By Uzodinma
Nwala
The day was
Thursday, August 13, 1998. The setting was a meeting of the nascent People’s
Democratic Party (PDP) which just metamorphosed from the activist group, G-34, in Abuja , Nigeria ’s
capital city. The agenda was to decide on the policy of the emergent party,
especially power-sharing and rotation of the presidency.
The buildup started much earlier with Dr. Nelson Mandela of South
Africa’s second visit to Nigeria to meet with Gen. Abacha, after his 1995 release
from prison. He was here to advise Gen Abacha to loosen his tight grip on Nigeria and
allow the air of democratic freedom to flow in. His Holiness, Pope John Paul
II, had earlier undertaken a similar mission, albeit with no success. Mandela
had specifically called for the release of the likes of Chief M. K. O. Abiola,
General Olusegun Obasanjo, General Shehu Yar’Adua, Ken Saro Wiwa and his Ogoni
colleagues. But, Abacha was adamant on Nelson Mandela’s entreaties. Even though
his trip to Nigeria produced
negative results, Dr. Nelson Mandela, the world-acclaimed doyen of
revolutionary struggles in Africa , was
prepared. He did not relent, he had a Plan B. Mandela turned his attention to Nigeria ’s
pro-democracy groups, asking them to come to the rescue. He invited them to South Africa ,
hoping to inspire them to take to militant opposition.
The South African authorities made auspicious arrangements to
assist the visiting Nigerian pro-democracy groups and individuals to discuss
among themselves. Occasionally, Nelson would sit in during their discussions.
As a tested fighter, he weighed what he was hearing at the discussions of the
delegates. All he heard were mainly rhetoric and empty radical phraseologies.
Disappointed, *Dr. Alex Ekwueme |
Then, came one auspicious early morning in 1998, when the BBC
quoted Dr. Mandela as having said that “the tragedy of the Nigerian situation
is that there is no alternative to Abacha.” The statement came like a big bang,
like a thunderbolt. The challenge Mandela posed in that historic statement was
obvious to any strategic thinker, namely: the liberation of the country from
Gen. Abacha’s iron grip depended on the existence of an alternative political
power to him. Sadly, Mandela knew that the emergence of that alternative was
something nobody could ensure, except Nigerians themselves. The promise he
thought was in the pro-democracy community blew up right in his face!
The challenge boiled practically down to the question: how do we
create the missing alternative to Abacha which Nelson Mandela discovered did
not exist then? The National Democratic Coalition (NADECO), though a big thorn
in the flesh of Abacha’s regime, did not constitute a comprehensive threat or a
viable alternative to him. It was proven in South Africa , and Mandela noticed
it. Mandela’s statement turned something in my bowels. I could not rest, there
just had to be a way out! That same day, I left Nsukka for Enugu to meet Dr. Alex Ekwueme to discuss
this critical challenge which Mandela had posed.
By this time, some politically active individuals, who had metat
the 1994-5 Constitutional Conference in Abuja ,
had set up the Institute of Civil Society (ICS). It had Dr Alex Ekwueme as
chairman and Prof Jerry Gana as secretary. I was to take leave from my teaching
job at the University
of Nigeria , Nsukka, to
become the Director-General of the Institute. Membership of the Institute of Civil Society consisted mainly of our
colleagues from different parts of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, most of
whom were at that 1994-5 Abuja National Constitutional Conference. At the end
of that Conference, we had formed a number of political parties on which
platforms we had sought to pursue the vision of that Conference and the
implementation of some of its key decisions. Among these parties were the
Social Democratic Party (SDP), the All Nigeria Congress (ANC), the Peoples’
National Forum (PNF), the Peoples’ Democratic Movement (PDM) and the Peoples’
Consultative Forum (PCF).
Abacha’s electoral body denied these groups registration as
political parties. In response, we, the promoters of these unregistered
political parties, refused to participate in his transition politics and,
instead, organised ourselves under the Institute of Civil Society .
