The ‘masters’ at work?

the Herald 06/01/2010

Dele Ogun was born in Nigeria on 9 February 1962 as Akindele Ogunetimoju. In the course of the challenge of finding employment within the British legal system, he came to adopt a shortened version of his name, Dele Ogun.

He arrived in Britain at the age of seven to begin a tortuous journey through the British school system that finally saw him being called to the English Bar in 1985. It took him another six agonising years to find employment as a "corporate tax lawyer" with the London based law firm, Lovell White Durrant (now Lovells).

In his fascinating new autobiography aptly titled The Law, The Lawyers, and The Lawless, published by New European Publications Limited, Dele tells of "a chance encounter on the London Underground" in early 1995 that gave him "a peep behind the curtains on the workings of democracy in Nigeria," and especially on the Abiola-Abacha affair.

He writes: "The Northern Line was, once again, living up to its reputation as the Misery Line on my way to work that morning. I had already boarded the train at Finchley Central when the suspension of the service was suddenly announced and we were directed off the line onto the bus service. It is on these occasions when they have a shared grudge against the public transport service that London commuters break their habit of not talking to each other.

"I got talking to a slightly lanky fellow with an Irish accent who had been sitting next to me on the train. I was pleased to learn that he worked in the commercial department of the US embassy (in London) and he was pleased to hear that I was a lawyer at Lovells. We exchanged details and agreed to arrange a luncheon with our principals.

"The venue was the partner’s dining room at Lovells. He had invited his boss, the commercial attaché at the embassy, and I had invited the partner who I considered to have the best interpersonal skills amongst the partners in (Lovells) tax department. The high quality of the food matched the quality of the discussion.

"When the discussions touched on the current political developments in Nigeria, I must have said something that caught the commercial attaché’s attention, because not long afterwards he was putting me forward for his government’s International Visitor Programme.

The programme, he explained, was for those whom they considered were likely to have some kind of role in the countries in which his government had an interest. The programme, which was funded by USIA, involved an all expenses paid trip to the USA for up to four weeks.

"The deal was simple enough. The US government would fly me to up to six states, New York and Washington being mandatory as the power base of the government, with the rest being of my choosing. At each location, they would arrange meetings with anyone I wished to meet.

The quid pro quo was that I would make myself available for anyone they wanted me to meet. It sounded a fair enough deal to me and so off I went, in the autumn of 1995, to New York, Washington, and to Seattle, Boston, Tulsa in Oklahoma and Charlotte in North Caroline."

In New York, Dele met the US counterparts of the British Law Society and the Bar Council where they discussed legal education.

He was then taken to UN headquarters, and thence to Washington where he was taken to the US Supreme Court. He chose to sit in the chair of the first and only black Supreme Court judge in the country’s history, Justice Clarence Thomas.

Dele says: "I was glad that it was only his chair that I met and not him because I was later to learn that our political philosophy could not have been more different. Even so, that a full black (man) like me had a seat in the highest court in America did reinforce my view that it was the traditions of England, and not the ability of the black lawyers in England, that accounted for the absence of a pure black person even at the level of a High Court judge in England."

But it was in Washington DC that Dele says he came face to face with the "Masters of the Universe". It started with a former US ambassador to Nigeria requesting to meet him.

The Ambassador had served in Nigeria in the mid-1970s when General Olusegun Obasanjo first came to power on the back of the assassination of General Murtala Muhammed.

The Ambassador (name withheld by New African) had retired to devote his spare time to charitable work in West Africa in the area of river blindness, while Obasanjo had retired to his farm as a chicken farmer at Ota in Ogun State, Nigeria. But both men had remained in contact through the Ford Foundation.

At the appointed time, the Ambassador turned up at Dele’s hotel to pick him up and conduct him on a tour of the stately home of America’s founding president, George Washington.

Dele takes up the story: "As the two of us strolled in the grounds of the former home of this great US president on this sunny autumn day, the Ambassador pointed out, as if by way of confession, that George Washington had owned slaves and it was believed that he had fathered a child with one of his domestic slaves.

"Quite how the conversation moved across to Nigeria, I can not recall; but when it got there I remember him asking: "What do you think of Abacha’s self-succession plans? Do you think he will get away with it?"

"The new vogue from the Masters of the Universe was that military dictators ‘were out’ but military dictators who were ready to leave their uniforms at home were in. The formula had been successfully tested in Ghana with Flt-Lt Jerry Rawlings and would be used later in Uganda with General Museveni and in Pakistan with General Musharraf.

"In preparation for his metamorphosis, Sani Abacha had, by military decree, promulgated a new constitution that permitted five political parties to contest the presidential elections and had got all five parties to adopt him as their sole candidate for the presidency. ‘I can’t see it working’, was my reply.

