Our Ref: NCP/NHQ/12/03/03
Tuesday, 2 December 2003
Mr. Victor Ifijeh
Thisday Newspaper
35, Greek Road, Apapa, Lagos.
Dear Victor,
RE-NO TO VIOLENT CHANGE
On Monday, December 1, 2003, in your State of the
Union column, you consciously or unconsciously
falsified my position to mean that my call for removal
of General Obasanjo from power by all means is
tantamount to calling for military coup. Nothing could
be farther from the truth. Nowhere in the entire
interview I granted The News did I call for military
coup.
Your problem is that you tend to have a parochial,
narrow-minded view of the process of social change. To
you, the alternative to any change that does not
involve the ballot box must be military. But it is not
every non-ballot box process of change that must
necessarily involve the military.
Only recently, the Georgians revolted against the
rigging of the electoral process by the sitting
President Eduard Shevardnadze. They stormed the
parliament and seized control of power. Eduard
Shevardnadze had to succumb to the revolutionary
wishes of the people. That was not a military coup.
Currently, the masses of Lithuana have risen in mass
revolt against President Rolanbas Paksas on grounds of
having links with the Russian mafia and for lack of
social development in their country. The Luthuanian
mass movement does not involve the military. The
collapse of the ruling bureaucracies in the former
USSR and Eastern Europe did not involve the military.
Yet, the masses shook off the yoke of Stalinist
oppression in those countries. Even right here in
Nigeria, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida stepped
aside in 1993 not on the basis of the military coup
but under the heat of mass revolt from below. In
contradistinction to the failure of military putsch in
April 1990, the will of the people in mass action
compelled the removal of Babangida from power.
There is nothing wrong in the masses of the people
revolting against a President who is consciously
moving in the direction of establishing a fascist
state. General Obasanjo has continuously and
fundamentally violated key provisions of the
Constitution and has made a change through the ballot
impossible.
General Obasanjo has been viciously, fraudulently and
illegally manipulating the democratic process so as to
remain in power at all costs with a view to promoting
anti-people programmes, which are practically
destroying the national economy and the future of
Nigerians.
It is not an invitation to the military to call on the
people to remove, through mass action, a ruler whose
pre-occupation and dreams are how to impoverish the
people. That is not a call on the military to stage a
coup; it is a call on the suffering people of Nigeria
to revolt. That is what I preach.
General Obasanjo has to be stopped through a revolt
from below. Otherwise, his ruthlessness, on the long
run, would pale into insignificance the fascism of
Adolf Hitler of Germany, Benito Mussolini of Italy and
Batista of Cuba.
It should be recalled that Hitler manipulated the
electoral process to remain in power. He got to power
through the ballot but later misused the process to
repress and to kill opponents. He brought about
agonising and brutal holocaust against the Jews. Had
the Italian opposition parties and the labour movement
seen the need to form a United Front to defeat and
remove Hitler, the world would have been spared the
holocaust against the Jews. It was because the fascism
of Hitler could not be arrested early enough that
humanity was plunged into the worst holocaust in the
history of mankind and millions of citizens of various
nationalities had to pay the supreme price in the 2nd
World War. We should not allow Obasanjo to get that
far.
I neither advocate military putsch nor violence. What
I advocate is the mass intervention of the people in
politics to shape their own fate. Conscious mass
intervention of the people in politics is otherwise
often called revolution. That is what I advocate. And
revolution does not on its own acquire violent
character but it is not also a dinner party. Whether a
revolution is violent or peaceful is always dependent
on the nature of the reaction of wielders of political
power. It is in the process of violent repression of
the masses in action that mass actions usually turn
violent.
SOCIAL CHANGE IN NIGERIA: BALLOT BOX OR MASS REVOLT?
You claim to agree that Obasanjo’s government is a
failure but you think the process of changing the
government should be restricted to the ballot box.
Ordinarily, the ballot box would be the first choice
of the people. But Obasanjo’s fraudulent and
diabolical manipulation of the electoral process has
made people to lose confidence in the ballot box as a
basis for change.
General Obasanjo did not rely on the ballot box in the
April - May 2003 elections. Those elections were no
democratic elections. What Obasanjo did was an
electoral coup through conspiracy with INEC, violence
perpetrated by the police and the army, bribery and
intimidation of the electorate, falsification of
election results and a total disregard of the votes as
a basis for obtaining the mandate of the people.
Obtaining votes by fair means did not count in
determining the winner of the 2003 elections.
The 2003 election was a subversion of the will of the
people. That was a coup by an incumbent civilian
government. A coup is not restricted to the seizure of
power by those in military uniform alone. The April
2003 election was a coup; a coup is a subversion of
the will of the people.
We call on the masses of our people to assert their
will just like the Georgians did and the Lithuanians
are doing. We would support any process, which aids
the assertion of the will of the people against their
oppressors.
It would be an illusion to think that Obasanjo and the
PDP could be removed through INEC organised elections,
if we are to learn any lessons from the despicable
roles of the Nigeria Police Force and the Nigerian
Army in the 2003 elections.
General Obasanjo does not pretend to show his disdain
for the democratic process. By the nature of their
appointments, INEC commissioners could easily be
compromised. General Obasanjo and INEC are
pre-occupied with de-registering political parties and
putting stumbling blocks in the way of the people to
organise politically. He implements harsh economic
programmes to compel people to realise that they can
hardly survive without being sycophantic to Aso-Rock..
General Obasanjo has pocketed the National Assembly.
The Judiciary is daily being corrupted. The security
agents are deployed against perceived enemies of
General Obasanjo. Assassination and tear-gassing to
death of any one who may stand in the way of General
Obasanjo have become the pre-occupation of the
nation’s security agencies.
Only today, Tuesday 2 December 2003, the BBC has been
broadcasting the 40-page latest Report of the U.S
based human rights body, the Human Rights Watch, which
indicts the corrupt and brutal government of General
Obasanjo on grounds of gross violation of the
democratic process, repression and victimisation of
political opponents, arrest, detention and torture of
innocent protesters, blackmailing of political
opponents, etc.
General Obasanjo usurps the powers that are not given
to him by the Constitution. He has made the
Constitution unworkable. He has turned the
Constitution on its head. He forges Electoral Act. He
encourages imposition of un-elected Caretaker
Committees on the Local Governments contrary to the
clear provisions of the Constitution. He has made
corruption a national culture. He has enthroned
poverty. He has made life unbearable for most
Nigerians. He represses any attempt by the people to
exercise their fundamental right of mass action.
General Obasanjo has, in one word, blocked all
democratic avenues for change and for expression of
political preferences.
General Obasanjo can only be removed by all
revolutionary means, including mass action or mass
revolt by the people. Mass action is not an
anti-democratic option. General Obasanjo can only
delay his removal; he cannot prevent it. Actually that
he has not been removed through mass action up till
now is the surprise. The dastardly, dictatorial and
anti-people Obasanjo’s regime definitely has a date
with history. No President, no political party, no
political system has a right to continued existence if
the welfare and fundamental freedoms of the people are
continuously assaulted.
Dear Victor, there is a curious dimension to the
contents of your column of Monday, 1 December 2003. I
granted an interview to The News magazine on 25
November 2003. It was published on Monday, 1 December.
Your reaction to the same interview was published in
your column on the same 1 December 2003. How did you
know of the interview since you do not work for The
News magazine? Obviously, you do not write your column
on the day of publication. Could you explain this?
Yours sincerely,
Chief Gani Fawehinmi, SAN
National Chairman, NCP
