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One-Party Monster

May 8, 2007

Since 1999, there has been a steady progression in the way the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been capturing more states, and legislative seats at both state and national levels across Nigeria. This, in the view of political observers, shows that Nigeria, a multi-party, culturally pluralistic country, is being transformed into a one-party structure, a state of affairs that may constrict the democratic space.


The PDP government, led by President Olusegun Obasanjo, has been able to achieve this feat through different tactics. Some of these are the President’s one-party mindset, which he espoused way back in 1989; his propensity to play dumb while, at the same time, shuffling the cards under the table to beat his opponents and his penchant to crush real and imagined enemies completely.

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President Obasanjo and his party also perfected the art of infiltrating and disorganising rival political parties by using the carrot of patronage and, more devastatingly, the stick of probes. Their most potent weapons, so far, have been election rigging, stealing of ballot boxes and papers for illegal thumb-printing, falsification of figures and intimidation of the electorate with the armed forces.

In the recent governorship elections, the PDP won 29 out of the 36 states of the federation. That is against the 2003 polls when it controlled 28 and 1999 when it clinched only 21. The party repeated this progression in the presidential, National Assembly and state legislative polls.

The PDP, with the 2007 elections, has gained firm control of Bayelsa, Delta, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Gombe, Katsina, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Sokoto, Kwara, Plateau, Jigawa, Benue, Ondo and Anambra. The party was also victorious in Adamawa, Edo, Kaduna, Kebbi, Cross River, Taraba, Enugu and Kano.

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Umar Yar’ Adua, the PDP presidential candidate in 2007, scored 24,338,063 votes, against ANPP’s Muhammadu Buhari who had 6,605,299. Vice President Atiku Abubakar polled 2,637,848. While Chief Orji Kalu of the Progressive People’s Alliance (PPA) polled 608,803, Alhaji Attahiru Bafarawa of the Democratic People’s Party(DPP) scored 289,324 and Dim Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) got 155,947 votes. Other candidates scored as if only their family members voted for them.

PDP’s performance in 2007 was better than 2003 when its candidate, Chief Obasanjo, polled 20,002,377 votes. Buhari of ANPP trailed behind with 9,071,997 while Ojukwu, the APGA candidate, got 1,064,570.While Chief Gani Fawehinmi of the National Conscience Party scored 98,651, Senator Ike Nwachukwu polled 104,290 and Chief Jim Nwobodo of United Nigeria People’s Party (UNPP) scored 137,118 votes.

With the 2003 elections, PDP expanded its territory by winning 89 out of the 109 senatorial seats and 249 of the 360 positions in the House of Representatives. Out of the 774 local government areas nationwide, PDP controls 578.

In 1999, Chief Obasanjo, the PDP presidential flagbearer, polled 18,738,154 votes, while Chief Olu Falae of the Alliance for Democracy garnered 11,110,287.

In the National Assembly election, held on 20 February 1999, PDP won the majority seats. At the Senate, it cleared 69 seats; APP, 21 and AD, 19. In the House of Representatives, PDP clinched 224 seats; APP, 69 while AD came third with 68. APGA had 2 and United Nigerian People’s Party(UNPP), 2.

The same year, the PDP controlled 21 out of the 36 states. These were: Kano, Katsina, Kaduna, Bauch i, Adamawa, Taraba, Benue, Plateau, Nasarawa, Niger, Anambra, Enugu and Ebonyi. Others were Imo, Abia, Delta, Edo, Rivers, Cross Rivers, Akwa Ibom and Bayelsa States.

PDP’s ability to garner votes with the ruthlessness of a combined harvester fits the template earlier designed by President Obasanjo himself, in a negative emulation of some African leaders.

In his controversial book, Constitution for National Integration and Development, President Obasanjo advocates a one-party state to, according to him, be in consonance with a possible and logical outcome of the country’s political development.

Thus, as he puts it, this "appears to be the only procedural mechanism through which we can transcend the divisive and centrifugal forces tearing us apart and diverting our attention from the monumental task of integration and nation building." He reasoned further that it is within such purview that ultimate unity is always to be hoped for the subordination of sectional opinions to the criteria of rationality."

In some countries, President Obasanjo argued, their one-party structure had been responsible for the enduring political and governmental continuity they are enjoying. It also enabled them to move along a path of harmony, political stability, political unanimity and unity of purpose with a durable structure.