"I elaborated that as a military dictator, Abacha could very much do as he pleased, but that once he took the uniform off and held himself out as a civilian democratic ruler, he would be hounded by the world media over the continued detention of Chief Abiola….I added that I could not see (Abacha) releasing Abiola to avoid this problem, because Abiola would insist on his mandate and at the same time

I could not see Abiola accepting to leave his dungeon without his mandate. A hard divide had formed with Abacha being seen as the flag bearer of the North and Abiola being seen as the champion of the South. "In these circumstances, I said, I cannot see a soft landing."

Then the Ambassador asked tersely: "Supposing the two of them weren’t there, who would you see as a possible successor?"

Dele says the import of the ambassador’s casual hypothesis was lost on him at the time. He, however, explained to the Ambassador that given the seriousness of the north-south standoff in Nigeria, he could not see a direct return to one-man one vote democracy in the country. As he saw it, there would have to be some form of transitional government, possibly a government of national unity, to take the country forward.

"I proceeded to throw up some names from the different competing power sectors in Nigeria that could be pulled together to form such a government," Dele recalls.

"The one name that I did not mention was the one that the Masters of the Universe had in mind: General Olusegun Obasanjo, the former military ruler turned chicken farmer. ‘What of Obasanjo, (the ambassador) asked, ‘what do you think of him?’

"I began by offering my apologies for the fact that I didn’t have much knowledge of the man. He had been a military ruler from 1976 to 1979 following the assassination of his boss General Murtala Muhammed at a time when I was a political ignoramus.

I explained that from what I had heard, he had run a relatively clean administration and, by nationalising British Petroleum in the face of protests from the British government, he had shown he wasn’t afraid of taking on the West.

"I added that with him being a former military ruler, he would be able to control the army so as to contain the risk of military coups and being, at the same time, a Southerner and a Yoruba man, like Abiola, his presidency would probably serve to appease the bitter sense of injury amongst Southerners.

I speculated that with the North having accepted him as supreme military ruler before, they may not be averse to him as a compromise candidate. ‘Yes, now you mention it, I can see him being able to hold the fort,’ I concluded."

Dele says the conversation then veered away from Nigeria. And that was it.

But now, writing his book 14 years after meeting the Ambassador, and looking at what had actually happened in Nigeria in between those years, Dele says the trip to America was an important contribution to his realisation that he had some role to play, however marginal, in the political affairs of Nigeria.

"I never saw the ambassador or the commercial attache again, but what I did see was that about three years after the discussion with the ambassador, on 7 June 1998 to be exact, Sani Abacha died suddenly. It was said that he died of a heart attack," Dele writes.

"Then, just as everybody in Nigeria, at least everybody in the South and many in the North, were jubilantly expecting Chief Abiola to be pardoned, released and installed as the duly elected president of Nigeria, on 7 July 1998, exactly a month to the day of Abacha’s death, the news came that Abiola had also died of a heart attack. The news was broken by a former US ambassador to Nigeria who was leading an American delegation to see Abiola, and it was explained that Abiola suffered a seizure while he was having tea with the ambassador."

Dele continues: "Even as Bill Clinton, the then ‘honorary black president’ of the USA took to the airwaves to reassure Nigerian that there had been no foul play, my mind went back to the question that had been posed on that sunny autumn day in 1995 at the stately home of George Washington: "Supposing the two of them were not there, who would you see as a successor?"

The picture that was emerging in my mind became fully formed when General Olusegun Obasanjo, the man that I had not initially given a thought to until the ambassador mentioned his name, was sworn in as president of Nigeria a year later, in May 1999."

The inference

"Supposing the two of them weren’t there, who would you see as a possible successor?" the former American ambassador had asked.

But what did he really mean by supposing the two of them weren’t there?" Weren’t there where? In Nigeria? In the world? And how were they not going to be there? Expelled from Nigeria? Made to forgo their political ambitions (or in Abiola’s case, his already won mandate)? Or deliberately eliminated?

In his book, Dele allows the story to hang at this important juncture, leaving readers to use their fertile imaginations. But the point had been beautifully made: Nigerians elected Obasanjo all right, but they were not the ones who chose him?

The same can be extrapolated for much of Africa. We may physically elect our leaders but do we really choose them? Isn’t "the choosing" done surreptitiously by outsiders through the funds they pour into our political parties and individual campaigns? Thus pushing these individuals forward to be elected by the people?

And how does that help democracy on the continent and the running for our countries? From what is on the ground, from Africa’s current condition, it appears the masters choices have not been the right ones for the continent! Which throws up the very important question: why can’t we be left alone to do the choosing ourselves and elect whoever we want?

l Article published courtesy of New African