WITH less than two months to the end of the tenure of President Olusegun Obasanjo, world acclaimed author, Professor Chinua Achebe, says the president has taken Nigeria �as low as she has ever gone.�
Professor Achebe in a statement, �The clouds are gathering,� from his base, Annandale-on-Houston, New York, said all the talk about the administration�s fight against corruption was nothing short of a myth.
Also, Nigerians living in the United Kingdom have sent a letter to President Obasanjo asking him to allow free and fair elections this month.
In Achebe’s words: �President Olusegun Obasanjo has taken Nigeria as low as she has ever gone. This will surprise foreign �friends� of Nigeria who may believe the myth that Obasanjo has been fighting to end corruption in the country and to bring democracy to its citizens. Nigerians know better.
�President Obasanjo has had the opportunity to rule Nigeria for three years (1976-79) as an unelected military dictator and later for two terms of eight years as a retired general/civilian (1999-2007). People don�t exactly remember what Obasanjo did in his first civilian incarnation. His second coming, however, was a different matter. He unfolded a gigantic scheme for staying in power beyond his tenure.
He set up agencies with long titles like the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission and the Independent National Electoral Commission. It soon became clear, however, that these devices were not intended to curb the crimes they enumerated but to go after people who disagree with the President, especially on his desire to extend his tenure.
�Perhaps the strangest of these events took place in my own state, Anambra, where a governor was kidnapped by a criminal gang who claimed that they had �fixed� the election and earned the right to receive the state budgetary allocation.
Whatever the merit of this bizarre story the governor refused to turn over the allocation to these thieves and began to spend it on building roads and bridges which nobody had done in decades. He began to pay pension to retired civil servants who had not been paid in years.
Anambra State was transformed overnight. No where else in Nigeria had such a change happened. Governor Ngige became the people�s governor.
�One would have thought that our anti-corruption president, Chief Obasanjo, would have embraced Governor Ngige as a fellow fighter against corruption. But no.
The fellows demanding the state revenue were Obasanjo�s friends who in anger set about burning down and destroying state property while the Police stood at a distance, watching.
�I have told this story again although we all know it. I am retelling it because as it goes with Anambra, so will it go with Nigeria.
�As Nigeria gets ready for the election of Governors, Anambra State is in a quandary. President Obasanjo�s hatchet man for elections is determined that only one candidate will be allowed to run in the state and has gone ahead to disqualify everybody else so that the President�s favourite man will be alone in the field. If this plan goes through, it would amount to nothing less than the disenfranchisement of the people of Anambra State.
�I must congratulate the Judiciary on the tough battle many of its members are waging for the soul of Nigeria. The Senate came ever so close to snatching Nigeria out of the fire, and then� That was a historic moment lost. What a pity.�
Nigerians in UK demand free polls
In their letter entitled: �Nigeria and the Dream Of Democracy: Let There Be Free and Fair Elections in Nigeria� delivered through the Nigerian High Commissioner in London during a demonstration at the commission yesterday, Nigerians living in the UK wrote: �We feel compelled as patriotic Nigerians living in the United Kingdom to write you this letter to express our deep concerns over the situation in our beloved country.
We believe that we have a stake in the Nigerian project and we also believe that Nigerians as a people have already paid a very high price since the time of our independence to the present time in their desire to build a prosperous country where no one is oppressed, as a result of the actions or inactions of our political leaders.
�We are mindful that these were views that you shared; looking back at your past comments especially in the time you began organising events of the African Leadership Forum in the 80s and in your various publications, especially in your book, This Animal Called Man. We have no doubt at all that you accepted the call to service this second time around because of your conviction to faithfully serve our fatherland.
�We are, however, concerned that your historical comments, statements and expressions of love for the rule of law and advancement of democratic values in Nigeria, nay Africa, have not been evident in the manifest activities of your government since you returned to power in 1999.
�Like several other patriotic Nigerians, we longed for the correction of the anomalies in the elections of 1999, an election that was widely acknowledged as lacking transparency and not representing the true will of the people.
It was thought then that this was a �military arrangement� to finally ease out of power, after the disgraceful events of June 12, 1993 elections and the after shocks of its annulment, the military governments of Generals Ibrahim Babaginda and Sani Abacha. Indeed your comments on these matters led to your being roped into the phantom coup saga, �events that we believe have defined your memory of the true meaning of a dictatorial government�.
�As stated above, post-1999, 2003 was therefore a year of great expectations by all Nigerians who yearned for true democracy untainted by electoral fraud (characterised by vote rigging, intimidation and violence). It has however become accepted history that the 2003 elections were again not a representation of the people�s will as they were marred by political intimidation, violence and most of all, the grossviolation of the rights of the Nigerian people to choose their leaders through free and fair elections.”