Bitter fight for power may be spark for chaos

As Nigeria heads for general elections in 2007, the biggest political battle gearing up in Africa’s most populous country is not between the government and the opposition - it is between the president and the vice president. A powerful campaign to lift a two-term limit imposed by the constitution and have President Olusegun Obasanjo run for a third term, is only matched by the strength of the opposition against it, led by Vice President Atiku Abubakar. In recent weeks, both sides have drawn their battle lines. Though Obasanjo has never stated a desire to run for a third term, his supporters recently submitted a bill in parliament, which if passed with a two-thirds majority will allow Obasanjo to run again. Days later, Abubakar who has publicly declared his intentions to run as a presidential candidate in next year’s polls, alerted the nation to what he said was a plot by his boss to institute life presidency. “When the constitution is amended, it means Nigeria will have a life president. I detest it and I urge all Nigerians to strongly and vehemently resist any move that would actualise it,” he told supporters in Yola, capital of his home state of Adamawa. But the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), now apparently firmly controlled by Obasanjo supporters, has given its official support to the third term bid while setting up a panel to probe Abubakar for “anti-party activities”. “The National Executive Council of the party is asking its members to lobby our legislators at the National and State Assemblies to support and approve the draft [third term amendment] bill,” said party secretary Ojo Maduekwe. Obasanjo, he said, had laid strong foundations for Nigeria’s development and this process should not be curtailed by “exclusionary provisions” such as consitutional term limits. Dividing a fractured country But the spat between Obasanjo and Abubakar is not just dividing the PDP. It is dividing Nigeria. And in a recent statement the United States warned Obasanjo to refrain from constitutional amendments, saying many Nigerians believed the constitutional review was suffering from a lack of transparency. Already, a north-south splinter has emerged, with many influential politicians from the country’s predominantly Muslim north - including Muhammadu Buhari, the main opposition challenger in the 2003 elections - now teaming up with Abubakar against Obasanjo, a Christian from southwest Nigeria. Days after Abubakar spoke out against extending the president’s tenure, he was heckled and abused by Obasanjo supporters while visiting Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city and Obasanjo’s ethnic Yoruba stronghold. And in a tit-for-tat response following those incidents, a northern pressure group, the Arewa Coalition for Democracy and Good Governance, threatened retaliation. “We make bold to say that an attack on the vice president is an attack on the North,” said the group’s leader Mohammed Ringim. “The North will hasten to retaliate in the event of another attack.” Just last week, angry protestors stoned Obasanjo’s motorcade while he was on a visit to Kano, the biggest city in the mostly Muslim north. The north-south Muslim-Christian divide has been a source of trouble for decades in Nigeria. Muslim northerners have dominated power for most of the years since the country’s 1960 independence from Britain, either as military or civilian rulers. And when in 1993 military leader General Ibrahim Babangida annulled presidential elections about to be won by southern businessman Moshood Abiola, many in the mainly Christian south saw it as part of a wider plan by northerners to control the country. Years of turmoil followed under two other northern military rulers before Obasanjo’s 1999 election ended a 15 straight years of rule by northern Muslim generals. Obasanjo was backed by key northern military brass as he was generally believed to be a safe hand who would protect northern interests and maintain a powerful central government in the face of increasing regionalist pressures. In the eyes of many northerners, Obasanjo proved his trustworthiness in 1979. After taking over from a northerner killed in an attempted coup as head of a military government, he handed over power to a civilian government with a northerner at its helm. Obasanjo is the only Nigerian military ruler to have relinquished power to a civilian government voluntarily. Motivated by oil money Control of political power in Nigeria determines how wealth from crude oil exports worth millions of dollars every year, is distributed among the country’s 36 states and more than 250 ethnic groups. After two years in office, many northerners complain of being marginalised by Obasanjo. “Another term for Obasanjo is bad news for the North,” said Bolade Omonijo, Nigerian newspaper columnist and political commentator. “And they have chosen to speak out and act.” And its not just northerners that say they aren’t getting their fair share. Southerners who live atop the country’s lucrative oil fields in the Niger delta and other areas of the southeast dominated by the Igbo, are also demanding more. The Igbo who had led a failed secessionist attempt that would have included the Niger Delta during Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war, allege they have been oppressed by successive presidents since than and denied the chance of producing a head of state. Resentment is similarly high in the oil-rich Niger Delta, where inhabitants accuse successive Nigerian governments of denying them the benefits of the oil wealth pumped from beneath their homes. Militant groups are increasingly resorting to violence to press home their demands. Attacks on oil installations since January by a militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), has cut Nigerian oil exports of 2.5 million barrels a day by more than 20 percent. MEND, which claims to be fighting for local control of oil wealth, too is opposed to Obasanjo remaining in office. “We will act as a voice for the nation when Obasanjo decides to run for a third term,” the militant MEND said in a recent statement. “Even if all the governors accept this foolishness, it will never come to be.” Analysts opine that a third term bid could plunge the country into chaos. “If Obasanjo extends his tenure without regard for the feelings of the rest of the country … he will set the country on fire,” said analyst Simon Kolawole. “It is going to be another era of protests, demonstrations, riots, civil disobedience, tear-gassing, arrests, detentions and killings.”