What did Ekwueme and I discuss on the Nelson Mandela challenge? We
agreed with Nelson Mandela that only Nigerians can liberate Nigeria . For
this to happen, there has to be an alternative political force on ground. The
question then was: how do we set up a nucleus for this alternative force to
emerge? Unlike the activists who were in Pretoria
on Mandela’s invitation, we did not believe that the alternative can emerge
mechanically, whether through grammar or isolated acts of terror, but rather
through the process of some strategic praxis!
Dr. Ekwueme and I concluded that membership of the Institute of
Civil Society (ICS) could constitute the needed nucleus that would launch the
struggle ahead. All we needed to do was for the group to stand boldly and
publicly against Gen. Sani Abacha’s infamous self-mutation scheme. Abacha had
concluded plans to transform himself from a military head of state into a
civilian President, via a stage-managed process of democratic election.
We agreed that I should go to Abuja and discuss this plan with the ICS
Secretary, Prof. Jerry Gana. To make the journey, I left Nsukka about 6.00 pm,
got to the 9th Mile Corner and joined one of those market women and goods-
carrying molue buses heading to Abuja on a night journey. We got to Dumez, then
a major motor park in Abuja ,
in the early hours of the morning and I headed straight to Prof Jerry Gana’s
house in town. I remember vividly. When Prof. Jerry Gana opened the door to
receive me, my greeting to him was, “Jerry, is there no man in this land!?” The
same words came out of his mouth instantaneously “Doctor, is there no man in
this land?!”
He ushered me in, and we sat down and discussed my mission. He was
highly elated. We agreed that a meeting of the members of the Institute of Civil Society
should be convened forthwith in Kaduna .
Meanwhile, the tempo of organised campaigns to declare Gen. Abacha as the
unopposed, consensus President of Nigeria was in full gear. The five parties
(the respected Chief Bola Ige referred to them as the “five fingers of a
leprous hand”) had earlier held their separate stage-managed conventions with
each declaring Gen. Abacha as their unanimous Presidential candidate. Massive
demonstrations were taking place all over the Federation.
The first party to adopt him was the Grassroots Democratic Party
(GDM). All the other four registered parties – United Nigerian Congress Party
(UNCP), the Congress of National Consensus (CNC), the Democratic Party of
Nigeria (DPN) and the National Congress Party of Nigeria (NCPN) followed suit.
Series of demonstrations and rallies were organised with largely hired crowds
to support Abacha’s self-succession bid. The two million-man march was the
climax of this. It was organised in Abuja
to orchestrate massive support for Abacha. Some leading politicians were
cajoled, bribed or intimidated into attending and addressing the rally, thereby
lending support to the movement for Abacha’s self-succession. With this and
other rallies populated by rented crowds, the stage was set for Abacha’s formal
acceptance of his so-called nomination to run as sole candidate for President.
The National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON) and his
legal advisers busied themselves with working out the modalities for Abacha’s
self-transmutation from military Head of State to civilian President without a
formal election. Meanwhile, October 1, 1998, the proposed date for the handover
and swearing-in-ceremony, was fast approaching.
The nation awaited helplessly as the ominous cloud continued
thickening over her political horizon.
The meeting of the ICS was called for Kaduna on February 18th 1998. I was unable to
attend the meeting but I gave my Memo to Dr. Ekwueme at Obollo Afor on his way
to Kaduna . At
the meeting it was decided that the first step in the public reaction of ICS
was to get its Northern members to speak out first against Abacha’s plans. This
was to strategically establish the overwhelming northern support of the ICS
position. The northern outrage was to be followed by a collective statement by
the entire ICS group. One critical propaganda weapon which Abacha exploited was
to portray opposition to his plans as a purely Southern phenomenon. Beyond
that, his strategists tried to link every semblance of opposition against him
as NADECO-inspired. Leaders of NADECO were mainly from the west and east of Nigeria .
To neutralize this propaganda and to demonstrate that Northern
patriots and democrats were not supportive but rather were vehemently opposed
to Abacha’s self-succession plan as well as his fascist government, the
decision to have the Northern wing of the ICS, made up of patriots and
democrats, to make their position pubic first became very compelling. The
famous G-18 letter was, therefore, written and signed by 18 members of ICS
Northern wing, under the joint-leadership of Malam Adamu Ciroma, Chief Solomon
D. Lar and Alhaji Abubakar Rimi. The Statement came out with a big bang and
became known as the G-18 Statement. It had eighteen signatories.
