POLITICS-NIGERIA: Abdusalam Abubakar Named Head of State

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Remi Oyo

Abuja, Jun 9 1998 (IPS) - Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, Major General Abdusalam Abubakar, was sworn in early Tuesday as the new Head of State following the sudden death of General Sani Abacha.

Abubakar becomes Nigeria’s eighth military ruler and the first Chief of Defence Staff to assume the presidency.

Fifty-five-old Abubakar, who has made a career of the Nigerian military, was named the West African nation’s new leader by the Provisional Ruling Council, Nigeria’s highest governing body, which met into the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The Council, which had gone into an emergency session after Abacha’s death from cardiac arrest early Monday, resumed its meeting at Aso Rock, the seat of government in Abuja, soon after Abacha was buried in accordance with Islamic tradition (before sunset) in Kano, his home in northern Nigeria.

In a brief statement during the swearing-in ceremony, Abubakar said he considered his appointment a “personal challenge”, and he called for “all hands on deck to move the country forward”.

Nigerians were reported to be “celebrating or indifferent” to the news of Abacha’s death.

Abubakar was scheduled to address the nation Tuesday although, according to a source close to the presidential villa in Abuja, there was “no scheduled time for the broadcast”.

The new leader, a close friend of former Nigerian head Ibrahim Babangida (1985-1993, rose through the ranks and is regarded as an infantry man. Abubakar, who is married to a Nigerian High Court judge, was an intelligence officer during Babangida’s tenure. The two men also come from the same hometown of Minna in the north of the country.

Abubakar has held several military positions, including General Officer Commanding A Division and Commandant of the National War College in Abuja, a post he took over from Oladipo Diya, the number two man in the late Abacha’s government who has been sentenced to death for treason.

Diya and 11 others were arrested in December for plotting to overthrow the government.

Although the new Nigerian leader had stayed in the background and shunned politics, he was the first to officially inform the nation Tuesday of Abacha’s death. He had also been the first to announce the alleged coup plot that led to Diya’s arrest.

“He is a hardline soldier and a very well respected military officer who has the capacity to bring together the perceived factions in the army,” a northern political analyst said Tuesday. “His broadcast will be a pointer to the way he wants to move the nation forward,” added the analyst, who declined to be named.

Abubakar’s ascension to Nigeria’s top political post also is seen as a step to bring stability to a fluid political situation in Africa’s most populous nation.

Speculation was rife in this West African nation — where some have seen Abacha’s death as “God’s answer to the prayers of Nigerians” — that pro-democracy activists would take advantage of the fluid situation, or, that junior military officers might seize power.

Nigeria’s universities nationwide have been ordered to close and students Tuesday were preparing to leave campus ahead of the fifth anniversary Friday of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections, whose results had been annulled by Babangida.

The polls were widely believed to have been won by Moshood Abiola, who was jailed after proclaiming himself president on the first anniversary of the election, and later charged with treason. At the time of Abacha’s death, the ailing Abiola was still in prison.

Abubakar has several options before him if he wants to restore order in the country, said the northern political analyst interviewed by IPS in Abuja. “He first needs to rein in factions in the army, then dissolve the political parties and call for an engagement with Nigeria’s political class.

“Nothing stops the government from reaching out and engaging the political class in dialogue. Engagement is the key to defuse tension among us,” he added. “Nigeria is not in short supply of men and women of conscience,” he said, calling on the new military leader to get the transition to civilian rule back on track.

That transition process was to have culminated in the swearing in in October of an elected civilian president. However, earlier this year, all five of Nigeria’s registered political parties endorsed Abacha, making him the sole candidate for the presidency in the transition process even though his rule was marked by a series of human rights and political abuses that gained the West African nation international notoriety.

During Abacha’s reign, any attempts to press for a return to democracy were dealt with severely and scores of unionists, human rights and political activists and journalists are in jail.

A university professor interviewed Tuesday told IPS that it was “too premature to make any comments” on Abubakar’s appointment. “Anything can happen,” he said.

Another Nigerian interviewed in Abuja Tuesday noted that although Abubakar is a “respected military officer who is not tainted by a political past, if he surrounds himself with powerful people from Abacha’s government”, then this would send a signal that he plans to continue in Abacha’s footsteps.

The Chief Security Officer under Abacha, Major El-Mustapha, believed to have wielded enormous power, and Foreign Minister Tom Ikimi, for example, are seen as obstacles to any political change in Nigeria.

But it is not certain whether Abubakar is strong enough to shake off many of the members of the old cabinet, although rumours were rife within the country before Abacha’s death that he had planned to sack many of his ministers.