Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
02ABUJA509
2002-02-15 12:39:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Abuja
Cable title:  

NIGERIA: FORMER HEAD OF STATE THINKS OBASANJO

Tags:  PREL PINS PINR PGOV NI 
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This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 000509 

SIPDIS


E.O. 12958: DECL: 1.6 X6
TAGS: PREL PINS PINR PGOV NI
SUBJECT: NIGERIA: FORMER HEAD OF STATE THINKS OBASANJO
SHOULD FORGET SECOND TERM


Classified by Ambassador Howard F. Jeter. Reason 1.6 x6


C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 ABUJA 000509

SIPDIS


E.O. 12958: DECL: 1.6 X6
TAGS: PREL PINS PINR PGOV NI
SUBJECT: NIGERIA: FORMER HEAD OF STATE THINKS OBASANJO
SHOULD FORGET SECOND TERM


Classified by Ambassador Howard F. Jeter. Reason 1.6 x6



1. (C) Summary: During a February 1 breakfast meeting,
former military Head of State Abdulsalami Abubakar told
Ambassador Jeter that President Obasanjo meant well but has
performed badly the past several months. Obasanjo's sincere
intentions have been betrayed by his abrasive manner and by
maladroit decisions that have alienated many supporters.
With his stature in the Northwest and Southeast significantly
eroded, Obasanjo would be hard-pressed to duplicate his 1999
electoral victory in 2003. Because Obasanjo's candidacy
would now be divisive, Abubakar hoped the President would
follow the example of Nelson Mandela and not seek a second
term. The former Head of State also warned that, despite the
National Assembly's excision of the clause barring new
parties from the 2003 national and state elections, the
electoral law still contained provisions that could
precipitate major constitutional and political crises.
Abubakar also expressed annoyance at the recent suit filed
against him and other former Nigerian military Heads of State
by Southwest-based politicians for alleged human rights
abuses and the death of putative 1993 electoral victor,
Moshood Abiola. Abubakar's comments on his role in the DROC
peace process and in Zimbabwe will be reported septel. End
Summary.


--------------
A Historic Opportunity Being Squandered
--------------



2. (C) During a February 1 breakfast at the Ambassador's
residence, a relaxed, avuncular Abubakar commented that
President Obasanjo had the best interests of Nigeria at heart
and was a patriot who thought of Nigeria first. There was no
other figure who could have assumed the Presidency in 1999
without having further convulsed an already frail body
politic. Nigeria would have been worse off without Obasanjo,
he maintained. Generous and brief, these encomiums were the
prelude to a tactful but harsh critique of the Obasanjo
Presidency.



3. (C) Abubakar believed that Obasanjo's utility as a
stabilizing force had waned; in fact, the President appeared

to have forgotten his mandate. Obasanjo's task when elected
was to advance the democratic transition the 1999 elections
had set in motion. In 1999, civilian politicians united to
escort the military from office. However, they had no
program beyond the military's ejection. As President, it was
incumbent on Obasanjo to stand above the fray of power
politics and forge a national consensus around key issues.
His mandate was to guide the nation down the critical path to
genuine democratization. He should have focused his
attention as well as sacrificed his ambitions to the building
of republican institutions and a democratic political
culture. Instead, Obasanjo had sunk into the thick of
political mudslinging and intrigue, Abubakar complained.
Meanwhile, his Administration had no domestic social and
economic policy focus. Unlike a good general, Obasanjo was
operating on multiple fronts, dealing with too many issues
simultaneously. By trying to do everything himself and
failing to delegate sufficiently, Obasanjo has achieved
little except generate resentment among the political elite
and frustration among Nigerians in general.



4. (C) However, Obasanjo's greatest self-disservice,
according to Abubakar, has been his combative style and
disdain for compromise and dialogue. Obasanjo thinks he is
omniscient and does not need to listen, the former Head of
State emphasized. Preferring to surround himself with
second-rate hacks who echo his tune, Obasanjo has banished
independent-minded advisors like Patrick Dele Cole who could
have helped him from stumbling into the recent spate of
political miscalculations, such as the electoral law.



5. (C) For Abubakar, the electoral law represents Obasanjo's
biggest recent political blunder. Abubakar was nonplussed by
Obasanjo's alleged personal involvement in the unseemly
inclusion in that law of the prohibition against new
political parties in the 2003 elections. By inserting his
hand in this roiling pot, Obasanjo singed both his pride and
prestige, thus lowering his stature as President. The
President's involvement in this backroom meddling
strengthened his critics in and out of his party, the PDP.