Following this development, members of this group began to
publicly voice their opposition to the regime. Alhaji Abubukar Rimi and Alhaji
Sule Lamido were detained for their principled public stand. Down in the South,
both Chief Bola Ige and Chief Olu Falae were detained for different fabricated
reasons. Chief Basil Nnanna Ukegbu was hounded in and out of the court for
sedition. National and international reactions to the G- 18 document were
overwhelmingly favourable and inspiring. It was the first public demonstration
that a national consensus was emerging in opposition to Gen Sani Abacha. What
is more, it was an evidence that an alternative political leadership to
Abacha’s infamous regime was crystallizing, something Dr. Nelson Mandela saw
was previously absent. The nation’s hope began to rise as she now perceived a
strong, twinkling, star-lit silver-lining in her gloomy political horizon. It
then appeared that it was possible to overcome Abacha without provoking a civil
strife. If it was possible to deny Abacha the opportunity of using one section
of the country against another; then the threat of war was mitigated. History
has demonstrated again and again that once the entire populace was
geopolitically united in any struggle, the resistance against tyranny, the
latter’s weapon of repression and domination becomes considerably weakened.
After this, Dr. Ekwueme and I met and agreed that a national
meeting of the entire group should be summoned immediately. The ICS had to
demonstrate the reality of a national consensus. On the eve of April 27th,
1998. I spent the night with Chief Ekwueme in his Enugu residence. After dinner with Beatie,
his beautiful wife, we drank chilled palm wine, sat down and perused the
documents we had assembled to prepare the statement to be discussed the next
day in Lagos . I
woke up by 2.00 am and prepared a draft of the letter. By 6 am Chief Ekwueme
and I went through the daft and made necessary changes. We then ate and left
for the airport en-route to Lagos
for the meeting at the Mainland Hotel, Ebute Metta. The meeting was presided
over by Chief Ekwueme, the Chairman of the ICS. Only 18 people, from both
the north and south, had the courage to attend the meeting.
After reading the draft we came with, a member urged that we
should tone down the language so that Abacha could read it. I told our
colleagues that, even though the letter was addressed to Abacha, that it was
not really meant for him. That it would be unrealistic to expect that Abacha
would unwind because of our letter. I argued that the letter was meant first
and foremost for our countrymen and women who have lost any hope of any
intervention from any man or group in Nigeria . Secondly, that the letter
was meant for the international community that had doubts over the emergence of
any alternative political force under the prevailing circumstances in Nigeria , as was
ably espoused by Dr. Nelson Mandela.
Mallam Adamu Ciroma quickly got up to support my argument. He
queried how do we expect that Abacha would care to read the letter, let alone
respond to it – a man who does not listen to the voice of the international
community, or even to the voice of God. He emphasized that the letter was
meant for the people of Nigeria
to signal that there are men of honor and integrity ready to sacrifice anything
to save the people of Nigeria
from the grip of a mindless dictator. The Chairman and other members concurred
with our submission. Then we set up a Committee of five (Alex Ekwueme, Jerry
Gana, Uzodinma Nwala, Senator Onyeabor Obi and Senator Iyorchia Ayu) to update
the draft in the light of the agreements in the meeting and mandated the former
Vice President of Nigeria, Chief Alex Ekwueme, to formally forward it to
General Abacha.
We discussed the signatories to the letter. Our colleagues from
the North informd us that out of the eighteen persons that signed the G-18
letter, one person had developed cold feet. However, the rest, including
Abubakar Rimi and Sule Lamido who were in detention asked that we include their
names in whatever we had agreed. That gave us seventeen (17) signatories from
the north. To even things out, we then had to look for another seventeen (17)
signatories from the South. This was how we arrived at the name of the famous
G-34.
