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United By
Politics, Divided By Ambition
By
Levi
Obijiofor
culled from GUARDIAN, April 14,
2006
All through human history,
ambition has defined the rise and the fall of men and women of substance.
Like a horse, some politicians have ridden ambition to their demise while
others have seen ambition take them to the height of glory. Some people have
the capacity to check their ambition so that it does not constitute a menace
to others but some other people perceive ambition as a piece of chocolate
cake - hard to resist. To many politicians, ambition is like a dream. Above
all, it is free. It is not a criminal offence to possess ambition but many
politicians hardly admit to possessing ambition. Once, when the late
political sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, was asked in the late 1970s during an
election campaign whether he possessed political ambition, he replied that
he had no political ambition but that he had political aspirations.
In human society, there is a
general perception that there is a limit to ambition. Ambition that does
not recognise the laws of social behaviour in any society must be
defined as vile ambition. That is what is driving the current frosty
relationship between President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice President
Atiku Abubakar. Right from the time Obasanjo and Abubakar started their
odd marriage of convenience (some people prefer to call it "marriage of
inconvenience"), both men knew they possessed ambition but they also
believed that wise counsel would prevail and that maturity - the
hallmark of adulthood -- would see them through tempting times.
Abubakar must now admit
to being politically naive right from the beginning. He trusted the
words of his fellow politicians, including his boss. That's where
Obasanjo, the wily retired army general, beat him in the exercise of
common sense. In politics, you must never trust anyone. In the good
old days, when both men shared jokes and slapped each other on their
shoulder blades in a friendly manner, Abubakar believed that he
could check his personal ambition and wait for eight years. He had
calculated (wrongly, it would appear) that, as a former military
head of state, Obasanjo would be bored of life in Aso Rock after
eight years in office as an elected president. But things never go
according to human plans. Abubakar forgot to acknowledge that
Obasanjo had ambition.
Abubakar was wrong in
his calculations and dead inaccurate in his projections of how
politicians would behave in office. His fundamental error of
judgment was his inability to read or predict human behaviour,
in particular his boss's behaviour in politics. You see, ever
since Obasanjo cast aside his military uniform and transformed
himself into an authoritarian democrat, he had taken on all the
attributes of a fox - always slippery, always difficult to
understand, always inconsistent in his public statements.
Against this background, it must be mystifying that despite the
proximity between Abubakar's office and Obasanjo's office, as
well as the regular meetings and interactions between the two
men, Abubakar still couldn't predict his boss seven years into
an eight-year tenure. Abubakar tended to perceive Obasanjo
through the innocent but cracked and coloured spectacle of a
rookie politician. In Abubakar's blank state of mind, eight
years of "loyal" service to Obasanjo should naturally be
rewarded with automatic anointment to the presidential throne.
That naive view of life in politics has turned out to be
Abubakar's undoing.
A vice president
who can't understand or read his president for nearly eight
years has no business aspiring to succeed his boss. The
tragedy in the weird relationship between Obasanjo and
Abubakar is that, while Abubakar presented himself as a
saint to the president, the president chose to perceive
Abubakar as a rapacious politician who should be watched
carefully. While Abubakar went about singing personal
choruses in public about how deeply loyal he had been to
Obasanjo, the boss who benefited from that loyalty did not
recognize the servant. It is a relationship in which both
men plotted the downfall of each other in their private
moments. None wished the other goodwill. For a very long
time, Obasanjo had held deep suspicions about Abubakar and
his political motives.
On many
occasions, Obasanjo openly or surreptitiously tested
Abubakar's elasticity of patience and loyalty by
deliberately approving actions that were designed to
hurt the integrity and authority of Abubakar.
Occasionally too, Abubakar had taken the bait and used
public speeches to snap and snarl at his boss.
Abubakar's major mistake was his inability to see a trap
and avoid it. His enemies say he was too arrogant that
he failed to recognise his personal weaknesses. For that
reason, Obasanjo's aides had questioned the sharpness of
mind of a man who would not identify an easy trap on his
route. Abubakar was such a guy who did not bother about
political traps and other kindergarten tricks often
adopted by people in high political positions to damage
the image of their colleagues. With Abubakar, if a trap
was set on his path, he often shut his eyes to it or he
pretended the trap wasn't meant for him. He walked
straight into the trap and was caught and bruised. In
politics, that's not a good strategy for survival.
Another
of Abubakar's weaknesses was his inability to
maintain silence over certain national issues. He
likes to talk and talk and talk. In this context, he
failed to borrow a page from Obasanjo's most recent
fictional book entitled How to manoeuvre your
friends and enemies in politics. Whatever anyone
might say, Obasanjo must be given credit for making
it difficult for his enemies and friends to read his
mind on the question of his third term ambition. His
consistent reference to waiting for directions from
angels and God is evidence of his determination to
keep everyone - hecklers and cheerleaders --
guessing about his next political move. Even when
Obasanjo was cornered in a Cable News Network (CNN)
interview on the subject of third term during a
recent trip to the United States, Obasanjo
confounded his interviewers and journalists by
invoking the name of God for the umpteenth time. It
was a card Obasanjo played so well at the end of his
first term in office and it worked for him.
Now,
as questions begin to pile over Obasanjo's
ambition to amend the constitution that would
allow him to run for a third term, Obasanjo has
refused to say which direction the angels would
push him. Assisted by an increasingly abusive
team of aides, the key message from the
Presidency is that Obasanjo must not be rushed
into making a judgment. The president has a job
to do, we have been told, and nothing would
distract him from doing that job. The future of
Nigeria can wait while Obasanjo confers with the
angels that serve as his unofficial advisers.
That is the way we like to play politics in
Nigeria. When things get tough, you must appeal
to supernatural powers to provide you with the
superior insight. Until that guidance is
received, life must grind to a halt in Nigeria.
For Abubakar, the man with ambition, such
political drivel would not do. He has heard
such poppycock stories for the past seven
years and has had to block his eardrums with
home-made ear plugs. He wasn't going to
tolerate it any more. He had waited for
Obasanjo to play the gentleman's game of
politics but Obasanjo seems to be defying
every counsel to drop the ambition to run
for a third term. The dilemma for the
country really is: how do you convince
Obasanjo (with his elephant ego and vaulting
ambition) to respect the constitution, quit
Aso Rock in 2007 and give way to Abubakar
who has served or undermined him for nearly
eight years? How we untangle that dilemma
would depend on which side of the two
implacable enemies we line up.
Abubakar is a man in a hurry. A delay in
politics can be a delay in a lifetime.
Until their relationship soured to a
point where it could no longer be
retrieved and knocked back again,
Abubakar believed Obasanjo was a "Baba"
(elder) whose words must be trusted. In
our society, elders are respected and
are regarded as repositories of
knowledge and emblems of forthrightness.
In hindsight, Abubakar must be wishing
he never trusted Obasanjo or worked with
him.
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