US embassy cable - 02ABUJA1184

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ABUJA 001184 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
LONDON FOR GURNEY; RIYADH FOR HANKS 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/09/2012 
TAGS: PGOV, PINS, PINR, KDEM, NI 
SUBJECT: NIGERIA 2003: OO BOOSTERS TRY TO PRE-EMPT 
COMPETITION 
 
 
REF: A. ABUJA 1068 
     B. ABUJA 829 
     C. ABUJA 1091 
     D. ABUJA 1159 
 
 
Classified by CDA Andrews.  Reason:  1.5(b). 
 
 
1.  (C) Summary: From the perspective of recent history, the 
processions of sycophantic visitors and Obasanjo's own words 
strongly suggest Nigeria's President will seek a second term. 
 At a minimum, Obasanjo boosters seek to pre-empt anyone else 
contemplating a run -- the better to assure continued access 
to the public trough where they greedily feed.  The political 
show of force intends to impress upon potential opponents and 
their possible allies the costs of confronting the incumbent. 
 But despite an increasing tendency toward isolating himself, 
Obasanjo knows his Administration has not delivered much to 
the average Nigerian and that sycophancy does not demonstrate 
popularity.  There is still a small chance he'll say, "No." 
End Summary. 
 
 
------------------------------ 
WHATEVER SUITS YOUR SYCOPHANCY 
------------------------------ 
 
 
2.  (SBU) The orchestrated visit to President Obasanjo's Ota 
Farm the Tuesday after Easter (ref A) by 20 governors and a 
score or so of other political figures continues to generate 
controversy.  Political cartoons show the same archetypal 
political elites who pleaded with Abacha to run in 1998 now 
imploring Obasanjo to seek a second term.  "ThisDay" ginned 
up a merged photo (half Abacha/half Obasanjo) to accompany a 
column on the similarities between Abacha's self-succession 
plans and the growing Obasanjo-is-indispensable movement. 
 
 
3.  (U) While those angered by the event have dubbed it an 
"unholy pilgrimage by sycophants" who were acting out a "Sani 
Abacha script," Obasanjo's supporters are asking questions, a 
notable one being: if the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF) is 
free to campaign openly against Obasanjo running for a second 
term, why should his supporters not step out to openly and 
resolutely prevail on him to run? 
 
 
4.  (C) What apparently galls many Nigerians is that both 
Obasanjo and his supporters are trying to show the world that 
it is not he that wants to continue as the President, rather 
that Nigerians who have anointed him as a political Messiah. 
The 14-day fast (Ref A) that ends today and OO's frequent 
references to a need for divine guidance inject a spiritual 
element intended to resonate with Nigeria's deeply religious 
masses but which deepens the cynicism of commentators, who 
note that Abacha did much the same thing in 1998.  Obasanjo's 
boosters are not talking about his achievements as a basis 
for seeking reelection.  They are, in effect, saying that 
there is no alternative to Obasanjo -- a sycophantic, 
unimaginative card that makes the Presidency look rather 
cheap.  Perennial Information Minister Jerry Gana 
disingenuously claimed that the April 2 event did not amount 
to clearing the way for Obasanjo to emerge as the sole 
candidate and that the presidential race was still open, even 
in the President's party, the People's Democratic Party (PDP). 
 
 
5.  (C) However, sources tell us, Works and Housing Minister 
Tony Anenih made it clear that governors who declined to join 
the parade at Ota should expect the Obasanjo Administration 
to deploy its powers against them.  For Abubakar Audu of 
Kogi, facing scrutiny over residential real estate purchases 
in London and Potomac, being from the opposition All Peoples 
Party was not enough to keep him away from Ota.  Writing in 
"ThisDay", Olusegun Adeniyi commented, "What...bothers me is 
the total lack of creativity that Obasanjo's undertakers have 
shown in recent weeks.  Must they do it the Abacha way?  This 
lack of creativity may also tellingly reveal to us why these 
public office holders have not been able to achieve anything 
tangible in three years.  They have no fresh ideas, even for 
manipulating people and elections."  Separately, an Obasanjo 
confidant told us that someone might be paid to run against 
the President in order to preserve the appearance of an open 
race.  If attempted, it would not be a new concept; Ibrahim 
Babangida reportedly provided money to both Moshood Abiola 
and Bashir Tofa to finance their 1993 presidential campaigns. 
 
 
--------------------------AN HISTORICAL COUNTERPOINT 
-------------------------- 
 
 
6.  (U) In 1956, Western Region premier Chief Obafemi Awolowo 
faced some of the re-election challenges that confront Chief 
Olusegun Obasanjo today.  According to Akpo Esajere of the 
"Guardian", Awo did not tell people to go and pray or that he 
was seeking divine guidance to know if he should re-contest. 
Instead, the sage quietly mobilized his lieutenants.  When he 
stepped into the open, he enumerated what he had achieved and 
what more he would do.  The campaign not only highlighted his 
achievements, it sought to knock the bottom out of the case 
of his opponents, in that it carefully detailed how he would 
move the region forward from the point to which he had taken 
it.  It was a confident campaign whose persuasive edges would 
seem more useful to Obasanjo than allowing professional 
politicians to come and beg him to run for another term. 
 
