Tuesday, October 31, 2006
By Muhammad Al-Ghazali

The name Alhaji Lamidi Adedibu provokes different views and emotions among a wide spectrum of Nigerians.

There are many who believe he is the doyen of political thugs, or, at best, a loafer and political mercenary of the meanest hue, whose services are always available to the highest bidder. But love or hate him, there are a few things which seem beyond dispute about the man: He is the undisputed strongman of Ibadan politics and any presidential wannabe can only ignore him at great peril. If anything, his words are always backed by actions often at the expense of anyone foolish enough to contest his tenacious hold on his territory.

And thinking in that sense, if Ibadan is comparable to a territory occupied by a pride of lions, Adedibu has certainly done enough in the past several decades to suggest that he is the only male in the pack. There is even the suggestion that the president, an unrepentant bully that he may seem to many, is also in awe of Adedibu for his ruthless efficiency in political debauchery.

A little over a year ago, Alhaji Lam Adesina, former governor of Oyo State and Adedibu’s erstwhile political godchild, thought he could play games with his mentor when he reneged on a pre-arranged deal to share the state’s security votes and was quickly shown the door from the Government House. Yet, it was not as if Adedibu, who will be 78 this week, was shamed by the shocking revelations about the genesis of their disagreement.

In fact, he was the first to go public with the details of the deal and how he felt betrayed by Adesina. And as it later transpired in this ever perplexing nation of ours, by the time Adedibu was through with him, it was Adesina who had the greater compulsion to hide his face in shame. Ordinarily, such brazen indiscretion would have qualified any transgressor for a choice space in Ribadu’s dungeons, but it is Adedibu and Nigeria we are talking about here for, God’s sake!

In a tragedy that may well be replayed in Plateau State this very week, Adesina discovered that neither the laws of the land nor the constitution were sufficient to retain him in his plum job. But the profound lesson was that Adesina’s humiliation was at the instance of a man many have dismissed as a stark illiterate!

So what makes him tick? What gives him such awesome longevity in a ‘profession’ in which only he appears to be the ultimate master? Why has his home in the Molete district of Ibadan become such a Mecca for presidential hopefuls since the days of the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua? Why is his ego being massaged by every politician alive today including the president?
The posers are many, but for answers, we need only to look further than ourselves in the mirror. Adedibu may be a master of his profession, but his politics is completely devoid of principles or even ideology.

In their place, he has substituted fear, intimidation and insatiable greed. His crude methods are fuelled by our collective hunger, insecurity and rabid underdevelopment in a land where violence, ignorance and mediocrity interface with uncommon venom and velocity. With such a background, it is obvious that even if Adedibu did not exist, the megalomaniacs in power today, and those angling to succeed them, would have found a way to create someone in his image, because without people like Adedibu, they would be out of business.

After all, were our politics to be defined by issues, competence and ability, his type would pale into irrelevance as could be expected in any society founded on justice and the rule of law. Sadly, in that context, Adedibu is every inch the victim as much as the villain.

These are why the 2007 elections have become ever so important. The statement quoted at the beginning of this piece may appear like a huge joke to those who don’t know Lamidi Adedibu, but he actually made them on a state-owned television programme in Ibadan last week. And, unless we indulge in self-denial, they cannot be dismissed with casual indifference.

Adedibu may be a terror to his adversaries, but even he could not have succeeded in removing a sitting governor without the trust and close collaboration of today’s occupants of Aso Rock. And so informed is the man that over the weekend, he even dared to ‘reveal’ what many consider to be the worst kept secret in the land by ‘exposing’ the identity of our next president.

Addressing supporters of the Rivers State governor, Peter Odili and party faithful at his home in Ibadan after a visit by the presidential aspirant, Adedibu declared that “Odili must be the president of this nation in 2007 because there is a clear indication that Obasanjo loves him, just as he loves Obasanjo.”

If we forgive Adedibu for reducing the very important matter of our presidential elections to the level of the love affair between two mere mortals, his antecedents suggest that we cannot ignore his intricate knowledge of the ‘system’ or the garrison brand of democracy we have in place presently. As we approach crunch time, and with the PDP primaries only a few weeks away, Peter Odili may not be the last presidential contender to solicit the ‘support’ of Adedibu either, but he is the only one with more than a fistful of naira, which he could afford to spray like confetti.

Again, unless we ignore the lessons of our recent experience, that factor should be music to the ears of not only Adedibu but disciples of ‘Amala’ politics across the country. In openly endorsing his candidacy, not only did Adedibu raise Odili’s hand in the fashion of a referee at the conclusion of a boxing bout, he even pledged the support of the entire South-West pointing at the presence of Osun and Oyo states governors at the event as indication of Odili’s acceptability in the South-West.

