www.twitter.com/platform9ja
WHEN former president Olusegun Obasanjo expressly wrote on President Jonathan’s political hit list, for which snipers are being trained to look out for, a lot of ordinary citizens wondered what the retired old soldier was talking about. For some, OBJ could go on to accuse President Goodluck Jonathan of any other misdemeanor, but not a grave crime like training snipers in a democracy.
Initially, the entire subject matter sounded weird, like a joke taken too far, but when one gives it sufficient consideration, one discovers that it is not a new thing to draw a list of opponents and keep a close watch on their operations. It is good for planning and for plotting how to destabilize the enemy camp, not only with sticks, but also with carrots.
After all, even politicians in the United States keep political hit lists. An upcoming book on Hilary Clinton reveals that her aides meticulously kept a record of those who endorsed her and those who didn’t during her shot at the Presidency in 2008. This was revealed by Politico Magazine, a US based magazine that drives high-wire conversation in Washington. Why keep such a list? According to the Magazine, the authors think there was need to “have a record of who endorsed us and who didn’t and of those who endorsed us, who went the extra mile and who was just kind of there.” What is the purpose? They say to ensure, “that the acts of the sinners and saints would never be forgotten,” and that, “there was a special circle of Clinton hell reserved for people who had endorsed Obama or stayed on the fence after Bill and Hillary had raised money for them, appointed them to a political post or written a recommendation to ice their kid’s application to an elite school.”
To that extent of loose and hyperbolic connection, OBJ might be right in leaking the story of snipers and some men who are on a hit list. But he seemed in a hurry to explain that there is a civilian equivalent of a political hit list that is exactly not the same as that operated by the military. He could have been merciful, to explain to ‘bloody civilians’ his frustrations with Jonathan’s style of engagement with his political hit list.
I want to contend that the unduly long years of history with the military have affected our capacity to appropriately transmute. Since we were more familiar with military leaders’ brazen use of force to suppress opposition, we are now quick to see every action of the civilian government as highhanded. In my understanding, what we think is a hit list is actually what governments since 1999 have used to reward loyalists and punish opponents. The President of the Federal Republic, as it were, is too strong and powerful to resort to any other clandestine force to hem in opponents.
Also, the federal government is too powerful to want to apply physical force to deal with every political troublemaker. Such tactics, if they still exist, are not only cowardly, but spineless. There are enough instruments in the hands of the government to deal with noisemakers, not lethal instruments, but psychological and economic.
If memory serves us well, Obasanjo himself deployed both economic and psychological warfare to disorganize the opposition in the Southwest, between 1999 and 2007. Without firing one single shot, the OBJ administration dislodged the Alliance for Democracy (AD) by putting sufficient food on the table of opposition politicians. They left in drove to taste the chalice that had no ideology and depth. OBJ appointed strategic opposition leaders and descendants of regional political icons into his government and for that moment, he became the messiah. Not to mention how Obasanjo used the EFCC to chase some governors out of town and refused to license one governor’s airline.
He also hounded Abubakar Atiku, his former vice president. Is that what he meant by a hit list?
The federal government could also use hunger to make life miserable for the opposition. You do not need to train snipers to asphyxiate the opposition. Imagine that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu did not survive that 2003 onslaught by the PDP, where would the Southwest gain a foothold as rallying point to bounce back? It would have been total annihilation and the political landscape could never have been this way. Muhammadu Buhari has no financial muscle and he does not pretend about it. But Obasanjo did not fire one shot. He did not need to. All he did was to empower certified election riggers and men who could fix the most difficult electoral riddle, with plum jobs in the maritime, aviation, petroleum, and lucrative board appointments; and they in turn pumped in resources to help ‘capture’ elections and weaken the opposition.
I’m sure OBJ’s anger is more with the poor deployment of resources by the Jonathan administration to annihilate the opposition and realise the vision he left behind, which was that the PDP would rule for 60 years. Which former leader will not be angry when a godson refuses to show smartness and cover up the flanks for at least a few decades, before scavengers come to unveil what had been cleverly stashed away?
When Rotimi Amaechi, the Rivers’ Governor tells the world that he is number one on the imaginary hit list, he does not say anything new. He could not have challenged a sitting president in the manner he had done and expect to sleep with two eyes closed. And the President does not need to fire a shot to cause Amaechi sleepless nights. A governor who does not control the aviation industry does not rattle a president and expect his toy aircraft not to be grounded. Or challenge the president’s Nigeria Police Force with his tattered boys scout platoon. The president does not need any hit list to smoke any governor out. It is a long drawn, subtle enclosure and we only pray it doesn’t get messier than this.
Nasir el Rufai is very good at figures. He has allocated numbers to those who are on the President’s hit list. He claims to be on number seven, after other stalwarts of the APC. Rufai is the exemplification of how badly the Jonathan presidency failed to deploy the instruments of office to suppress, without firing a shot. When Umaru YarÁdua was our president, Rufai was on the run. Only God knew what the two had against each other, but I suspect that YarÁdua, a very quiet man did not want too much noise around himself. Rufai could be loquacious. That is the surface matter; there must be something else, but the point is that Rufai sent himself on exile.
From that distance, he wired lovely tales about Jonathan; around the time some persons did not want him on the driver’s seat. As soon as YarÁdua passed on Rufai came and Jonathan refused to identify a good talent. The man waited and waited and all appointments were concluded. Then he decided to join the opposition. The man was available, but the administration didn’t care. The man could have done very well in any of the parastatals, but that economic sanction that was imposed on him was the first hit list where his name appeared. I want to take a guess that it is that list Rufai keeps referring to in his regular conversations. For goodness sake, why would anyone want to send snipers after this pious-looking and meek intellectual?
One fact is that some of those who worked with OBJ thought they would remain in government perpetually, so long as the PDP continued to ‘win’ elections. But YarÁdua was a gentleman, yet he was his own man and nobody’s boy. He was the one who imposed economic sanction on some of OBJ boys. When Jonathan came, they thought he was their own, but he too denied them and that is why they are so angry. Just imagine having to retire young men who are still very vibrant politically and tell me they will not run riotous.
If this is the hit list politicians are talking about in figurative terms, then it is easier for we that are uninitiated to understand. Otherwise, don’t we have enough Boko Haram to contend with? Do we still need snipers when we have lost count of the number of small arms in circulation? No. There are enough instruments at the disposal of Mr. President to deal with opponents.
The last time OBJ set up an Oputa Panel to reconcile Nigerians; we knew what it meant to train snipers. We heard graphic tales of those who went on training oversees in order to deal with opponents of the military. We heard and saw one Sergeant Rogers. The man has disappeared. But the memory is still too fresh for any dumb person in government to want to replicate that cruel history. Any government that is not greedy will know how to protect itself. There are enough resources to keep half of those in the opposition actively busy. So busy that they will not even remember there is 2015. You do not need snipers to demobilize anybody. That’s too crude.
No comments:
Post a Comment