Uses of Power
“Obasanjo was an arbiter of power, holding the reins of the country in such a way as to balance the interest of the south with that of the north … the greatest lesson he imparted was the fact that a leader ought to quit while the ovation was loudest.”
Nigerians are getting used to coups, and this is bad. One, two … five, they have counted on all the fingers on their right hand the number of times that they have woken up to announcement of “I, …” Every on knows that means that a coup has taken place and the leadership has changed. When it happened in 1966, people took to the streets in jubilation. When it again happened later that year, people were confused. They didn’t know what the second announcement early that morn meant. Things were tranquil for some nine years. The man who became head of state via that coup, the young Yakabu Gown, kept things together as it were for nine years. He became a pleasant fixture in the affairs of the nation and in the life of the citizenry. Gowon was a jolly fellow, a good Samaritan who found himself in Khaki in which he didn’t really belong. The young man himself started sharing that feeling tha’s how pervasive it was, that he thought he could stay on perpetually in Dodan Barracks, just as Gamal Nasser, his idol, did in Egypt. Power or bad advisers or both went into his head, and thus failed to read the countenance of the country and the people that they had enough of his beneficence.
And then his colleagues said in 1975 that Gowon had failed the nation, that he had broken his word to the country and had to go, also in an early morning broadcast to the nation. As in the coming of Gowon, Nigerians didn’t quite know to make immediately of Murtala Muhammed who came charging furiously into town astride a Trojan horse. In a matter of weeks, Muhammed convinced Nigerians that a good and purposeful leader could make a difference. And Muhammed changed the attitude of Nigerians to everything, from their perception of the nation to their duty to the country. Buy the time that the assassin’s bullet felled Muhammed six months later on a Friday morning, he had won the hearts and heads of all Nigerians, even if Dimka’s voice had come early in the morning without the blessing of Bacchus, Nigerians were not ready for him. They knew that Muhammed’s job was not down, and they wanted nore of him. Olusegun Obasanjo, who succeeded Muhammed, continued Muhammed’s progamme but with a different style. The more than three years that Obasanjo spent at Dodan Barracks gave Nigerians the first to see how a leader could survive by picking his way through a dense minefield. Obasanjo became an arbiter of power, holding the reins of the country in such a way as to balance, in his words, the interest of the south with that of the north, the interest of the muslim with that of the Christian.
The greatest lesson imparted by Obasanjo was the fact that a leader ought to quit the stage while the ovation is loudest. Muhammed before Obasanjo, unfolded a programme to the nation on coming to power, that his government would not spend more than five years in power. Obsanjo knew more than anyone else that he would have been as good as dead if he went back on the solemn promise of drawing up a constitution for the country and conducting elections for the general leadership of the country. When other African leaders told him privately that he would be to leave the nation’s leadership without any apparent contest, Obasanjo knew that he would prove to be a greater fool to stay on. So he left. And Shehu Shagari entered. And that’s the most interesting aspect of modern Nigerian history. Shagari’s main failing was his abdication of the great power entrusted to him, whereby his aides like Umaru Dikko, who didn’t understand enough of the dynamics of power, usurped his authority and abused it for personal aggrandizement. That was why Sani Abacha’s voice on the morning of December 31, 1983, was music to Nigerians. Everyone in Nigeria, at least almost everyone and definitely including Shagari himself, knew that if Abacha has not spoken that morning, Nigeria was going to disappear. So everyone was happy to see Shagari go. Ibrahim Babagida was not hyperbolic when he said that the nation’s enthusiasm to see Shagari go was unprecedednted in Nigeria.
Such a huge mandate was supposed to give Muhammed Buhari and his friends at the helm of the nation’s affairs enough confidence to act in the better interest of Nigerians. Instead, Buhari declared what was akin to an open war against Nigerians, targeting every sector and every person almost in a running battle. Battle used the enormous power of his office to chase his enemies, real and imagined. His most enduring legacy became that of killing the customary exuberance of Nigerians. Of course, that state of affairs could not last. By the time that Buhari was sacked from his office, Nigerians had begun to dream of coups. People who were normally not knwn to dream were telling their friends of their soup dreams. If you think hard enough about wish, you are most likely to dream about it. The way many Nigerians saw it, any change would be better; after Shagari and Buhari, most people felt nothing worse could happe.
That was the frame of mind of most Nigerians when Joshua Dogonyaro’s voice woke them up on the morning of August 27. They were relieved but pensive. They didn’t know quite what to make of the new voice. After Gowon and Shagari and Buhari and the many dashed hopes, they were not eager to embrace another voice at dawn. They wanted to see. The only known denominator about Babangida is that he is a man who understands the dynamics of power as a nebulous entity with deceptive heaviness which can just as easily serve as the burial groud of a man who misuses it. Babangida’s first steps are assuring, although one may detect a few conflicting signals, but then that is the way of politics. Test the waters and see how it plays in the bowel of the country. But if the continues to temper his enormous power of office with humanity and understanding of Nigeria as a difficult country to govern, we may just be starting that trip on the way forward.
©Newswatch, September 23, 1985
(Pp.273-275)