6. (C) Abubakar continued that the President's involvement
in the electoral law controversy strongly suggested that
Obasanjo sought to bar new parties to lessen competition and
assure his reelection. However, slipping that prohibition
into the law after the measure had been passed by the
National Assembly had backfired severely. Not only was there
a sustained public hue and cry, but all 36 Governors filed
suit against the measure's postponement of local elections
from April 2002 to 2003, while Senator Arthur Nzeribe filed a
companion case against the ban on political parties.
Meanwhile, the two houses of the National Assembly voted to
repeal the bar on new parties. But these "cleansed" bills
have not been forwarded to the President for his assent.
Consequently, no one really knows if there is an electoral
law or not. Abubakar feared a major constitutional showdown
if some governors make good their threats to hold local
elections this year in face of the federal government's
insistence that it, not the states, had the authority to
determine the date for local elections. Such a standoff
between Governors and the President, Abubakar predicted,
would fog an already dense political atmosphere.



7. (C) Abubakar added that the Governors would not have felt
the need to hold local elections in 2002 but for their fear
that Obasanjo is actively trying to engineer the demise of
governors he dislikes, even those in his own party. Holding
local elections prior to the national polls would strengthen
the Governors' position in influencing all subsequent
elections in their states, including the Presidential
contest. Conversely, should the Presidential election occur
first, the bandwagon effect would dictate that contestants in
the subsequent state and local elections would need the
imprimatur of the President-elect to maximize their chances
for victory. (Comment: In Nigeria, once people know who the
President will be, they flock to his party and its candidates
at all levels in hopes that their support for the winning
team will translate into lucrative favors from government.
End comment.)



8. (C) Despite his manipulations, Obasanjo's chances to
reclaim the presidency were fading; in fact, Abubakar thought
that Obasanjo has suffered a major loss of political
goodwill. Three years ago, he was a unifying force, someone
in whom all major political constituencies reposed a degree
of confidence. Then, he was perceived as de-tribalized, and
his lack of support in the Southwest actually strengthened
his hand on the national stage. Unfortunately, Obasanjo's
personality could not tolerate losing his home region to
those he saw as his inferiors. Consequently, he has focused
too much attention on garnering support in his ethnic
backyard.



9. (C) Any incremental support gained in the Southwest came
at the expense of alienating key segments of the North and
Southeast. Obasanjo had paid scant attention to the North,
and any meaningful policy initiative or infrastructure
project in that region was the work of state governors not
the federal government. Moreover, Obasanjo was dismissive of
Northern opinion leaders; he failed to meet and when he met,
he failed to listen, Abubakar quipped. Abubakar noted that
the Constitution provided for the President to confer with
former Heads of State, but only two such meetings had
occurred. Both times, Obasanjo treated his predecessors to
long monologues that precluded any exchange of views. All of
the other former Heads of State were Northerners, except for
the deferential Earnest Shonekan, Abubakar, wryly remarked.


10 (C) Abubakar contended that Obasanjo grievously erred if
he thought keeping Atiku Abubakar as his running mate would
ensure significant Northern support. Atiku's name does not
resonate beyond his native state, Adamawa. To Abubakar, the
trappings of office appeared to have rendered both Obasanjo
and Atiku so heady that they forgot the electoral formula
(and its chemists, primarily Northern power brokers) that
ensured their victory. Additionally, Abubakar surmised, there
might be growing tension between Obasanjo and Atiku. In
private talks, the Vice President acted as if he would be
running for the top office next year but Obasanjo's actions
suggest that he is not heading for the sidelines.



11. (C) Compounding his electoral challenge, Obasanjo's
disapproval rating in the Southeast now ran high. Obasanjo
had hurt himself by engaging in a running public feud with
charismatic Abia state governor Orji Kalu. Each skirmish
with Kalu rubbed too many Igbos the wrong way. Although not
every Igbo supported the flamboyant governor, many saw him as
a spokesperson for Igbo political aspirations. The more
Obasanjo upbraided Kalu, the more the President was seen as
being against an independent Igbo politician rising to
national prominence, reinforcing the sentiment that Igbos
remain marginalized as a result of the civil war thirty years
ago.