The President further submitted that the one-party system, like the use of a knife, is a technique. "I am sure that we will all agree that a knife is a knife, whether in the hand of a butcher, carver or farmer," Obasanjo maintained. "It is a technique for achieving a set goal. It is the use to which we put it that matters. Too much opposition (that is opposition that is pushed to the extremes), will tear the system apart."

Obasanjo, in the same essay, played the devil’s advocate to his own theory. In other words, he admitted the possibility of a one-party government dominating and possibly hijacking the party through the distribution of largesse and government patronages. He, however, suggested solutions. Apart from the parliament, which he said could act as a check, he maintained that the National Council of State should be entrusted with fundamental responsibilities in the functioning of government to prevent abuse by the Chief Executive.

Obasanjo insisted with magisterial finality: "One-party system as our national rallying point would give us continuity and structural change, continuity and stability as regards fundamental policies and objectives and dramatic (but peaceful) change of our dramatis personae." President Obasanjo, in that same book, urges his compatriots to work together and "give nature and history a gentle push in the right direction."

But developments since 1999 have shown that the President and the PDP’s ideal of a gentle push has become a shove in the wrong direction of one-party state.

First, when President Obasanjo assumed control of the nation in 1999, he presented a genial front of a political neophyte. TheNEWS authoritatively gathered that he dusted and studied The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Green, a book which he recommended for his top aides.

Law 3 which helped the President early in his administration has to do with concealment of intentions: "Keep people off balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defence. Guide them far enough down the wrong path. Envelop them in enough smoke and by the time they realise your intentions, it will be too late."

The South-West governors, their party, the Alliance for Democracy, and Afenifere, the Yoruba socio-cultural organisation, were the first victims of Obasanjo’s usage of this law.

In 1999, an idea of a Government of National Unity (GNU) was sold to Obasanjo by the leadership of the rival All People’s Party, (APP) which was to later metamorphose into the All Nigeria Peoples Party. Its protem National Chairman, Alhaji Mahmud Waziri, was appointed a polticial adviser to the President. When Chief Bola Ige divorced his Afenifere sweethearts over the D’ Rovans affair (when they chose Chief Olu Falae as AD Presidential candidate), Obasanjo quickly grabbed him. Ige was first made Minister of Mines and Power and, later, Attorney-General and Minister of Justice. He was occupying the latter position when he was murdered by some unknown persons. Chief Abraham Adesanya’s daughter, Mrs. Dupe Adelaja, became a Minister in that dispensation. Tokunbo Dosunmu, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s daughter and others from the progressive camp were sucked in by the Obasanjo government.

Ochereoma Nnana gave the implication of this in his political analysis in the Vanguard recently: "GNU was a Greek gift. It ensured that the opposition had no chance in the next election. It helped to destroy the prospects of robust multi-party politics."

True. In the spirit of this GNU oneness, what happened to Ige further polarised the AD. There were pro-Ige groups in Afenifere and among the South-West governors. The Ige governors were Bola Tinubu of Lagos; Bisi Akande, Osun; Lam Adesina, Oyo and Niyi Adebayo, Ekiti. But the late Governor Adebayo Adefarati of Ondo and Chief Segun Osoba, Ogun, were core-Afenifere.

In this state of disunity, President Obasanjo, who was humiliated by the South-West electorate in 1999, decided to play a fast one on the governors. He allegedly reached a pact with them that if they supported his presidential bid in 2003, he would make sure they retained their positions. For the governors, Obasanjo had led them down a blind alley. And by the time the 2003 election results were announced, all of the AD governors, except Bola Tinubu of Lagos, had been swept aside. They were replaced by PDP Governors Ayo Fayose, Ekiti; Olusegun Agagu, Ondo; Olagunsoye Oyinlola, Osun; Rasheed Ladoja, Oyo and Gbenga Daniel, Ogun.

After the election, Obasanjo appointed AD Chairman, Alhaji Ahmed Abdulkadir, in a show of quid pro quo, special adviser. Chief Michael Koleosho took over as acting chairman. At the party’s 11 December 2003 emergency meeting, Abdulkadir who had earlier secured a leave of absence, presided. Three members of the National Convention Committee were replaced. The Chairman, Alhaji Ibrahim Hassan, was replaced with the late Reverend Father Moses Adasu. The Secretary was asked to vacate his seat for Tunde Salami, while the Vice Chairman, Chief Emeka Eze, stepped down for Reverend Chinedu Adiele.

