“Army arrangement” means Obasanjo victory

Twenty years ago, when then-head of state General Olusegun Obasanjo handed power to Nigeria’s last-elected civilian government, Afro-beat musician and radical icon Fela Kuti wrote a song called ‘Army Arrangement’. It portrayed the controversial 1979 elections as a pre-ordained result, in which the military effectively chose their successor. In Nigeria today, “army arrangement” is shorthand to describe a political process in which key former military officers have rallied around the presidential candidacy of Obasanjo. Their generous campaign donations and political clout are expected to ensure the retired general victory in the 27 February election, political analysts say. “Money plays a very pervasive role in Nigerian politics. The military’s grip is based on money, and people’s greed,” human rights lawyer Festus Okoye told IRIN. “The military fears that if they don’t get someone they trust [in power] they will be held accountable for their past human rights abuses.” The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), whose performance so far has been generally applauded, is quick to deny the presidential elections would be anything but free and fair. “These are insinuations that are not founded,” INEC spokesman Steve Osemeke told IRIN. But Obasanjo has the advantage of a formidable political machine inherited from his former government deputy, General Shehu Yar’Adua. It is this network, according to political observers, which is behind the national success of Obasanjo’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Across the country, with the exception of the southwest and core north, the PDP has trounced its main rivals, the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and All People’s Party (APP), in local government and governorship elections. With less than one-fifth of the results to come, the centre-left PDP had by Monday already taken 194 of 360 House of Representative seats in last Saturday’s legislative polls. “Retired army generals with tons of money and Yar’Adua’s machinery is an awesome combination,” Okoye believes. It has not only propelled the PDP into pole position, but also allegedly secured Obasanjo’s party presidential candidacy in what some press reports suggest was a surprising victory at the PDP’s recent convention. Obasanjo loyalists do not deny that he is widely regarded as the military’s choice. In coup-happy Nigeria, in which the army has ruled for a total of 29 years since independence in 1960, his campaign portrays his military past as an advantage. “We need someone who can act as a bridge for a gradual disengagement of the military,” an Obasanjo spokesman told IRIN. “If we don’t have someone who can understand them, then I think we’ll have problems.” However, the fear among civil society groups that opposed Nigeria’s past military rulers, is that the democratic transformation of the country so desperately yearned for will prove illusory. The former generals, responsible for the looting and brutalisation of the country, will remain unaccountable and continue to hold political sway.