US embassy cable - 03ABUJA999

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 ABUJA 000999 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
NSC FOR JFRASER 
CAIRO FOR JMAXSTADT 
 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/05/2013 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, KDEM, PINR, NI 
SUBJECT: NIGERIA: AMBASSADOR ENGAGES POLITICAL ELITES IN 
KANO 
 
 Classified by Ambassador Howard F. Jeter.  Reason: 1.5(b) 
and (d). 
 
 
1. (U) Summary: On May 19-20, Ambassador Jeter traveled to 
the North,s largest city, Kano, for meetings with prominent 
community leaders and key political players.  Four themes 
dominated the discussions: 1) electoral irregularities; 2) 
potential for violence after the elections; 3) the 
independence of election tribunals; and 4) perceptions that 
the USG is pro-Obasanjo.  Most interlocutors disparaged the 
results of the April 19 Presidential elections and advised 
that Obasanjo,s failure to respond to Northern complaints 
could lead to violent reactions after the inauguration. End 
Summary. 
 
 
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POSSIBLE VIOLENCE IF GRIEVANCES ARE NOT ADDRESSED 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
 
2. (C) Ado Bayero, Emir of Kano and among the most 
influential northern traditional rulers, warned about the 
possibility of violence if the Government failed to address 
complaints of electoral malpractices.  The Emir said he had 
met Obasanjo several times to discuss the possibility of 
violence, each time stressing the need to reconcile with 
opposition groups.  &We want peace and stability in Nigeria. 
 This explains why we urged all aggrieved candidates to 
utilize the election tribunals.8  On a parallel track, the 
President should attempt to reach a political reconciliation 
with the opposition, Bayero stressed. 
 
 
3. (C) Junaidu Muhammed, a prominent Kano politician, 
signaled a possible &northern eruption.8  He cautioned that 
the current silence in the North was &not an endorsement of 
the Presidential elections.8  Northerners felt Buhari won 
the elections.  Muhammed cited 1966 as an example, noting 
that it took the North five months to react to the 
assassinations of Northern-based leaders resulting in 
Nigeria,s first military coup.  When the reaction finally 
came, it was massive.  The slowness of the reaction does not 
augur weakness.  &While the North reacts slowly, it also 
tends to over-react8, he said.  Muhammed stated that calming 
the tension depended on how well Obasanjo reached out to his 
opposition.  He predicted, however, that Obasanjo,s ego and 
vindictiveness would prevent him from making politic 
concessions. 
 
 
4. (C) Rabi,u Musa Kwankwaso, outgoing Governor of Kano 
State and the only incumbent PDP governor to lose, believed 
that Kano would remain calm since the ANPP won the election. 
So far, Kwankwaso is right. 
 
 
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PARTIES WERE GUILTY OF ELECTORAL MALPRACTICES 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
 
5. (C) Muhammed said all political parties committed fraud in 
last month,s elections.  He claimed that a free election in 
Kebbi might not have returned the ANPP governor.  He posited, 
however, that the ruling PDP was the most prolific culprit, 
accusing it of using security agents, pliant electoral 
officials and party thugs to guarantee victory at all levels. 
 While voter vigilance in urban centers minimized fraud, 
rural areas were fertile ground for electoral manipulation. 
Muhammed told the Ambassador that INEC officers and security 
officials approached parties to offer &their services and 
cooperation8 with the hope of coaxing the parties into an 
escalating bidding war for their services.  In Katsina, when 
Governor Yar,adua heard that officials were making overtures 
to the ANPP, he offered to beat the price, Muhammed asserted. 
 
 
6. (C) Auwalu Yadudu, Harvard-trained law professor, election 
monitor and former legal adviser to former Heads of State 
Abacha and Abubakar, gave a graphic account of various forms 
of electoral malpractices, including ballot box stuffing by 
government officials, voter intimidation, changing of voter 
tallies, underage and multiple voting, use of money, and lack 
of fairness by the INEC officials.  Yadudu opined that 
INEC,s shoddy preparations provided an open door for 
electoral fraud.  He said that most polling stations used two 
voters, lists -- the hand-written register and the INEC 
computer-generated list.  He said some electoral officials 
colluded with politicians to divert election materials. 
Yadudu cited a particular polling station in Bichi LGA, Kano 
State, where voters forcibly recovered ballot papers from a 
voting clerk who claimed that all ballots had been used. 
Some of the ballot papers were later found in his car and 
others were traced to the residence of a government official. 
 