The schism in the party further widened. While the Adasu committee organised a national convention at the Eagle Square, Abuja, which produced Mojisoluwa Akinfenwa as National Chairman of the party, Hassan’s 16 December 2003 parallel convention in Lagos threw up Chief Bisi Akande. The two chairmen kept laying claim to authentic leadership while PDP was waxing stronger, scheming ahead.

By the time members of the AD gathered at Onikan Stadium, Lagos in 2003 for their convention, a team of INEC officials led by Dr. Ishmael Igbani acted as observer and subsequently recognised Chief Bisi Akande as the chairman. But with the exit of Abel Guobadia as INEC boss, Professor Maurice Iwu, his successor, decided to recognise Akinfenwa as factional chairman of the party. This resulted in a deep crisis within the party, eventually leading to the exit of key members like Akande and the party’s only surviving governor, Bola Tinubu from AD. In the end AD lost its position as a virile opposition party in the country. Its merger with other groups to form the Action Congress did not help matters, as the new party clinched only Lagos, out of the 36 states of the federation, in the last elections.

The situation was not different with the ANPP. The party won nine gubernatorial seats in 1999. But its fortunes have continued to dwindle since then. From nine seats in 1999, the party won seven in the 2003 elections. In the 2007 elections, the party was however only able to retain five of the positions it won in 2003. President Obasanjo had contributed to the dwindling of the party’s fortunes, first by encouraging the governors-elect on the platform of the party to defect to the PDP. Out of the seven governors of ANPP, two, Saminu Turaki of Jigawa and Adamu Aliero of Kebbi have formally joined PDP. Other governors remaining in the party, like Ali Modu Sheriff of Borno, Bukar Abba Ibrahim of Yobe and Ahmed Yerima of Zamfara are only biding their time in the party.

To ensure the defection of the ANPP governors to his own party, President Obasanjo has been using the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to harass them. Aliero was reportedly railroaded into the PDP as a result of corruption allegations brought against him by the EFCC. He was allegedly promised that the anti-corruption agency would leave him alone only if he was willing to defect to the PDP. The governors were also coerced not to give their support to Buhari, the ANPP presidential candidate in the 2007 elections. There were even reports last week that that the PDP was in talks with Ahmed Yerima, Governor of Zamfara State, with a view to getting him to defect to the PDP. It was gathered that Alhaji Mahmud Shinkafi, the newly elected governor of the state, may defect to PDP along with the outgoing governor. Recently, the EFCC arrested some officials of the state government for embezzlement of state funds. The governor himself was reportedly spared because of the immunity he has against arrest and prosecution. But it was gathered that the fresh move against Yerima was part of the plot of the riling party to deny the ANPP presidential candidate in the recently concluded polls the necessary financial wherewithal to challenge the election results at the tribunal. It was gathered last week that the PDP officials had promised the Zamfara State governor that the charges against officials of the state would be dropped as soon as they joined PDP.

Just like in the case of AD, President Obasanjo’s plans to decimate the ranks of ANPP began in 1999. Key memebres of the party, then known as All Peoples Party (APP), were appointed into the PDP-led government with a view to breaking the ranks of the party.

Mahmud Waziri, the party’s chairman, was appointed Presidential Adviser on Inter-Party Relations. Other top guns of the party like Mohammed Shatta, Senator Ben Obi and Aisha Ismail also took appointments under PDP.

The controversy generated by the exit of Waziri especially, led to the renaming of APP as ANPP. Though Waziri claimed that he remained a member of ANPP, in spite of his appointment, his party members no longer trusted him to continue to hold the post. Thus, Yusuf Ali was appointed in his stead. But the trouble sparked off by Waziri’s appointment soon led to the defection of other notable politicians like the strong man of Kwara politics, Dr. Olusola Saraki, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, Senators Arthur Nzeribe and Florence Ita-Giwa, among others, to PDP. Ali was apparently hurried out of office. He left the party in the hands of a caretaker committee headed by the Sokoto State Governor, Attahiru Bafarawa, who conducted the national convention that produced General Muhammadu Buhari as the presidential candidate of ANPP in 2003. There was a mass exodus from the party afterwards. The Bafarawa-led caretaker committee handed over to Chief Don Etiebet’s executive. Etiebet was, however, a mole working for PDP within ANPP. He spoke more to defend PDP’s position as the National Chairman of ANPP than PDP’s spokesmen, in the words of an ANPP chieftain. For example, he supported Obasanjo’s third term agenda against the wish of the majority of members of his party. Indeed, Etiebet played double games throughout his tenure as ANPP chairman. He was later to return to the PDP where his attempt to pick the party’s gubernatorial ticket for Akwa Ibom State failed.

