Offshoot of Murtala-Obasanjo regime
Offshoot of Murtala-Obasanjo regime
Read full article here: http://www.theopinion.ng/offshoot-of-murtala-obasanjo-regime/
Read full article here: http://www.theopinion.ng/offshoot-of-murtala-obasanjo-regime/
This characterisation was both symbolic and substantive. It was a symbolic identification of itself as the standard-bearer of the legacy of the earlier military administration. This identification was intended to confer legitimacy and acceptance on itself-to the extent that the invoked military patriarchy was adjudged a worthy progenitor, nationally and internationally. In substance, the hierarchy of the Buhari military regime including Babatunde Idiagbon, Domkat Bali and Ibrahim Babangida were the junior colleagues and protégés of
Generals
Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo in the highest ruling organ (Supreme Military Council) of the preceding military administration. In the over four years of the subsistence of the earlier military regime, Buhari at different times served as governor of the North-Eastern state and Minister of Petroleum Resources. The coup that brought their mentors to power in July 1975 was spearheaded by Ibrahim Babangida, Abdullahi Mohammed and Shehu Musa Yar’Adua. The subsequent successful military coup of December 1983 was packaged by Babangida and Yar’Adua and at the very minimum had the blessing of the then retired General Olusegun Obasanjo. Both Obasanjo and Yar’Adua had openly expressed their dissatisfaction with the civilian government of President Shehu Shagari and thereby prepared the grounds and public mind for its exit. The expression of this antipathy reportedly encompassed a brief political romance between Yar’Adua and the late presidential torch bearer of the rival Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Chief Obafemi Awolowo, wherein the former nominated Mohammadu Kura (as proxy) to serve as running mate to Awolowo. Subsequently, Yar’Adua was similarly credited with the nomination of Buhari as military head of state resulting from the 1983 coup-to which he was privy. A week or two to the coup, Obasanjo equally gave a well-publicised thumbs-down to the Shagari government-read as a signal anticipation of the impending military putsch. Right from day one, the Murtala-Obasanjo administration conspicuously manifested the ambition to be perceived as a reformist-nationalist government and in terms of positive governance impact it is difficult to fault the commendation that it was the most credible national government Nigeria ever had. The crowning glory was the then unique achievement of a programmed and sustained transfer of power from military dictatorship to civil democratic rule. It proclaimed itself and was so accepted a corrective military regime. In the invocation of godson continuity from its mentor regime, Buhari was similarly vaunting his regime as a ‘corrective military regime’. The nexus between the two regimes was also acted out in the power politics outreach of the mythical pressure group christened the Kaduna mafia… According to Nvemdaga Jibo‘the, Kaduna mafia is a name given to a loose group of young northern Nigerian intellectuals, civil servants, business tycoons and military officers residing or conducting business in the former northern capital city of Kaduna during the end of the first republic. Many of its members were educated at the famous Barewa College and had demonstrated a certain level of managerial competence in comparison to some of their older contemporaries… They were known for their intelligence, commitment to the traditional values and socio political interests of northern Nigeria and their internal camaraderie. The group thrived on an elaborate network of power alliances among northern aristocrats and government sympathisers who favoured the groups pro-northern and Islamic bent. The group achieved most success during the first era of Obasanjo’s government, where many of its members were appointed to key positions of power and used its alliances to obtain patronage and disburse favour to friends and associates. Famous members and allies include, Adamu Ciroma, Mamman Daura, Ibrahim Tahir, Yar’Adua, Mahmud Tukur and Mohammadu Buhari. Intra-mural personality clash and struggles within the military-bureaucratic power complex that installed Buhari eventually imploded in a palace coup ouster primarily targeted at replacing the military head of state with his Chief of Army Staff Babangida. The connivance of Yar’Adua was discerned in the conflict between his desire to return to the pinnacle of political power through the contrivance of civil democratic election (in which the military regime of Buhari would play John the Baptist) and the latter’s disdainful declaration that restoration of civil democratic rule was not its priority. Buhari’s nascent illiberal conservative posture was challenged by the projection of an opposing liberal cosmopolitan worldview of Babangida who found common purposes with the similarly estranged godfathers of the regime including, speculatively, Obasanjo-who seemed to have undergone a rethink when he latterly frowned on the ascription of the regime as ‘offshoot of Murtala-Obasanjo government’. Babangida did not find the need to invoke a similar patriarchy but he had a lifelong personal bond with Obasanjo that dated back to their pre-1966 days in Ibadan. He cultivated populism to legitimise and entrench himself in office and pander to the civilian political class with a choreographed and mobilisational programme of transition to civil democratic rule spanning his assumption of power in 1985 to 1990 and ultimately 1993.