 
7. (C) Ahmed Jalingo, professor of political science and 
labor activist who monitored elections in Bauchi State, also 
complained of serious irregularities.  Jalingo said a village 
chief is now hiding at the residence of a senior official in 
Bauchi for fear of reprisal by his own community.  The local 
chief ordered his men to assault an ANPP agent only to 
discover that the ANPP agent was the son of his senior 
traditional ruler!  Jalingo said that while the actual ballot 
count in Gamawa LGA was still being conducted, an INEC radio 
announcement reportedly gave a final result for that area. 
All those present at the collation center, including the PDP 
agents, were stunned by the announcement of something they 
had yet to complete. 
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AGGRIEVED PARTIES MIGHT NOT GET JUSTICE AT THE TRIBUNALS 
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8. (C) Yadudu said election tribunal precedents clearly 
showed that the &judicial process is available to the 
highest bidder.8  However, he supported the idea of going to 
the tribunals &for posterity.8  It was necessary to make a 
historical record, he said.  The opposition might win some 
low-level positions like state and National Assembly seats 
but key elections like governors and President would not be 
overturned no matter what degree of evidence was presented, 
he predicted. 
 
 
9. (C) Discounting the possibility that the tribunal would be 
transparent and follow the rule of law, Jalingo recounted a 
bitter personal experience he had with electoral tribunals, 
when he ran for governor of Taraba State.  Jalingo recalled 
members of the election tribunal in Taraba asking him to pay 
a higher bribe than his opponent when he petitioned the 
results of the 1991 gubernatorial elections, which he 
narrowly lost to Governor Jolly Nyame. 
 
 
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PERCEPTIONS THAT USG SUPPORTS OBASANJO BECAUSE OF HIS 
CHRISTIAN BACKGROUND 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
 
10. (C) Jalingo echoed a popular perception among Northern 
Muslims that the USG supported Obasanjo despite his disregard 
for basic democratic values, like free and fair elections, 
because the President was Christian.  Jalingo speculated 
that, if Obasanjo were Muslim the US would have criticized 
him more heavily for &bastardizing democratic norms.8 
 
 
11. (C) The Ambassador unequivocally denied the assertion, 
stating that the United States supported the democratic 
process and did not play favorites.  The election was for 
Nigerians to decide.  It was not a decision for Washington 
nor was it one Washington sought to make or influence, he 
stated. 
 
 
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OBASANJO, BUHARI COMPARED 
------------------------- 
 
 
12. (C) Jalingo feared Obasanjo,s &Yoruba-centric8 
politics and combative style would further divide Nigerians. 
He did not foresee President Obasanjo and Vice President 
Atiku meaningfully reaching out to the opposition and to each 
of the various regions of the country.  While praising Buhari 
for a tough stance against corruption, Jalingo complained 
that Obasanjo,s opposition to corruption was belied by the 
fact that his immediate family and relatives of his wife were 
suddenly immersed in and making fortunes from the oil 
industry. 
 
 
13. (C) Muhammed, Jalingo and Yadudu also complained that 
Obasanjo, not Buhari, exploited the religious card during the 
Presidential elections.  They pointed out that Obasanjo was 
regularly televised at the Presidential Chapel conducting 
religious services.  Conversely, Muhammed explained that 
Buhari was the first Nigerian leader to limit public funds 
for religious trips.  In 1984, Buhari reduced the number of 
government-funded pilgrims to Saudi Arabia from 150,000 to 
20,000, a policy that attracted sharp criticism throughout 
the North.  Buhari also attempted to limit the growing 
influence of the late Sheikh Abubakar Gumi, founder of the 
vocal and influential Islamic group Izala. 
 