The posers are: given what we already know of our democracy, and the likes of Adedibu, how many candidates in the race can possibly match Peter Odili in ‘resources’ and how do we avert or even minimise the preponderance of moneyed politics in the next elections?

When the PTDF scandal first broke, I wrote against the unnecessary haste to crucify the Vice President without getting at the root causes of the sordid affair. I saw an excellent opportunity for a post-mortem to cleanse the system along with our electoral laws, because in any civilised democracy, there are several ways to run a political campaign and operating a slush fund is not one of them. Now, going by the reaction of Akin Osuntokun, the Special Adviser to the president on Political Affairs who was the Director of Media and Publicity for the Obasanjo/Atiku campaign in 2003, the warning has never been more urgent.

Responding to claims by the Atiku camp that he benefited from the controversial PTDF account, he responded: “Was it proper and legitimate for me to receive support for campaign activities I was directing? How was I to know that a particular donor was donating or contributing proceeds of corruption (as attested to by the Atiku Abubakar campaign organisation)?”

I am almost ashamed to add that if the Director of Media and Publicity in the presidential campaign of the biggest political party in Africa was ignorant of the sources of funding for a campaign in which he was the chief spokesman, then we must be in serious trouble. If we accept his perplexing naivety, the funding may well have come from the American Mafia, a cartel of fake drug manufacturers run out of business by Dora Akunyili’s NAFDAC or even the association of 419 kingpins ravaged by Ribadu’s EFCC.

What about the union of residents displaced by el-Rufai’s bulldozers? Those are the risks we run when laws regulating campaign funding in the country are primitive, archaic or even non-existent. The National Assembly is yet to conclude its sittings on the PTDF affair, of course, but even while we await judgement from the law courts on the several suits filed in the wake of the scandal, we already know enough to believe that in 2003 at least, ‘unknown’ donors conspired to hijack the government from the Nigerian people.

Such a development is a luxury we can ill-afford and should be a call to arms to all genuine democrats.
In America, from where we copied our system of government, funding presidential elections is a serious affair. Strict regulations exist on campaign funding from the primaries to the elections proper.

Candidates must meet special conditions to qualify for state funding. A clear distinction also exists between soft money (corporate contributions) and hard money (individual contributions), which must not exceed two thousand dollars per individual. That is not to suggest, however, going by the series of litigation their own system has experienced over the years that their system is flawless. In 1996 and 1997, for instance, there were stories of Lincoln bedroom sleepovers and Chinese funding which drew wide criticism in the American media.

These prompted the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) or the McCain-Feingold law after its chief sponsors. Some loopholes still exist, of course, but by and large, the system has been sanitised to an appreciable level.

But my problem with campaign funding in Nigeria — and I have gone through the relevant sections of our constitution and INEC regulations — is that the vital aspect of funding presidential campaigns has not been accorded the prominence it deserves. Candidates can spend obscene amounts in self-glorification without disclosing their sources of funding.

The law requires INEC to publish audited reports of the books of political parties, but I can’t ever recall coming across any. But if they even exist at all, they have certainly not been given the wide circulation they deserve. The risk we run for our alarming lethargy and the near total paucity of regulation of the entire process is that for a developing nation such as ours, the tragedy is that vital funds required for urgent social services could be diverted to fund the campaigns of individuals who have done little to uplift the masses from the squalor of poverty and disease.

It is hard to ignore the determination of Nuhu Ribadu in the fight against corruption, but if he is serious about preventing Nigeria from becoming a ‘tokunbo’ country like he claimed, he needs to change his strategy by beaming the searchlight of the EFCC on the vital aspect of campaign funding to prevent crooks from hijacking government at all levels. What is the source of funding for the extravagant campaigns of all the PDP governors who have declared interest in the presidency? How did they come about the money? The National Assembly must also re-examine our laws to halt the proliferation of political godfathers like Chris Uba and Lamidi Adedibu who may be tempted to believe that the noble act of public service is not more than the primitive exchange of commodities.

el-Rufai for president?
Last week, the grapevine was alive with stories that FCT Minister Nasir el-Rufai was high on the list of candidates being tapped up to replace OBJ next year and I actually belly-ached with laughter. The sheer arrogance of the suggestion aside, a man who could not deliver on a promise he made to staff of government agencies whose lands were revoked only to be shared out with brazen impunity cannot be trusted with power. But that is even the beginning of his problems.

If he dares leave the relative safety of his present job, he would discover, if he is not already aware, that demolition, especially of the image variety, is equally a fair and useful tool in politics, and not necessarily restricted to the restoration of any master plan!

In the meantime, let us pray for the repose of the soul of the late Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammadu Maccido and all victims of the ACD plane crash last Sunday. The sad news of the tragedy reached me just as I was concluding this piece.