NIGERIA 2003: OO BOOSTERS TRY TO PRE-EMPT

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ABUJA 001184

SIPDIS


LONDON FOR GURNEY; RIYADH FOR HANKS


E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/09/2012
TAGS: PGOV PINS PINR KDEM NI
SUBJECT: NIGERIA 2003: OO BOOSTERS TRY TO PRE-EMPT
COMPETITION


REF: A. ABUJA 1068

B. ABUJA 829

C. ABUJA 1091

D. ABUJA 1159


Classified by CDA Andrews. Reason: 1.5(b).



1. (C) Summary: From the perspective of recent history, the
processions of sycophantic visitors and Obasanjo's own words
strongly suggest Nigeria's President will seek a second term.
At a minimum, Obasanjo boosters seek to pre-empt anyone else
contemplating a run -- the better to assure continued access
to the public trough where they greedily feed. The political
show of force intends to impress upon potential opponents and
their possible allies the costs of confronting the incumbent.
But despite an increasing tendency toward isolating himself,
Obasanjo knows his Administration has not delivered much to
the average Nigerian and that sycophancy does not demonstrate
popularity. There is still a small chance he'll say, "No."
End Summary.


--------------
WHATEVER SUITS YOUR SYCOPHANCY
--------------



2. (SBU) The orchestrated visit to President Obasanjo's Ota
Farm the Tuesday after Easter (ref A) by 20 governors and a
score or so of other political figures continues to generate
controversy. Political cartoons show the same archetypal
political elites who pleaded with Abacha to run in 1998 now
imploring Obasanjo to seek a second term. "ThisDay" ginned
up a merged photo (half Abacha/half Obasanjo) to accompany a
column on the similarities between Abacha's self-succession
plans and the growing Obasanjo-is-indispensable movement.



3. (U) While those angered by the event have dubbed it an
"unholy pilgrimage by sycophants" who were acting out a "Sani
Abacha script," Obasanjo's supporters are asking questions, a
notable one being: if the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) is
free to campaign openly against Obasanjo running for a second
term, why should his supporters not step out to openly and
resolutely prevail on him to run?



4. (C) What apparently galls many Nigerians is that both
Obasanjo and his supporters are trying to show the world that
it is not he that wants to continue as the President, rather
that Nigerians who have anointed him as a political Messiah.
The 14-day fast (Ref A) that ends today and OO's frequent
references to a need for divine guidance inject a spiritual
element intended to resonate with Nigeria's deeply religious
masses but which deepens the cynicism of commentators, who
note that Abacha did much the same thing in 1998. Obasanjo's
boosters are not talking about his achievements as a basis
for seeking reelection. They are, in effect, saying that
there is no alternative to Obasanjo -- a sycophantic,
unimaginative card that makes the Presidency look rather
cheap. Perennial Information Minister Jerry Gana
disingenuously claimed that the April 2 event did not amount
to clearing the way for Obasanjo to emerge as the sole
candidate and that the presidential race was still open, even
in the President's party, the People's Democratic Party (PDP).



5. (C) However, sources tell us, Works and Housing Minister
Tony Anenih made it clear that governors who declined to join
the parade at Ota should expect the Obasanjo Administration
to deploy its powers against them. For Abubakar Audu of
Kogi, facing scrutiny over residential real estate purchases
in London and Potomac, being from the opposition All Peoples
Party was not enough to keep him away from Ota. Writing in
"ThisDay", Olusegun Adeniyi commented, "What...bothers me is
the total lack of creativity that Obasanjo's undertakers have
shown in recent weeks. Must they do it the Abacha way? This
lack of creativity may also tellingly reveal to us why these
public office holders have not been able to achieve anything
tangible in three years. They have no fresh ideas, even for
manipulating people and elections." Separately, an Obasanjo
confidant told us that someone might be paid to run against
the President in order to preserve the appearance of an open
race. If attempted, it would not be a new concept; Ibrahim
Babangida reportedly provided money to both Moshood Abiola
and Bashir Tofa to finance their 1993 presidential campaigns.


-------------- AN HISTORICAL COUNTERPOINT
--------------



6. (U) In 1956, Western Region premier Chief Obafemi Awolowo
faced some of the re-election challenges that confront Chief
Olusegun Obasanjo today. According to Akpo Esajere of the
"Guardian", Awo did not tell people to go and pray or that he
was seeking divine guidance to know if he should re-contest.
Instead, the sage quietly mobilized his lieutenants. When he
stepped into the open, he enumerated what he had achieved and
what more he would do. The campaign not only highlighted his
achievements, it sought to knock the bottom out of the case
of his opponents, in that it carefully detailed how he would
move the region forward from the point to which he had taken
it. It was a confident campaign whose persuasive edges would
seem more useful to Obasanjo than allowing professional
politicians to come and beg him to run for another term.