 
-------------- 
TRIED AND TRUE 
-------------- 
 
 
7.  (U) The events of April 2 serve to remind observers not 
only of parallels with Abacha in 1998, but also of OO's 
actions prior to deciding to run in 1999.  In 1998 after his 
release from prison, Obasanjo claimed to have no desire to 
run for President, and it was rumored that this refusal to 
contest was part of the bargain that granted his release. 
But within weeks, he had received several leading Southwest 
politicians, including the current Internal Affairs Minister, 
Chief Sunday Afolabi, who begged him to seek the Presidency. 
Obasanjo was reported as having said that if Nigerians wanted 
him to become President, he was left with no choice but to 
seek divine direction. 
 
 
8.  (C) The President is now using pretty much the same 
tactic, except that perhaps that "begging" him to come and 
run is this time being done on a large scale, the idea being 
that the "Messiah" air should be brought home as forcefully 
as his campaign machinery can make possible, in hopes, 
perhaps, of intimidating all possible opposition with this 
manifestation of the power of incumbency.  Visits to Aso 
Villa or Ota to "persuade" Obasanjo are part of a larger 
strategy.  Different "independent" campaign groups have been 
created, notably Coalition 2003, Obasanjo Solidarity Forum, 
Vote Obasanjo/Atiku (VOA), Leadership Front, Alliance for 
Obasanjo and Atiku and others.  The PDP women's forum, led by 
Josephine Anenih, wife of Tony Anenih went to Aso Rock to 
plead with the President.  Earlier, the women's arm of the 
Obasanjo Solidarity Forum was also admitted into the Villa to 
plead. 
 
 
9.  (C) Aside from the Ota event, Anenih had been active in 
efforts to make the President's re-election a fait accompli. 
He recently led a delegation comprising the governors of 
Rivers, Cross River and Bayelsa states, as well as some top 
party chiefs from the South-South zone, to Aso Rock.  The 
path was well-trod; Anenih had been prominent among those 
political figures who in 1998 averred that Nigeria could not 
survive without Abacha.  Not to be left out, Chief Solomon 
Lar in late March led PDP figures from the North-Central zone 
to Aso Villa to plead with Obasanjo to re-contest.  Lar was 
Police Affairs Minister under Abacha until a falling-out sent 
him home to Langtang; he later emerged as the first chairman 
of the PDP. 
 
 
10.  (U) To all these, Obasanjo had given a standard 
response, except that on April 2, he notched the stakes a bit 
higher.  His words -- "I have been touched to the point of 
emotion, to the point of sentimentality.  When you have this 
type of gathering uninstigated by me, unsolicited, as genuine 
as it is, one cannot but feel touched, because what else does 
one want in life except to serve humanity and serve God" -- 
were in character and according to script, even though they 
struck a discordant note with many sophisticated Nigerians, 
and even with some assumed to lack sophistication.  Cynicism 
about the pleaders not only runs deep, but increasingly wide. 
 As one Embassy driver succinctly put it, "They just want to 
keep eating our money." 
 
 
----------------------------- 
THE PERSPECTIVE FROM "ABROAD" 
----------------------------- 
 
 
11.  (U) In his administration, which clocks three years in 
late May, Obasanjo has made 90 trips abroad.  However, the 
benefits of the trips are unclear to many Nigerians.  Despite 
all the travel, Obasanjo has not obtained the painless debt 
cancellation he so avidly seeks, nor are foreign companies 
(other than South Africans) interested in investing in the 
non-oil sector.  Recently, Investors International London, 
Limited (IIL) was unable to raise the funds needed to buy 51 
percent of GON-owned Nigeria Telecommunications (NITEL) and 
seems likely to lose its deposit, casting a further pall over 
Nigeria's privatization exercise.  Nigerian elites are deeply 
ambivalent about privatization, anyway.  They complain about 
foreigners buying the "national patrimony" for less than its 
"true" value (there is particular unhappiness with the South 
Africans) but are just as bitter that privatization has 
produced little net inflow of foreign direct investment. 
12.  (U) Nigerian elites are equally confused about the roles 
being played by some of Nigeria's key international partners. 
 Noting that "Western countries especially America and 
Britain are said to be unsatisfied with the Obasanjo 
administration's performance in fighting corruption, battling 
the scepter (sic) of insecurity and stabilizing the polity 
and the economy," Esajere sees the hands of Washington and 
London trying to guide Obasanjo to eschew a second term: 
"About nine months ago, when Obasanjo's administration was a 
little over two years, a campaign suddenly came out that the 
President should play Nelson Mandela or take to the path of 
the biblical John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus 
Christ.  Foreign diplomats are said to be behind the 
campaign, which has put enormous pressures on Obasanjo." 
 
 
13.  (U) Satisfied with his own analysis, Esajere concludes 
that Obasanjo should have "actively created a successor who 
(could) stabilize the polity.  But Obasanjo is not one to 
willingly and selflessly give his blessing to a young man as 
Mandela did with President Thabo Mbeki in South Africa.  Can 
Obasanjo play John the Baptist, talking about 'one among 
you?'  He is most unlikely to do that," Esajere concludes. 
 
