Obasanjo hints that he would like a third term as president

[Richard Akindele]

Lagos: Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo dropped his clearest hint yet in an interview that he hopes to stay on if parliament approves a contested proposition to change term limits.

"The reforms that we are putting in place have to be anchored, anchored in legislation, anchored in institutions," Obasanjo told the Washington Post, signalling that he believes his work is not yet complete.

Obasanjo's supporters are currently attempting to push a constitutional reform package through parliament, which would strengthen the president's powers and allow him to stand for a third term in April 2007.

But many here, both opposition activists and disgruntled former regime loyalists, argue such a move would jeopardise democracy and stir up more of the violence that has killed 20 000 Nigerians since Obasanjo's election in 1999.

In this latest interview, as in previous statements, the born-again Christian and former military ruler did not explicitly endorse the proposed constitutional reforms.


Instead, he said that only God could predict what would happen next.

Obasanjo was elected in 1999 at the end of Nigeria's latest bout of kleptocratic military rule and again in 2003. Both polls were marred by widespread ballot-rigging and political violence.

Since winning re-election, however, Nigeria has won international respect for an ambitious programme of economic reform and a renewed anti-corruption drive. Foreign creditors have rewarded Obasanjo with a major debt-relief package.

Nevertheless, there are concerns among some foreign experts that any attempt by Obasanjo to emulate other rulers around his troubled continent and change the constitution to remain in power could provoke widespread unrest.

In February, US director of National Intelligence John Negroponte warned that Nigeria's 2007 election "could lead to major disruption in a nation suffering frequent ethno-religious violence, criminal activity and rampant corruption.
http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fS ... Id=3188895

[Richard Akindele]

ABUJA, 16 May (IRIN) - Nigerian senators voted on Tuesday to throw out a bill seeking to amend the country's constitution to give President Olusegun Obasanjo the chance to run for a third successive term in office next year.

A majority of lawmakers in the upper house agreed in a voice vote to scrap the bill, which has raised tensions in Africa's most populous country plagued by ethnic and religious violence.

"By this result, the Senate has said clearly and eloquently that we should discontinue further proceedings on this amendment bill," Senate President Ken Nnamani announced to applause.

Obasanjo, who was on a visit to France as the lawmakers took the decision, has never stated he wants to run again when his second, four-year term comes to an end in 2007. But he has hinted he would like to complete economic and political reforms he has initiated.

However, many Nigerians believe he is behind a powerful campaign by his supporters to prolong his rule.

Six months must now elapse before the bill can be re-presented to the Senate, if Obsanjo's third term supporters wish to.

The campaign to extend Obasanjo's tenure split not only the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) but also the government, with Vice President Atiku Abubakar rallying opponents and publicly accusing his boss of trying to institute life presidency.

While the PDP officially supports extending Obasanjo's tenure, the party has been unable to get all party lawmakers, who command a comfortable majority, to support it with their vote.

The issue has also divided Nigeria along regional lines, with many influential politicians from the country's predominantly Muslim north teaming up with fellow Muslim Abubakar against Obasanjo, a Christian from southwest Nigeria.

Source: IRIN

[Richard Akindele]

The House of Represen-tatives yesterday buried the third term ambition of President Olusegun Oba-sanjo as it withdrew the controversial Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (Amendment) Bill, 2006, signaling the final death of the proposal to amend the Constitution by the National Assembly.

The Senate had Tuesday killed the bill that, among others, sought to amend section 137 (1) (b) of the constitution to increase the tenure of the nation's President from a maximum of two to three terms of four years each.

Yesterday's session began about 2.20pm, after anti-third term lawmakers, all dressed in white and brandishing small Nigerian flags had thronged into the chamber, celebrating the defeat of the third term agenda in the Senate.

Nearly all the members who voted for or supported the third term agenda stayed away.

Shortly after, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Aminu Bello Masari, announced to members that the House would be unable to continue with the amendment bill, which was okayed for second reading Tuesday.

The Speaker said: "As members are aware, the bill to amend the 1999 Constitution was yesterday, finally laid to rest by the Senate. Consequently, this bill is hereby withdrawn from this chamber." Masari's proclamation was greeted by a recital of the National Anthem by the anti-third term legislators who went wild with excitement.

