former Chairman, Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges, said: “The party pushing the third term agenda is the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and they dominate the National Assembly. You should expect that those who are in support of it are more than those against it. But the issue at hand required a particular number to determine what passes and what does not pass.”
This fear inspired last week’s meeting in Lagos between some members of the National Assembly and a coalition of civil society groups led by Bamidele Aturu, convener, United Action for Democracy (UAD). According to Aturu, the meeting became necessary following the increasingly disturbing activities of pro-third term campaigners.
Aturu and his group also sought to re-establish link with some progressive elements in the National Assembly and where possible, collaborate with them in the battle preceding the constitutional amendment.
Those in attendance included three members of the Federal House of Representatives, Francis Amadiegwu, Uche Onyegucha and CID Maduabua. The senators present were Mamora, Ben Obi and Saidu Mohammed Dansadau.
In his response, Malachy Ugumadu, Secretary-General, Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR), thanked the legislators, but warned that the struggle to liberate Nigeria must be seen beyond the context of civil society groups.
Abiodun Aremu of the UAD, however, spoke on the need for Nigerians to recover their sovereignty. He wondered why the country has remained in the firm grip of both local and foreign manipulators, citing the presence of American military forces as an indication of the policing interests of some foreign countries. He said the issue of tenure extension is not new, but that this time; Nigerians must change the rule of engaging and addressing their oppressors.
Speaking on the depletion of their numbers in the National Assembly, Onyegucha, who represents Owerri Federal Constituency, spoke specifically on the former Executive Director of CLO, Mr. Abdul Oroh: “Oroh is not only gone with our enemies, but he is even working to bring some of us to join him.”
He also spoke on his colleague, Lola Abiola-Edewor, whom he accused of joining reactionaries in the House after riding on her father’s credibility. He urged his colleagues to prepare for the struggle and promised to fight alongside all the human rights groups. “We must begin to picket institutions that are either quiet or in support of this third term agenda. The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) must be compelled to say something,” he contended.
Senator Dansadau, however, told the gathering that third-term is doomed because of the growing opposition to it. “As I speak, 45 senators are ready to vote against third-term even at gunpoint. We are optimistic that it will not work, but we also demand constituency pressure. People must put pressure on their representatives to ensure that the agenda fails.”
While addressing members of his constituency last week in Niger State, Idris Kuta, Chairman, Senate Committee on Works, admitted that over 50 per cent of his colleagues in the upper legislative arm are favorably disposed to tenure extension.
However, anti-third term legislators have concluded plans to visit foreign missions in Nigeria. To be visited are the Embassy of the United States of America, the British High Commission as well as French, Russian and Saudi embassies. A member of the publicity committee of federal legislators against tenure extension, Sule Yari Gandi, said the international community must speak out against third term because it portends evil for this nation.
“We are going to tell them not to wait until then to send relief materials to our people, because with third term, Nigeria may become another Rwanda or Somalia,” he said
For the most part of last week, governors of the 36 states of the federation were involved in meetings aimed at reaching a consensus on the third term matter. The governors seeking the amendment demanded total restoration of Section 308 of the Constitution by the National Assembly Joint Committee on the 1999 Constitution Review. The section confers immunity from criminal prosecution on the President, his deputy as well as governors and their deputies. The governors also demanded that the tenure extension should be extended to them too and not the president alone. They asked that they be allowed to retain control of local governments if they are to fully back the third term agenda.
With concern rising that the third term plot could be gaining more ground in the National Assembly, and against the background of Nigerians not trusting their elected representatives to do the right thing, Senator Uche Chukwumerije has said that God will not allow third term to succeed. “The God of Ndigbo who saved them from the last civil war, the God of equity and democracy will not allow third term bid to be actualised. If the bill is passed, it will become a new law and take effect from the date it is signed into law, with the implication that the serving President will contest the presidency in 2007 and if he wins, he may rule Nigeria for another 12 years or three terms of four years each. This would imply that there will be no rotational presidency, no President of Igbo extraction in the next 12 years. A Yoruba would rule for 20 years while Igbo and others remain in the political wilderness,” Chukwumerije said during a protest by his Arochukwu council constituents last week.
But as the drum of third term continues to beat, Professor Pat Utomi, Director of Lagos Business School, observed that balanced against its benefits, the third term agitation amounts to doing the “wrong thing because it is good.” Describing it as an ill-wind, he said: “I am very certain about it, Nigeria will go into civil war within two years if the third term thing sails through. The signs are there already. The Niger Delta crisis and other such tendencies that have been restive in the country will have a full rein. We will find ourselves going the way of other failed nations in the continent and that is where we need to be careful.”
But the third term campaigners who appear to have trapped President Olusegun Obasanjo do not see this grim picture and continue to raise money to actualize their plan. And the President, who in the past, glibly dismissed the agenda as a creation of the press now appears so favorably disposed to the ide that his language points directly at this unpopular desire.
Leave Gracefully, Obasanjo
Sunday Awoniyi
Dear Segun, Many times in the last several months (before the armed attack on me on Sunday 12th March 2006 in my bedroom in Abuja) I have had repeated strong feelings to write you an open letter on the affairs of our country under your stewardship in the last seven years. I refrained from doing so on each occasion because as one executive outrage of your government followed the other, young men and women, especially journalists, some of whom are in the same age bracket as your children and mine, write on the issues concerned with so much feeling, eloquence, logic and intelligence than I ever could.
