The East African (Nairobi)

COLUMN

May 23, 2006

Posted to the web May 23, 2006

By Charles Onyango-Obbo

Nairobi

President Olusegun Obasanjo, or OBJ as the Nigerians call him, was defeated last week when his country's Senate voted down a bid to amend the constitution and allow him to stand for a third term next year.

There have been several attempts in Africa recently to amend constitutions and remove terms, allowing the Big Men continue in office. They failed in Malawi and Zambia, but succeeded in Namibia and, lately, the embattled Idriss Deby in Chad and Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, to name a few of the luckier ones, pulled off theirs.

OBJ missed Museveni's inauguration last week, but dropped in the next day to personally congratulate the president. He visited Kampala late, when the battle at home was all but lost. Perhaps if he had come last year, he might have learnt how to craft a sure formula for victory.

THE MUSEVENI formula, what one might call the Pearl of Africa's Five Steps To Getting a Presidency for Life, was fairly straightforward.

Step One: The Reluctant Big Man. A president must never declare openly that he wants a third term. He gets delegations from the villages to clamour for it. Then the districts pick up the call; then parliament; his ministers begin claiming he's a gift from God, and the ruling party adopts a resolution demanding he "heeds the call of the people."

This strategy lulls opponents into not taking early action to foil him, giving him a crucial element of surprise.

Step Two: Purge internal opponents from government and party; crack a few journalists' skulls; and make the cost of opposition too high.

Step Three: Make the reward for personal support very attractive: Bribe MPs with cash and public property.

Step Four: Throw a bone to the masses. Museveni nearly doubled the number of new districts and scrapped several taxes.

Step Five: Pull off a dramatic international gambit or spectacle. Museveni bagged next year's Commonwealth Summit.

OBJ actually deployed most of these strategies. Though analysts think it's too early to say he's been comprehensively defeated, observers have applauded the result as a triumph for Nigerian democracy. However, it has far greater Africawide significance.

If a ruler succeeds in making himself president for life in Uganda or Chad, it's only a minor setback in continental terms. However, if it happened in Nigeria, South Africa or Egypt, it's no small matter. It's a major reversal, because these are countries with tremendous regional clout and some global influence, and what they do has the potential to create a ripple effect.

So after Hosni Mubarak changed the constitution to perpetuate himself in office, Africa was desperately in need of correction from a major country to avoid being written off. Nigeria has provided it - for now at least.

WHAT MAKES it more remarkable is that, with its reputation for corrupt politicians, most observers were not putting their money on defeat for OBJ's third term project. There were reports of Senators being bribed with land and money. Now Nigerian "chai" doesn't come in small brown envelopes containing $3,000 that Ugandan MPs got. It's delivered in boxes.

That the country now has politicians who can turn it down is something close to a revolution. Even more remarkable, OBJ had just done Africa proud by making Nigeria the first country on the continent to pay off its foreign debt.

His government actually wrote a cheque of over $6 billion. Ironically, by so doing, OBJ might have sealed his fate. A country that can write a $6 billion cheque to foreign debtors can only make its citizens proud. Suddenly, they feel theirs isn't a banana republic.

And if you ask them to allow you hang around State House past your sell by date, they are very likely to tell you, "No Sir."

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's managing editor for convergence and new products.