Thereafter, the Speaker reminded the legislators that but for the division caused by the controversial bill, "this House has always been a united one."

He, however, urged the jubilant legislators to be graceful since, according to him, "there is no victor, no vanquished."

At this point, one of the key members of the anti-third term movement, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamala (Lagos, AD), raised a point of order that the motion for the withdrawal of the motion was not seconded. To this, the Speaker retorted: "You don't second something that is already dead."

Inscribed on the flags clutched by the anti-third term legislators were the words "I believe in our country, I believe in our democracy, I reject life presidency."

At the House of Representatives yesterday to observe the final moments of the constitution amendment bill were the immediate past Speaker of the House, Alhaji Umar Ghali Na'Abba, Senator Emma Anosike and another former member, Mr. Greg Egu. Na'Abba, who rose shortly after the Speaker proclaimed the bill dead, told journalists that he was impressed by the courage and patriotism of the members of the National Assembly, a position echoed by Anosike.

Meanwhile, members of the anti-third term movement were last night hosted to a party by Hon. Temi Harriman (Delta, PDP). Harriman, one of the only two members from the South South opposed to the third term agenda, was the first in the House to demand for an increase in the derivation from 18 percent to 25 percent, and to 50 percent over a period of five years.

She was also the first on the floor of the House to demand that the zone be allowed to produce the president in 2007.

The event, which took place at Albasha Restaurant, in Maitama District of Abuja, attracted several members of the anti-third term movement in the Senate and House of Representatives.

This Day.

[Richard Akindele]

"We announce with deepest relief the death of our beloved third term, after a protracted and terminal illness. We sincerely mourn with the bereaved family who fought a gallant battle and spent billions of naira to keep Chief Third Term alive. Funeral rites as announced by the immediate and extended family. Chief Mourner, Rt. Honourable Chief Doctor Engineer General Matthew Aremu Okikiola Obasanjo" - Text message.

I spent the better part of Tuesday afternoon receiving telephone calls from people from around the country. These have been congratulatory calls in the wake of the decisive defeat of the third term project by the patriots in Nigeria's Senate. It was in the same effusive mode that the text at the head of this piece was also sent by an equally elated compatriot.

The past two weeks must surely go down in Nigeria's recent history as some of its most incredible; Nigerians lived through the desperation of the Obasanjo clique to swing their way the obviously dead-on-arrival constitution manipulative process in a most indecent, grotesque, illegal and brazen manner. The media was awash with the ill-concealed and elaborate machinery of bribery by a regime that is allegedly fighting an 'anti-corruption war.'

The bribery stake was raised to N150 million per legislator when it became obvious to the discredited Obasanjo clique that they had lost to the Nigerian people, thanks to the courageous decision of Senate President Ken Nnamani and House Speaker, Aminu Bello Masari, to conduct the hearings in an open, fair and transparent manner. This was a STRATEGIC defeat for the conspiratorial agenda to manipulate, adopt secret ballots, ban the live telecast of the proceedings by the Africa Independent Television (AIT), and get the rules of parliamentary procedure changed once it became obvious that the machinery of bribery, stealth, intimidation and blackmail had been so decisively defeated in the public sphere.

The Nigerian people DECISIVELY DEFEATED the Obasanjo clique, because the coalition of the patriotic legislators, the media and the people proved far more powerful than the bullying tactics of Obasanjo; the area boy politics of the PDP leadership and all the 'Ghana Must Go' that had been primed to subvert our country just for the interest of a thoroughly incompetent president, whose isolation from reality has become almost irreversible. At the end of it all, Mister Fix-It became an irrelevant schemer, used to the dark recesses of political intrigue, but unable to stand up in the limelight of democratic debate conducted in a transparent manner with a firm and fair National Assembly leadership that took a decision to be true to their oaths of allegiance, their consciences and a patriotic resolve not to betray the longsuffering people of Nigeria.