The PDP dropped its net on Benue and caught another big fish, Paul Unongo, ANPP governorship aspirant in the state. Even Tanko Yakassai, another ANPP top notcher, was not spared. PDP sucked him in too.

The same destabilising treatment was also visited on All Progressives Grand Alliance, APGA. The presidency, in concert with INEC, has since 2003 ensured that the party has had no peace to organise its affairs. Professor Maurice Iwu has also been useful for the scheme with his constant recognition and non-recognition of the different executives of the party.

President Obasanjo also perfected the art of weakening any voice of opposition. He did this in the National Assembly. Chief Akande summed it up when he addressed a press conference in Abuja on 18 April 2007. His words: "General Obasanjo engaged in a vicious struggle to control the National Assembly which led to frequent changes in the leadership of the institution, especially the Senate. When the strong-arm tactics did not quite work, financial inducements were introduced to set up members of the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly. The same Obasanjo would later appear on national television to accuse and convict without trial members of the National Assembly of corruption. The intention, of course, was to thoroughly discredit and weaken that institution and prepare it for his next assault on Nigerian democracy."

In the process, he engineered the exit of Dr. Chuba Okadigbo, a former Senate President. But he failed to remove Anyim Pius Anyim and former House Speaker, Ghali Umar Na’Abba. Their sin against Obasanjo, according to observers, was that they wanted to put the executive under tight reins.

Then Akande mentioned the Political Reform Conference which Obasanjo wanted to use to amend the constitution in a bid to elongate his stay in office. "But Vice President Abubakar and the National Assembly fought relentlessly against it."

In response to the defeat of these plots, Akande argued, Obasanjo vowed to play his last card to organise shoddy elections so that he could hang on to power. Obasanjo also vowed to use the entire government machinery to stop the Vice President’s presidential ambition. Akande added that Obasanjo then accused Atiku of corruption after his attack dog, the EFCC, had concocted a report on the PTDF. He quickly set up a kangaroo Administrative Panel of Enquiry, made up of his hirelings, which naturally found the Vice President guilty as directed. "A vendetta-driven Obasanjo," as Akande put it, "abandoned all the serious problems facing this country and embarked on an unstatesmanly conduct of trying to settle scores with Atiku. The Vice President’s office was violated; his rights and privileges withdrawn arbitrarily, his business, family, friends and political associates were also viciously attacked by state agencies such as the EFCC, SSS and the police, which have all become Obasanjo’s private armies. General Obasanjo even went a step further to illegally declare the office of the vice president vacant, for which the courts severely rebuked him."

Above all, Iwu, the INEC Chairman, through the recently concluded polls has helped President Obasanjo tremendously in his bid to foist a one-party state on Nigeria. But Iwu could not behave otherwise given the circumstances of his appointment. Senator Tokunbo Afikuyomi, pointed this out two years ago on the floor of the upper chamber of the National Assembly when he said Iwu’s appointment was unconstitutional in the first place as it was done by fiat rather than in consultation with the Council of State as recommended in the Nigerian Constitution. "...I don’t think it is right for us to confirm Iwu. If we do, we shall be endangering our nascent democracy," Afikuyomi declared on the floor of the Senate then. Like a prophet, Afikuyomi’s prediction has come to reality with Iwu’s handling of the 2007 elections. In the run- up to the election, Iwu became a willing tool in the hands of President Obasanjo. This is manifested in his commission’s dithering on the qualification and disqualification of candidates of the opposition parties.

Working in concert with the EFCC, the INEC Chairman will be remembered for his attempt to turn himself into a court, determining who was eligible for elections or not, and for flagrant disobedience of court pronouncements. Few weeks to the polls, the EFCC came up with names of some candidates which it accused of engaging in various forms of corrupt enrichment. The names were submitted to the federal government which subsequently set up a committee to review the list. The committee spent only two days to do its work. The federal government later set up another panel which issued a white paper on the committee’s report. But Nigerians were not fooled. It was discovered that the names in the list were mainly those of members of the opposition parties and some members of the ruling party who had fallen out of favour with the party for various reasons. But the INEC chairman, in spite of the preponderance of legal opinion that the electoral body did not have power to either screen or disqualify candidates, went ahead to act on the list. The fact that some of those indicted went to court and had their indictments quashed did not deter him.

