Productions: Nigeria Briefings

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ABUBAKAR TRANSITION
July 13, 1998

With the passage of Abiola as the consensus candidate in the next civilian-ruled administration, eyes are now trained in the direction of who heads a government of National Unity to midwife the transition program. The present government has moved in a manner that suggests a desire to seize the initiative by setting up a commission to produce guidelines on how to compose a team to organize the transition to civil rule.

The opposition is calling for the nomination of two delegates from each of the country's six zones to form the government [ the delegates could then choose their own chairman]. Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka told mediaNET: "that is the only way we can move forward and halt the possible crisis in that country. I cannot see any other way out since Abiola is now dead. Kingibe [ Abiola's vice-presidential candidate] has fouled his democratic credentials by joining the Abacha government and Umeh Ebute [senate president] has also joined one of the funny parties seeking power under Abacha's discredited transition program". The following names of prospective consensus candidates are now making the rounds:

Anthony Enahoro, nationalist leader of the National Democratic Coalition [NADECO]. He moved the legendary motion for independence in 1953 and now lives in exile having escaped General Abacha's assassination plot.

Abraham Adesanya, NADECO Vice President, leader of the Yoruba group, Afenifere.

Bola Ige, NADECO executive, victim of Abacha's dictatorship and one of the Yoruba leaders. He is the apparent choice of the young and technocratic Yoruba intellectuals.

Olusegun Obasanjo, former army general, former head of state, first military leader to hand over power to a civilian democratic dispensation, victim of Abacha's dictatorship.

Umeh Ebute, former senate president, briefly resisted Abacha's cancellation of the senate tenure, for which he was detained along with about a dozen other legislators. However, he later joined Abacha's transition program as a senate candidate.

Olu Falae, former finance minister and recently released from detention by the current head of state.

Gani Fawehinmi, Independent-minded Lagos attorney and fierce critic of military rule. Leader of the Joint Action Committee, a coalition of about a hundred civil society organizations opposing military rule.

[ Source: mediaNET bulletin, JACON, P.M. News, Tempo, Punch , Tell, Independent Journalism Center-Lagos],

Another proposal being considered is the possibility of a collegiate leadership comprised of past military leaders which will include Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalam Abubakar to supervise a return to civil rule. Sources in Lagos and Abuja say, however, that Obasanjo is not enthusiastic about that proposition. [Source: mediaNET]

Government in Nigeria says it is compiling a list of political detainees in the country as reported by both the state radio station [FRCN] and the independent television station, Channels. This is a departure from the official position held at the last UN Human Rights Commission session that there are no political detainees in the country.

The Nigeria human rights community says their figures are 415 political detainees held in the various prisons and military bases. During the Pope's last visit to Nigeria, earlier this year he gave a list of 60 names to the government. The police themselves later admitted that there are as many as 75 detainees, a claim countered by the human rights groups who said they had a list of 274 people detained under the dreaded Decree 2 alone.

Femi Falana, head of the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights [CDHR] said a list of the detainees will soon be published "to remove doubt in the mind of the police and the government". [Sources: Channels TV, FRCN, CDHR]

The possibility of a messy ethnic conflict arising from the developments in Nigeria is growing by the day. There has been ethnic violence in Lagos, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Oshogbo, Ife. This development feeds on the views of many ethnic nationalities in Nigeria that the problem is one of internal balance of power. In the days after Abiola's death a number of ethnic nationality groups have spoken in strong language that calls for a loose federation and a redrawing of Nigeria's power structure, but no one has spoken of secession.

The Egbe Omo Yoruba, The Chikoko Movement (in the oil producing Niger Delta area), the Izon National Movement , Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People, the Eastern Mandate Union (Igbo) and the Southern Nigeria Movement ( a coalition of both small and larger southern ethnic groups) have all called for the autonomy of ethnic nationalities as a basis of moving forward on the redistribution of power in the country.

Last week in an interview, Bola Ige said "the merit and desirability of a free Yoruba nation with or without Nigeria cannot be discounted and is long overdue." Oronto Douglas of the Chikoko Movement also spoke of the "need to liberate our land now or never". Last year at an international convention in Houston, Texas, the Egbe Omo Yoruba launched the campaign to mobilize Yoruba people for internal autonomy. Dr. Segun Gbadegesin, head of the movement and a professor of Philosophy at Howard University in Washington, DC said in a recent interview that the movement has been "successful beyond expectations in its short history". [ Sources: The News, P.M.News, Radio Kudirat, Autonomy Alert, Chikoko News ]

One clear pattern in the current wave of violence in Nigeria is the attack on symbols of the traditional institutions of local governance in Yorubaland, black market currency traders , and beneficiaries of government patronage during the Abacha regime. The palaces of at least four powerful traditional chiefs were burnt down in the Abeokuta, Ibadan and Ogbomosho. Soldiers were drafted in to guard the palace of the Ooni of Ife; Ife is the spiritual home of the Yorubas. Prominent beneficiaries of the Abacha dictatorship have also suffered various acts of arson and assault in Ibadan, Ife, and Lagos. The first victims in the Lagos riots were the currency traffickers who deal in the black currency market round the airport and international hotels. [Sources: Punch, Guardian, National Concord, P.M. News, Tribune]

The Christian Association of Nigeria [CAN] says power must go to the south after years of northern monopoly "otherwise instability will continue to dog the country". Bishop Sunday Mbang, head of the association, also said there should also be a national conference to address the structure of power distribution in the country. [Sources: Punch, National Concord]

The government has finally accepted the call to remove its hand-picked administrators from the ranks of the labor unions. The Organization of African Trade Union Unity [OATUU], The International Labor Organization [ILO] and many international labor groups had made this, and the call to release imprisoned labor leaders, the focus of a campaign against the Nigerian government over the past four years. Now as labor gears up to reclaim its institutions, an internal battle is already raging between "collaborators" and "the rank of the faithful". Attempts to draft those who have just returned from prison into leadership is being stalled by the state of their health. Labor's big challenge and its very battle for relevance will be tested on its response to the excessive centralization of the economy under the military and the deterioration of the take-home pay of the working Nigerian. [ Sources: Punch, Guardian. P.M. News]

Historians and political pundits in Nigeria have being speaking of fears that the unfolding pattern of developments and violence in Nigeria may yield to the tragic scenario of the sixties when in 1967, the country's weak consensus platform unraveled into a 30-month bitter civil war where an estimated 2 million Igbo citizens were killed. [Sources: Various Nigerian Media]

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