From the beginning of 2006, I had written very consistently on this page that the National Assembly would become the arena of a life-and-death struggle between the Nigerian people on the one hand, and the Obasanjo clique on the other. It did not need a crystal ball to see that the decisive defeat that the third term agenda suffered at the National Political Reform Conference underscored how determined the Nigerian people were to ensure that they were not subverted by a President Obasanjo whose messianic delusions were also intertwined with the cold fear of a comeuppance for the crimes he has committed against the Nigerian nation and its people.

Some of our colleagues had thought that the best thing was to boycott the Reform Conference, but I had argued that we should encourage attendance in order to be able to defeat the hidden agenda that pushed the dictator to call the conference in the first place! Though handpicked, the delegates were mainly patriots who have lived through the hell that has been the Obasanjo period of the past seven to eight years; they knew that the regime is discredited, it is unpopular and for most Nigerians, the Obasanjo name has become a byword for sorrow, poverty, incompetence, loss of jobs, insecurity at home, at work, in the streets, on the highways; there was therefore no way they would become pawns in the hands of Obasanjo.

The conference helped the Nigerian people to catch a whiff of the desperation of the Obasanjo clique to subvert our country. It became a platform where Northern delegates discovered the unity to transcend the 'divide and rule' politics that Obasanjo had perfected against its people since 1999, and the consequence of the newfound unity helped to provide a solid base for the eventual construction of a nationwide political process that would be conveyed into the haloed chambers of the National Assembly. The outcome seemed almost inevitable, that Obasanjo and members of his clique would suffer a decisive defeat, as we saw this week at the Senate.

The distinguished senators spoke for Nigeria, unfettered by the threats issued from party headquarters; they did not succumb to the greed which money, a huge amount of money, can induce. In the full glare of AIT's historic live telecast, the patriotic senators chose to stand on the right side of history by refusing to re-write the constitution to suit an egoistic dictator whose main problem is the fear of life AFTER May 29, 2007. But it has become clear that Obasanjo will still get his day in the court of the Nigerian people. It is just a matter of time.

But we must temper our jubilation because the days ahead will be very difficult for the country. Now that they have suffered such a crushing defeat, you can expect the Obasanjo clique to go for vengeance in the days, weeks and months ahead. Every Nigerian knows that Obasanjo is an unforgiving and a very vindictive person. Let us therefore be very vigilant.

The regime is quite capable of mischief and I have no doubts in my mind that the press, the opposition parties, legislators who voted against the third term and the broad masses of the Nigerian people will be visited with the sour grapes of wrath by a badly bruised, isolated and desperate regime and a president whose only exit strategy was to continue in power for another twelve years.

It must truly be a very painful defeat for a man who must wake up these days with a new jet plane in tow, wondering that he has conquered Nigeria and would do with it what he liked! He bids for Commonwealth Games, imagining that he would declare it open; etc. Yet it is this absolutely incompetent regime that will tell Nigerians that we shall not get electricity until 2056!

I believe that it is important for Nigerians to cherish the victory that we won against Obasanjo's clique; it is a step forward in our effort to deepen the content of democracy. The open and transparent manner of the debate in Parliament helped to put the media at the heart of the democratic process in consonance with our obligations under the Constitution. In this context, AIT came out in flying colours, and the courage of Dr Raymond Dokpesi (whose house was burnt by agents of darkness) and his staff must be praised. In the same vein, we must ask where Tonnie Iredia kept NTA at this important historical juncture in our nation's life. It is this irresponsible use of our national public service broadcasters, the NTA and FRCN, that make it important for us to interrogate the public broadcasting space, post the Obasanjo dictatorship.

If we intend to deepen the content of our democracy beyond the opening that the anti-third term debates have shown to be possible, we must also beam our searchlights on the electoral process; we must ensure that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) become a genuinely INDEPENDENT body, not one dedicated to doing the biddings of Obasanjo and the PDP. Some of its actions have left a sour taste in the mouth, in a manner of speaking.

INEC did not come out as an independent body in respect of the recall processes in Plateau State. It was a zealous body in the effort to recall the Speaker of the Plateau State House of Assembly, but became lost in a dubious legalese when it came

Daily Trust.