--------------
TRIED AND TRUE
--------------



7. (U) The events of April 2 serve to remind observers not
only of parallels with Abacha in 1998, but also of OO's
actions prior to deciding to run in 1999. In 1998 after his
release from prison, Obasanjo claimed to have no desire to
run for President, and it was rumored that this refusal to
contest was part of the bargain that granted his release.
But within weeks, he had received several leading Southwest
politicians, including the current Internal Affairs Minister,
Chief Sunday Afolabi, who begged him to seek the Presidency.
Obasanjo was reported as having said that if Nigerians wanted
him to become President, he was left with no choice but to
seek divine direction.



8. (C) The President is now using pretty much the same
tactic, except that perhaps that "begging" him to come and
run is this time being done on a large scale, the idea being
that the "Messiah" air should be brought home as forcefully
as his campaign machinery can make possible, in hopes,
perhaps, of intimidating all possible opposition with this
manifestation of the power of incumbency. Visits to Aso
Villa or Ota to "persuade" Obasanjo are part of a larger
strategy. Different "independent" campaign groups have been
created, notably Coalition 2003, Obasanjo Solidarity Forum,
Vote Obasanjo/Atiku (VOA),Leadership Front, Alliance for
Obasanjo and Atiku and others. The PDP women's forum, led by
Josephine Anenih, wife of Tony Anenih went to Aso Rock to
plead with the President. Earlier, the women's arm of the
Obasanjo Solidarity Forum was also admitted into the Villa to
plead.



9. (C) Aside from the Ota event, Anenih had been active in
efforts to make the President's re-election a fait accompli.
He recently led a delegation comprising the governors of
Rivers, Cross River and Bayelsa states, as well as some top
party chiefs from the South-South zone, to Aso Rock. The
path was well-trod; Anenih had been prominent among those
political figures who in 1998 averred that Nigeria could not
survive without Abacha. Not to be left out, Chief Solomon
Lar in late March led PDP figures from the North-Central zone
to Aso Villa to plead with Obasanjo to re-contest. Lar was
Police Affairs Minister under Abacha until a falling-out sent
him home to Langtang; he later emerged as the first chairman
of the PDP.



10. (U) To all these, Obasanjo had given a standard
response, except that on April 2, he notched the stakes a bit
higher. His words -- "I have been touched to the point of
emotion, to the point of sentimentality. When you have this
type of gathering uninstigated by me, unsolicited, as genuine
as it is, one cannot but feel touched, because what else does
one want in life except to serve humanity and serve God" --
were in character and according to script, even though they
struck a discordant note with many sophisticated Nigerians,
and even with some assumed to lack sophistication. Cynicism
about the pleaders not only runs deep, but increasingly wide.
As one Embassy driver succinctly put it, "They just want to
keep eating our money."


--------------
THE PERSPECTIVE FROM "ABROAD"
--------------



11. (U) In his administration, which clocks three years in
late May, Obasanjo has made 90 trips abroad. However, the
benefits of the trips are unclear to many Nigerians. Despite
all the travel, Obasanjo has not obtained the painless debt
cancellation he so avidly seeks, nor are foreign companies
(other than South Africans) interested in investing in the
non-oil sector. Recently, Investors International London,
Limited (IIL) was unable to raise the funds needed to buy 51
percent of GON-owned Nigeria Telecommunications (NITEL) and
seems likely to lose its deposit, casting a further pall over
Nigeria's privatization exercise. Nigerian elites are deeply
ambivalent about privatization, anyway. They complain about
foreigners buying the "national patrimony" for less than its
"true" value (there is particular unhappiness with the South
Africans) but are just as bitter that privatization has
produced little net inflow of foreign direct investment.

12. (U) Nigerian elites are equally confused about the roles
being played by some of Nigeria's key international partners.
Noting that "Western countries especially America and
Britain are said to be unsatisfied with the Obasanjo
administration's performance in fighting corruption, battling
the scepter (sic) of insecurity and stabilizing the polity
and the economy," Esajere sees the hands of Washington and
London trying to guide Obasanjo to eschew a second term:
"About nine months ago, when Obasanjo's administration was a
little over two years, a campaign suddenly came out that the
President should play Nelson Mandela or take to the path of
the biblical John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus
Christ. Foreign diplomats are said to be behind the
campaign, which has put enormous pressures on Obasanjo."



13. (U) Satisfied with his own analysis, Esajere concludes
that Obasanjo should have "actively created a successor who
(could) stabilize the polity. But Obasanjo is not one to
willingly and selflessly give his blessing to a young man as
Mandela did with President Thabo Mbeki in South Africa. Can
Obasanjo play John the Baptist, talking about 'one among
you?' He is most unlikely to do that," Esajere concludes.