This brings us to the very incident that gives us the title of
this historical reminiscence – But for This Day, Dr. Alex Ifeanyichukwu Ekwueme
Would Have Become the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
That day was August 13, 1998 at a meeting of the G-34 in Abuja . The main agenda was the Manifesto of
the emergent new political party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP)
especially with respect to Power-sharing and Rotation of the Presidency. These
were some of the most contentious issues at the 1994-5 Abuja Constitutional
Conference. Although the Conference decided in favor of zoning and rotation,
the decision was based on a vote in which the Southern delegates and their
northern allies had won.
As soon as the issue of zoning and rotation came up, the Chairman
of the Contact and Mobilization Committee, Alhaji Lawal Kaita, stood up and
said “Gentlemen, we shall adopt the policy of zoning and rotation.
To begin with, we shall zone the Presidency to the South, and not only to the
South, but personally to Chief Ekwueme.
As soon as he finished speaking, many hands were up. And the few
who had opportunity to speak, spoke in favour of Lawal Kaita’s position. But
the Chairman, Chief Ekwueme, interrupted the discussion and said, “Gentlemen,
we can decide that the Presidency should be zoned to the South, but it is not a
personal matter. It cannot be zoned to anyone person”.
As soon the Chairman ruled, I was one of those who rolled their
eyes and even shook their heads. For us it was the loss of a great historical
opportunity for the right man in our midst to be invested with the awesome
power to lead the emergence of the civilian democracy in Nigeria , nay the emergence of a new era in the
political history of Nigeria .
Chief Ekwueme’s action was that of a gentleman, a democrat, so to
say, a man anxious to hold the fragile post-military society together. But it
was the action of an honest puritan political actor; yes, it was not the voice
of real politics! Someone else in Chief Ekwueme’s position at that moment,
guided by the realities of raw political struggle as has always been the case
in Nigeria ,
would have allowed the debate ignited by Alhaji Lawal Kaita’s proposition to
run its full course. At the end he would have simply called for a formal motion
and then a vote.
The outcome of the vote would have been unanimously in favour. The
political environment at that point in time was that the civilian politicians
in control of the G-34 had become not only the singular political power. In
fact, there was no ALTERNATIVE TO THEM AS THE LEADING POLITIAL POWER IN NIGERIA
AT THAT POINT IN THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY. Every member of the G-34
was anxious for a transition that would have handed political power to them.
The main power brokers, the military hierarchy, were bruzed and
dazed by the turn of events, following the annulment of June 12 election, and
the majority of their members were anxious to leave the political scene. Abacha
was gone, Abiola was gone. No one would have accused Chief Ekwueme and those
rooting for him as leader of the G-34 of any political misstep. After all, the
G-34 and Chief Ekwueme had called for the release of Chief Abiola and to have
him installed as President, having convincingly won the presidential election
of June 12, 1993. Once that opportunity was lost, the ailing military
power-brokers were politically revived immediately. They quickly sprang into
action, shopped for their candidate, rallied round their local agents, sent
their foot soldiers to reach out to the Emirs and other political forces in the
North. And finally they reached out to their interrnational political and
business partners, who helped them to reach out to the international community.
And by all these, they had seized the leadership from the G-34 and, ipso facto,
set up their own nucleus, THE ALTERNATIVE TO ABACHA, which in fact was no
alternative but the continuation of the game as usual.
The then sitting military Head of State, General Abdulsalam
Abubakar, who was beholden to the G-34 and preparing to hand over to them, was
immediately wised up to the fact that the political equation had changed.
Shortly at a meeting he held with the leadership of the G-34, he now mockingly
asked the leaders of the G.34 “do you have a leader who will take over if we
have to go”. The answer was obvious. The answer was utter silence! They had
taken the rug out of the feet of the G-34. the democratic pocess! It was a coup
against the G-34, nay another annulment and abortion of the democratic pocess!
They now proceeded to anoint their candidate.
Ekwueme’s chance of becoming the post-military civilian President
of Nigeria was lost on August 13, 1998. And that was because he was a gentleman
and an idealist in politics.
*Prof T. Uzodinma Nwalal, a political philosopher and statesman,
writes from Enugu .
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