Segun, although you probably will not believe it, it is nonetheless true that for some unaccountable reasons I still have some soft spot for you. I pray for you and wish you well. That partly accounts for this letter. I thought, maybe if I am able to show you openly and unflatteringly the other side of the coin from the one displayed to you by those who behave as if they love you better than you love yourself, you may change tack and find a way out of the cul-de-sac into which you have been boxed.
What the vast majority of Nigerians and particularly the knowledgeable, experienced, patriotic lovers and leaders of our country have felt increasingly in the last seven years are mostly silent bewilderment, unbelief, deep pain and sorrow for you and for our country rather than just futile anger. They are embarrassed to see their once beloved leader waddling naked on the national and international stage while flatterers praise his robes as being more resplendent than those of the biblical King Solomon.
It is painful that the unequalled opportunity that providence and the good peoples of Nigeria gave you in 1999 to bind the nation’s wounds and to strengthen its internal cohesion, through the various prescribed democratic institutions and organs, in freedom, justice and fair play, in an all-inclusive manner has been so needlessly betrayed.
As you will recall, nobody thought that the task given to you in 1999 was going to be easy. At my own level, in spite of my initial grave doubts about temperamental suitability for the job, I was persuaded from our many honest discussions over weeks and months that if you performed half as much as you sounded, we would succeed.
More importantly, from the stimulating seminars and retreats which we organized at which you participated and spoke eloquently about democracy and the team work that would be needed to revamp the nation, you made the leadership of the party that brought you to power and its vast followership to believe that you were a leader worthy of trust, who would midwife the democratic ethos we needed in our national life.
In addition, your comments, posture and activities after your military presidency, your Leadership Forum at Ota, your countrywide lectures on the virtues of democracy and your warnings to past and current leaders of the day not to take the good nature of Nigerians for granted, all helped to convince Nigerians that you were a committed democrat.
Furthermore, Nigerians had put religion behind them in the Abiola/Kingibe Moslem/Moslem presidential ticket as a major factor in the choice of their leader. And in your election, Nigerians decided to put ethnicity behind them as a major factor in their choice of the leader. They voted massively for you regardless of religion and ethnicity all over the country while your own people rejected you and humiliated you at the polls.
These were two of the greatest achievements of Nigerians in nation building.
Segun, those were heady days, full of hope and expectations. I thought that if I could rekindle for you some sparks of the high ideals of those days, particularly at this period, when we have a confluence of spiritual preoccupations, and prayers by Nigerian Moslems and Christian alike (Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, PBUH, Lent and Easter), you may prayerfully join them and rethink where you have led Nigeria and how you can get her out of the jam into which she has now been landed.
I thought also that instead of the usual abuse from your image makers and beneficiaries of the present situation, maybe men of knowledge and experience, particularly those of our generation from all walks of life – administrators, professionals, businessmen, etc. – will break their silence and speak to you or find ways of speaking to those who can influence you.
What finally pushed me to write you in this manner?
I decided to shrug off all inhibitions to write this letter because of an incident that nearly brought tears to my eyes yesterday. My physiotherapist here in the UK has prescribed a set of exercises for me to follow strictly to aid my recovery. One of the exercises is to take some walk little by little, and slowly, slowly daily. Yesterday, as I walked past a Request Bus Stop my eyes caught a notice board with the flags of some thirty nations drawn on it. I ran my eyes over them and behold, I saw my country’s beloved green white green flag – so simply and so beautiful. I suddenly heard myself singing alone that portion of our original national anthem relating to our flag. I probably did not get all the words right after some forty years but its words struck a deep chord in me:
Our flag shall be a symbol
That peace and justice reign
In peace and battle honored
And this we count as gain
To hand on to our children
A banner without stain
O God of all creation
Grant this our one request
Help us to build a nation
Where no man is oppressed
And so with peace and plenty
Nigeria may be blessed
Segun, I plead with you, please ponder over these words and see how you can bring our country back to the path of mutual accommodation and progress, so that;
Though Tribe and Tongue may differ
In brotherhood we stand
Nigerians all are proud to serve
Our sovereign motherland
Let us not betray these visions of our great Founding Fathers.
God has been good to you. God has been magnanimous to you, Segun. For instance, to give just one example, every one of our past Heads of State has been used by God to aid you at all stages of your career. You benefited where others had sown. They saved you from death. They saved you from impeachment. They even tried to make you Secretary-General of the United Nations until one of the major European countries said that what the United Nations wanted was a Secretary-General, not an Army General.
One of our most respected, distinguished Generals recommended you to Nigerians as a man they could trust. He was even reported to have threatened “to check out” of Nigeria like Andrew, if you were not elected President.
In all humility, ask yourself what kind of truly beneficial relationship you have with them today.
The truth is that today, you hold them in derision, and their views count for nothing with you.
Surely, this cannot be right.
Why I feel able to write you
I feel qualified to write this letter to you for several reasons. But I will mention only three.
Firstly, providence brought us together and we have come a long way together and I know you more than most people and still feel for you more than most. With a few exceptions, most of the people around you dread you. The law they obey is the law of survival in office no matter the cost.
They cannot tell you the truth. Well, in spite of recent events, I am still foolhardy enough to risk offending them and offending you by telling you the truth. Both of us are over 70, i.e., the biblical three score and ten. We are not half the men we used to be.googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('comments'); });
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