14. (C) While we do not share Esajere's conviction that the
US and the UK actively seek to have Obasanjo remove himself
from the 2003 campaign, we agree with the view that Nigeria's
President is temperamentally disinclined to choose a strong
successor -- if choose a successor he someday must. For now,
the staged visits presume continuity rather than succession.
Those who would counsel Obasanjo to retire (such as Abraham
Adesanya, Sunday Awoniyi, Isyaku Ibrahim and Abdulkadir Kure)
or at least to dispense with the theatrics are not invited
into his presence. By all accounts and based on our own
experience (ref C),Obasanjo is becoming steadily less
willing to listen to dissenting points of view. Indeed, he
feeds the sycophancy Anenih and others engendered, producing
in his own mind a much rosier image of his performance and
popularity than is shared by many influential fellow
citizens. According to Esajere, Obasanjo is also "trying to
show the skeptical external world that it is not him that
wants to be president; it is Nigerians who want him, who have
anointed him as Messiah."


--------------
WHERE ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?
--------------



15. (C) Many Nigerians despair that the country is on the
road to a de facto single-party system. Obasanjo's public
comment that he shared some of the concerns of Zimbabwe's
Mugabe is read in light of Nigerian domestic politics rather
than the issues affecting Zimbabwe today. Leaders of the
unregistered parties believe that State House is intent upon
keeping them out of the 2003 contest. Alh. Saleh Jambo,
pro-tem Chairman of the United Nigeria Democratic Party
(UNDP) told us recently that he found Obasanjo's expressed
sympathy for the Zimbabwean leader a matter of great concern.
The deepening conflict over the local government polls,
notably their timing, the status of voter registers and the
role of the unregistered parties, further muddies electoral
waters.



16. (C) The APP and the AD joined forces to put up a joint
candidate (Olu Falae) in the 1999 Presidential elections.
The two parties did well in gubernatorial elections in the
North (APP) and the Southwest (AD). But both parties are
beset by factionalism (Ref B),and at-risk governors
(particularly from the APP) are lining up with Obasanjo while
remaining formally within their parties. Adamu Aliero of
Kebbi is said to have explained that, just as one is
instructed to fasten one's own oxygen mask before that of a
child, so, too, the governor must save himself if he is to
obtain benefits for his people. Such unabashed opportunism
pervades the political class and is both curse and blessing.
It militates against the establishment of interest-based
politics (a basic element of viable democracy),but it also
discourages politicians from standing on principle when the
wind is clearly blowing in another direction (thereby
reducing the chances of an enduring political crisis).



17. (C) Notwithstanding Anenih's infamous "no vacancy" line,
there is no shortage of people who would like to move into
Aso Villa. By all accounts, Babangida is particularly intent
upon salvaging his tattered reputation by winning the
presidency, if not in 2003 then certainly four years later.
However, he (and all other contenders) must assess their
prospects. The fact that Obasanjo has remarkably little to
offer the average Nigerian as proof of his leadership and
stewardship over the past three years does not nullify his
hopes for a second term. He simply needs to pre-empt likely
antagonists.



18. (C) Here lies the genius of organized sycophancy; it
constitutes a political show of force. The point is not to
convince a "skeptical external world" that Nigerians want OO
for another fours years. Anenih is far too calculating and
experienced to think foreigners unable to see through such a
contrivance. Calling on the troops to endorse the leader for
another term is typical in any democracy; the extent to which
they comply is a good test of the leader's popularity. What
is different about Nigeria today (and unsettlingly similar to
Nigeria in 1998) is the leader's seeming need to say he is
being "called" (by God and/or the people). Whether this
flows from a need to gratify the ego, or is a cynical view of
the electorate's sophistication is anyone's guess. Either
way, inveigling or coercing opposition politicians to join
the calls for four more years adds to the punch, leaving
potential opposing candidates off-balance and uncertain about
the likely costs of contesting.


--------------
IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS...
--------------



19. (C) ...Obasanjo will decide whether or not to seek a
second term. All outward signs continue to point to "yes,"
but the outward signs are largely of his boosters' making.
His own pronouncements suggest a strong inclination to run
again, but there remains a small chance he might say, "no."
Despite his frequent travels abroad, too much time spent in
Abuja while in Nigeria and an increasing tendency to brush
aside advice running contrary to his own views, Obasanjo is
too intelligent not to realize how little his Administration
has accomplished for the average Nigerian -- and how quickly
the sychophants can find new heroes. The fast ends tomorrow.
Andrews