12. (C) Unwittingly, postulated Abubakar, Obasanjo was
constructing a scenario familiar to Nigerian politics but one
that would leave him the odd man out. Spurned by a sense of
estrangement from the Presidential Villa, more Northern and
Southeastern politicians were talking to each other.
Abubakar foresaw a possible North-Southeast alignment against
Obasanjo, the Southwesterner. (Comment: If the North and
Southeast ally against him, Obasanjo would be in the same
corner that kept Awolowo from finding the Presidential grail.
Moreover, Obasanjo would not be able to count on the keep,
abiding support of his fellow Yoruba that Awolowo had. End
Comment.)

13. (C) As evidence of the North-Southeast axis, Abubakar
said the yet-to-be registered party, UNDP, was born in the
North but was gaining support in the Southeast. When
Ambassador Jeter mentioned the rumor that the UNDP was
brainchild of former Head of State Babangida, Abubakar did
not deny that his close friend was the money behind the UNDP.
He did state, however, his uncertainty about Babangida's
electoral plans; Abubakar himself was trying to figure out if
Minna's more famous favorite son would dive into the
electoral fray.



14. (C) Because Obasanjo's candidacy now would be ethnically
and regionally divisive, Abubakar thought Obasanjo should
stand down and not run again. As has been raised in the
print media recently, Abubakar hoped Obasanjo would take the
"Mandela option." The problem was that Obasanjo was so
obdurate that he would not even listen to Mandela, much less
follow him.



15. (C) Abubakar did not have many salutary things to say
about the three registered parties. Obasanjo's desire to
have a chokehold on party operations had demoralized and
divided the ruling PDP. Some party members were talking
about the need to jettison Obasanjo or find breathing space
for themselves in another party. The AD was too subservient
to Yoruba socio-cultural interests such as Afenifere, and
therefore, could not make headway outside the Southwest. The
APP was wracked by internal dissent, some engineered by
Obasanjo, the rest self-inflicted. In short, the political
landscape had deep pocks that needed to be filled or the
upcoming electoral campaign would be an unsteady, tumultuous
ride for the entire nation, Abubakar felt.


--------------
On A More Personal Note
--------------



16. (C) Abubakar stated that unexpectedly he had been handed
a court summons during a recent visit to Chicago. The suit
was brought in the US District Court of the Eastern District
of Michigan. Plaintiffs included NADECO stalwarts Gani
Fawahinmi and Anthony Enahoro. The gravamen of the complaint
was the detention of these plaintiffs and the death of
Moshood Abiola, were both human rights abuses punishable
under federal law. Former Heads of State Buhari, Babangida
and Shonekan also were named codefendants. Visibly annoyed,
Abubakar contended he was the "last Head of State that should
be accused of human rights abuses" since he released dozens
of political prisoners from detention, including some of the
plaintiffs, and was preparing for Abiola's release when the
latter died. Abubakar contended that the suit was not a
fitting reward for having been the general who voluntarily
returned the reins of government to civilian hands. Now the
Yoruba-dominated NADECO group, still seething that Abiola was
not allowed the Presidency, wanted to embarrass Abubakar, the
other former Heads of State, and Nigeria. He claimed the
plaintiffs seek to convict the entire history of military
rule and have raised issues dating back to the 1966 coup. He
said that he would enlist the Ministry of Justice to help
defend the case since it was Nigeria more so than he that
would be on trial in this "political case."


--------------
COMMENT
--------------



17. (C) Abubakar may have one or two personal bones to pick
with Obasanjo. For instance, Abubakar believes that Obasanjo
wanted him, Babangida and Buhari to testify before the Human
Rights "Oputa" Panel so that they would receive public blows
to their prestige through questioning by hostile lawyers
about Abiola's death, corruption and human rights abuses
during the years of military rule. (Abubakar and the other
Northern Heads of State refused to appear at the Oputa
hearings.) Despite this perception, Abubakar's indictment of
Obasanjo did not seem to be fueled by personal rancor.
Instead, it probably reflects the views of many in the
Northern elite. Perhaps more importantly, what Abubakar said
probably reflects the mindset of Ibrahim Babangida, a much
more powerful and unforgiving personality who may emerge as
Obasanjo's real political nemesis in the months leading up to
the Presidential elections.
Jeter