By IPS Correspondents
LAGOS, Sep 25 1996 (IPS)

Whether Nigeria’s Sani Abacha will don civilian gear and seek election as other West African strongmen have done has become a burning issue in this nation that has had more military rulers than any other in Africa.

The question had been asked before but the polemic began in earnest after an interview with former Chief Justice Mohammed Bello, published on Sep. 4 in ‘The Punch’, a private daily here.

“I don’t think he will contest, but if he likes, he can contest. There is nothing wrong,” said Bello, who was chief justice until last year. “He is a Nigerian and it will not be new, especially in Africa because there are examples.”

West African military leaders who later became elected presidents include Ghana’s Jerry Rawlings and Niger’s Ibrahima Barre Mainassara, while Gambia’s Yayha Jammeh recently retired from the army to contest the Sep. 26 election in his country.

According to Bello, nothing in Nigeria’s constitution prevents Abacha — who has set Oct. 1, 1998 as the date for Nigeria’s return to civilian rule — from running for president.

The possibility that Abacha will follow his West African colleagues’ lead cannot be ruled out, says political scientist Hakeem Osibona.

“Nothing is impossible on this continent where rulers have transformed themselves into presidents-for-life and emperors,” Osibona told IPS. “I will not be surprised if he does so all in the name of evolving a home-grown democracy.”

Another political scientist, Abubakar Mohammed, also felt that the possibility should be taken seriously. “I was excited by Justice Bello’s story,” he told IPS. “It falls within my general view and expectation. All facts on the ground point to that.”

While the government, the seventh military regime to rule Nigeria since independence in 1960, has repeatedly given the assurance that the transition to democracy is on track, Mohammed said “the current transition programme has been designed in such a way that it will lead to nowhere and the general will, in the ensuing confusion, present himself to the nation.

“If you go through the current transition programme you will realise that it is a programme of “ifs” — if this happens, that can then happen. Moving to a phase is dependent on satisfying a current phase. Once one is scuttled, you can’t move ahead.”

He does not believe that there would be any strong opposition if 53-year-old Abacha decides to run for election. “Nigerian politicians are spineless, directionless and opportunistic,” he charged. “They can’t constitute themselves into any meaningful or formidable group.”

The politicians themselves do not welcome the prospect of Abacha running for office.

“Some of us will find it difficult to comment appropriately until the head of state says it himself,” argued Kenny Martins, national secretary of the National Centre Party of Nigeria, one of the groups seeking official registration as a political party.

“If (Abacha) wants to contest, nobody can stop him,” Martins said. “The former chief justice was right that, technically, the head of state can contest … but the big question is the morality of that decision because he gave us the transition programme.”

Pointing out that, by 1998, Gen. Abacha would have been in office for five years, Chidi Nwike, a former elected deputy governor of the eastern State of Anambra, argued that “anybody who could not achieve whatever he wants within a five-year term cannot achieve it thereafter.”

“Any sensible person runs the risk of spoiling whatever he has achieved if he dares ask for more time,” he said. “Any sensible person should leave the stage when the ovation is loudest.”

Abosede Ajibabi, a beautician, hopes that Abacha will hand over to a civilian. Gen. Abacha “is a very wise man,” she told IPS. “He will not try it because no one before him has tried that gimmick and succeeded. He should not allow hangers-on to lead him astray.”

However, Ajibabi also believes that “the members of the public are too concerned with evolving survival strategies than to be concerned about who governs.”

“People these days concern themselves with how to meet their daily needs,” she argues. “What does it matter to the man in the street if Abacha switches his uniform for flowing ‘agbada’ (the three-piece national dress for men)?”

It matters to some opinion makers.

In a recent editorial, the privately owned ‘Guardian’ newspaper noted that the current political environment “provides elements of future tension which flatterers will find as ready materials to dissuade General Abacha from leaving as scheduled.”

While admitting that there has been a trend for West African military leaders to “succeed themselves as civilian presidents in suspect elections”, it argued that “Nigeria is part of the global village and its democratization process should be open to and influenced by positive and progressive impulses around the world.”

Abacha, it said, “now has the golden chance to prove he can lead his officers and men back to the barracks for good.”

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