 
14.  (C) While we do not share Esajere's conviction that the 
US and the UK actively seek to have Obasanjo remove himself 
from the 2003 campaign, we agree with the view that Nigeria's 
President is temperamentally disinclined to choose a strong 
successor -- if choose a successor he someday must.  For now, 
the staged visits presume continuity rather than succession. 
Those who would counsel Obasanjo to retire (such as Abraham 
Adesanya, Sunday Awoniyi, Isyaku Ibrahim and Abdulkadir Kure) 
or at least to dispense with the theatrics are not invited 
into his presence.  By all accounts and based on our own 
experience (ref C), Obasanjo is becoming steadily less 
willing to listen to dissenting points of view.  Indeed, he 
feeds the sycophancy Anenih and others engendered, producing 
in his own mind a much rosier image of his performance and 
popularity than is shared by many influential fellow 
citizens.  According to Esajere, Obasanjo is also "trying to 
show the skeptical external world that it is not him that 
wants to be president; it is Nigerians who want him, who have 
anointed him as Messiah." 
 
 
--------------------------- 
WHERE ARE THE ALTERNATIVES? 
--------------------------- 
 
 
15.  (C) Many Nigerians despair that the country is on the 
road to a de facto single-party system.  Obasanjo's public 
comment that he shared some of the concerns of Zimbabwe's 
Mugabe is read in light of Nigerian domestic politics rather 
than the issues affecting Zimbabwe today.  Leaders of the 
unregistered parties believe that State House is intent upon 
keeping them out of the 2003 contest.  Alh. Saleh Jambo, 
pro-tem Chairman of the United Nigeria Democratic Party 
(UNDP) told us recently that he found Obasanjo's expressed 
sympathy for the Zimbabwean leader a matter of great concern. 
 The deepening conflict over the local government polls, 
notably their timing, the status of voter registers and the 
role of the unregistered parties, further muddies electoral 
waters. 
 
 
16.  (C) The APP and the AD joined forces to put up a joint 
candidate (Olu Falae) in the 1999 Presidential elections. 
The two parties did well in gubernatorial elections in the 
North (APP) and the Southwest (AD).  But both parties are 
beset by factionalism (Ref B), and at-risk governors 
(particularly from the APP) are lining up with Obasanjo while 
remaining formally within their parties.  Adamu Aliero of 
Kebbi is said to have explained that, just as one is 
instructed to fasten one's own oxygen mask before that of a 
child, so, too, the governor must save himself if he is to 
obtain benefits for his people.  Such unabashed opportunism 
pervades the political class and is both curse and blessing. 
It militates against the establishment of interest-based 
politics (a basic element of viable democracy), but it also 
discourages politicians from standing on principle when the 
wind is clearly blowing in another direction (thereby 
reducing the chances of an enduring political crisis). 
 
 
17.  (C) Notwithstanding Anenih's infamous "no vacancy" line, 
there is no shortage of people who would like to move into 
Aso Villa.  By all accounts, Babangida is particularly intent 
upon salvaging his tattered reputation by winning the 
presidency, if not in 2003 then certainly four years later. 
However, he (and all other contenders) must assess their 
prospects.  The fact that Obasanjo has remarkably little to 
offer the average Nigerian as proof of his leadership and 
stewardship over the past three years does not nullify his 
hopes for a second term.  He simply needs to pre-empt likely 
antagonists. 
 
 
18.  (C) Here lies the genius of organized sycophancy; it 
constitutes a political show of force.  The point is not to 
convince a "skeptical external world" that Nigerians want OO 
for another fours years.  Anenih is far too calculating and 
experienced to think foreigners unable to see through such a 
contrivance.  Calling on the troops to endorse the leader for 
another term is typical in any democracy; the extent to which 
they comply is a good test of the leader's popularity.  What 
is different about Nigeria today (and unsettlingly similar to 
Nigeria in 1998) is the leader's seeming need to say he is 
being "called" (by God and/or the people).  Whether this 
flows from a need to gratify the ego, or is a cynical view of 
the electorate's sophistication is anyone's guess.  Either 
way, inveigling or coercing opposition politicians to join 
the calls for four more years adds to the punch, leaving 
potential opposing candidates off-balance and uncertain about 
the likely costs of contesting. 
 
 
------------------------ 
IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS... 
------------------------ 
 
 
19.  (C) ...Obasanjo will decide whether or not to seek a 
second term.  All outward signs continue to point to "yes," 
but the outward signs are largely of his boosters' making. 
His own pronouncements suggest a strong inclination to run 
again, but there remains a small chance he might say, "no." 
Despite his frequent travels abroad, too much time spent in 
Abuja while in Nigeria and an increasing tendency to brush 
aside advice running contrary to his own views, Obasanjo is 
too intelligent not to realize how little his Administration 
has accomplished for the average Nigerian -- and how quickly 
the sychophants can find new heroes.  The fast ends tomorrow. 
Andrews