A few examples will suffice. In Anambra State, Iwu, in spite of court pronouncements to the contrary, insisted that former Governor Chris Ngige was not qualified to contest the polls. He also maintained he would not to put Nicholas Ukachukwu, the ANPP gubernatorial candidate’s name on the ballot. Though he discovered on election day that his name was on the ballot, the damage had already been done; Ukachukwu had been prevented from campaigning for the election. The reason for this is however not far to seek. Iwu was allegedly appointed as INEC’s boss at the behest of Andy Uba, the presidential adviser on Domestic Affairs, who was also a contestant in the Anambra State gubernatorial election. So, Iwu, in the view of observers, was repaying his benefactor by preventing other popular candidates from contesting against him in the polls. The result was that the gubernatorial election in Anambra was turned into one-horse race. And in spite of the arguments that there were no elections in most parts of the state on 14 April, Uba was declared the winner of the election with over one million votes.

Also, in Adamawa, the more popular gubernatorial candidate of AC was disqualified on the eve of the election to pave way for the victory of the PDP flag bearer.

But there is no better indication of the bias of INEC under Iwu’s leadership than his insistence on getting Vice President Atiku Abubakar disqualified from standing for the presidential election. Iwu, working with the leadership of the PDP, insisted that his commission had power to disqualify the Vice President based on the report of his indictment by a committee set up by the federal government to review the report of the EFCC on the management of funds belonging to the Petroleum Development Trust Fund when it was under Atiku’s management. In spite of the preponderance of legal opinions to the contrary, Iwu was not persuaded. He pursued the case to the Supreme Court, obviously thinking that the apex court would be unable to deliver judgment on the matter before the election. President Obasanjo even declared a two-day holiday to help facilitate Iwu’s plan of getting Atiku excluded from the election. But when the Supreme Court justices overruled Iwu, the country was forced to spend another N62 billion to print fresh ballot papers for the elections, which were marred by INEC’s brazen partisanship.

Apart from getting popular opponents disqualified, another tool employed by the President to secure overwhelming victory for PDP in the election was rigging. Even the police and the army were involved in this during election days. Just like in 2003, the government reshuffled police commissioners across the states about a week to the election. Local and international observers reported how the security agencies participated in large scale rigging during the elections.

In Lagos and other parts of the country, there were reported cases of snatching of ballot boxes in public glare and in the presence of policemen at different polling stations. Human Rights Watch, a foreign observer group which monitored elections in different parts of the country, said it observed the open rigging of an electoral process that deprived voters of the opportunity to cast their ballots in many areas. The group also noted that voting did not take place in many areas where INEC later reported voter turn-out in excess of 90 per cent. "In several areas of Rivers State, local observers and foreign journalists watched ballot boxes being stuffed with ballots marked in favor of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in full view of the public. The extremely high voter turn-out as reported by INEC was not borne out by the situation witnessed on the ground, indicating that the elections were systematically rigged in favour of the PDP," the body noted.

In Anambra , Human Rights Watch said it visited 10 polling stations in rural areas across Anambra Central and Anambra South senatorial zones. "In most cases, polling stations visited...simply did not open at all, with no officials and no voting materials present. Human Rights Watch spoke to three women at 5 p.m. in Nwafor Uruagu Primary School in Nnewi, Anambra South, who had been there since morning waiting to vote. The Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi was unable to vote in his home town. The vice-presidential candidates of both main opposition parties, the AC and the ANPP, were also unable to vote in their home areas because of an absence of INEC staff and polling materials" the human rights body said. Reports from the other foreign and local groups were not different. The National Democratic Institute reported: "The cumulative effect of the serious problems the delegation witnessed substantially compromised the integrity of the electoral process … Other flaws observed included ballot snatching and stuffing, supply of inadequate voting materials, under age voting, lack of secrecy, unverifiable electoral documents and involvement of security agents in manipulating the electoral process."

The International Republican Institute (IRI), a 59-member international election observation delegation, also observed that the elections fell below the standard set by previous Nigerian elections and international standards witnessed by IRI around the globe. The group noted that it had raised some concern about the process of the election even during the registration process. "On April 14 and April 21, IRI’s delegation witnessed numerous problems." The group added that the elections did not measure up to those observed by its delegation in other countries, whether in Africa, Asia, Europe or the Western Hemisphere. The IRI delegation monitored elections in Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Kaduna, Katsina, Lagos, Nassarawa, Ogun, Oyo and Plateau.

With the expansionist tendency of the ruling PDP, will other parties have breathing space in subsequent elections in Nigeria? According to observers, one-party state has surreptitiously crawled into Nigeria.

Additional report by Oluokun Ayorinde(Abuja).

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