Beginning with the annulment of the 1993 presidential election and lasting through the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha, military rule in Nigeria decidedly went rogue. Nigeria was rebranded in 1999 with the restoration of civil democratic rule and normalisation of politics. Providence and the deliberate design of the 1998\1999 political transition-military disengagement programme, as a conflict resolution mechanism worked together to produce Obasanjo as the linchpin and recipient of the political baton in the relay race of the Fourth Republic. The crisis of the attempted constitutional amendment to review presidential term limits from two to three terms alias third term, rendered the exit strategy of incumbent President Obasanjo quite problematic. Against the sounding-board (of their mentor-protégé) military politics background there was the speculation, amongst others, to the effect of recruiting General Muhammadu Buhari to seek succession to Obasanjo on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). In the event, the preference was for the emergence of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua-whose premature exit from office led to the assumption of the number one position by Vice-President Goodluck Jonathan. Arising from disagreement and disappointment with his successive protégés, Yar’Adua and Jonathan, Obasanjo called it quits with the ruling PDP and providentially found himself playing the mentor, once again, to the APC presidential candidate. In the precedence of attaining the presidency of Nigeria first via the barrel of gun and then popular democratic mandate, Buhari is reliving the unique benevolence that providence has bestowed on Obasanjo. The latter has equally twice played the accessory godfather role to the ascendance of the president-elect to supreme political power. In their successful return bid to office, both of them had repetitively ridden a messianic crest at critical junctions of Nigeria’s political history. There can be no contention to the proposition that the duration of 1993 to 1998 was negatively unique in Nigeria’s political experience. At the death of Abacha in 1998, there was the formulation of Nigeria’s political problem as the disengagement of military rule, national reconciliation, political stability and compensation of the South-west political bloc for the persecution unto death of Chief Moshood Abiola. Taken this formulation into account, there was hardly any other Nigerian political personality and statesman whose resume fitted the bill of the anticipated president more than Obasanjo. Before President Yar’Adua succumbed to death in 2010, the assumption was that he would serve out (for the North) the power rotation prescribed regional entitlement of two terms. The accident of his death three years into his first term in office and the attendant elevation of his deputy to fill the vacancy fostered a sense of regional deprivation and cast the successor in the mould of a provocative usurper. At the realisation of the successor’s preparedness to seek re-election the animus over the sense of deprivation matured into a full blown regional casus belli and predisposed Nigeria to the affliction of a virulent pan ISIS Islamic insurgency. This negativity was met by the countervailing balance of terror fulminations of the Niger Delta militants in support of fellow Niger Deltan incumbent President Jonathan. Coupled with a widely held perception of an escalating crisis of corruption, the 2015 presidential election was shaping to become a perfect storm and accessory to the fate of political disintegration assigned to Nigeria by a dubious America forecast. As evidently attested in the last presidential election, the APC presidential standard-bearer had attained to the cult hero status of the embodiment and personification of the ethno-regional standpoint of the far North. His anti-corruption reputation resonated with a cross section of the Nigerian intelligentsia and gained traction and national utilitarian appeal in a political milieu in which corruption ranked next to insecurity in the national scale of priority. The combination of these circumstances was the backdrop to the messianic crest that Buhari rode to power less than two months ago. Whilst receiving candidate Buhari on a presidential campaign courtesy visit, former military President Babangida pledged to rally former military generals to the support of their comrade in arms. This is a significant pronouncement on the phenomenon of the dominant role of the military class in the contemporary politics of the fourth republic; and the military rule syndrome-of which the duo of Obasanjo and Buhari are the most outstanding symbols. Barring the possibility of any future military intervention, it is however a syndrome that has attained its climax in the return of Buhari as elected president and will thereafter wane and slide down the ladder of anti-climax. The longer the fourth republic endure, the lesser the likelihood of reproducing any other elected president with the pedigree of the duo. Their ascendance-rooted in protracted military rule, is a reflection of political dysfunction, in which the political system could not perform the important role of leadership recruitment within the civilian class-owing to military rule usurpation of Nigeria’s political space for the better part of Nigeria’s political independence.
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