 
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ALLEGED PLANS BY THE REGIME TO ARREST BUHARI 
-------------------------------------------- 
 
 
14. (C) Echoing reports from other sources, Muhammed alleged 
that the regime had issued orders to arrest Buhari before the 
May 3 State Assembly elections.  He explained that the main 
reason General Ajibade, the recently removed Director of 
Military Intelligence, was reassigned to Nigerian Institute 
for Policy and Strategic Studies was because Ajibade warned 
the regime of dire consequences if Buhari were arrested. 
Ajibade reportedly told a security meeting, with President 
Obasanjo and Vice President Atiku present, that reports 
reaching his office indicated that Buhari carried most of the 
polling stations where soldiers were voters.  Therefore, a 
regime decision to arrest Buhari could lead to unrest in the 
military and among the general population. 
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INCOMING GOVERNOR OF KANO 
------------------------- 
15. (C) Zainab Kabir, professor of sociology and Muslim 
female activist, said that the new Kano State Governor, 
Ibrahim Shekarau, is a veteran technocrat and probably 
honest; however, most of the ANPP officials around him were 
as corrupt as other politicians.  &He might be the only 
sheep among the wolves,8 she said.  Kabir cited a recent 
incident where some Kano businessmen and politicians offered 
new vehicles, expensive clothes and other inducements to the 
incoming politicians.  Shekarau reportedly rejected the 
offers but his deputy Magaji Abdullahi gathered his share of 
the loot with unabashed relish. 
 
 
16. (C) Outgoing Governor Kwankwaso said he feared that the 
lack of experience on the part of Shekarau could make him 
vulnerable to manipulation by politicians within and outside 
Kano.  In previous conversations, Kwankwaso had also 
described Shekarau as a religious hard-liner who would 
strictly impose the Sharia code in Kano. 
 
 
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COMMENT 
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17. (C) Many Northerners are upset about the results of the 
April elections.  This is not so much that they really 
supported Buhari but because they bitterly opposed Obasanjo 
and what he represented to them.  He represented a tectonic 
shift of power from the Northwest to the Southwest, from the 
Muslim to the Christian.  Northerners are used to being in 
the driver,s seat of national politics; their current tenure 
in the passenger seat has become very uncomfortable.  They 
cannot help but believe that since Buhari carried the North, 
he should have won the election.  Before this election, a 
maxim in Nigerian politics was that whoever won the North won 
the election.  That maxim is no longer valid. 
 
 
18. (C) Because of these political antecedents, the loudest 
hue and cry against electoral misconduct has emanated from 
the North.  However, the worst electoral injustices were 
probably committed in the South-South and Southeast, albeit 
in the gubernatorial and National Assembly races.  Most 
Southerners believe or are willing to accept that Obasanjo 
won the Presidency.  Yet, because many Northerners viscerally 
oppose Obasanjo,s reelection, election-related protests and 
violence are more likely to occur in parts of the Northwest 
than any other area of the country (with the Southeast coming 
in second).  This observation begets another.  The election 
intensified ethnic, regional and religious sentiment and has 
exposed unfortunate bigotries on both sides of Nigeria,s 
North-South divide.  For instance, it was disingenuous for 
the Ambassador,s interlocutors in Kano to accuse Obasanjo of 
playing the religious card while claiming Buhari preferred a 
secular deck.  Buhari and his supporters played religion to 
the hilt during the election.  The claim that Obasanjo has 
been Yoruba-centric is partially grounded in fact but it is 
also exaggerated, an end-product of the inflated rhetoric of 
ethnicity. 
 
 
19. (C) Essentially, many Northerners are guilty of 
reverse-image ethnic and religious biases for which they 
blame Obasanjo.  Nevertheless, grievances of electoral 
shenanigans are warranted to a large extent.  The PDP sweep 
the elections; the opposition in all parts of the country 
feels cheated.  Obasanjo and his PDP could lessen tension if 
a political settlement could be reached with more of the 
opposition.  This is probably easier in the Southeast and the 
South-South where the readjustment of some National Assembly 
seats and some senior level appointments could provide a fix. 
 However, mollifying the North will be a different ballgame 
because the North wants what it once had which is something 
Obasanjo will not give up )-Presidential power and control 
of Nigeria. 
JETER 
JETER