Yar'Adua is stepping into the vortex of Nigerian politics as Obasanjo the kingmaker steps down, writes Gamal Nkrumah "Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed", was one of Mao Zedong's wise sayings. Little did the Chinese Communist leader know that his maxim would be particularly applicable in the case of Nigeria in its warlike "contest of the ex-generals". There are those across the African continent who regard the Nigerian election as a breath of fresh air in the African political arena. Others are far more sceptical. They are taking it all with a grain of salt. As predicted, the front-runner presidential hopeful Umaru Musa Yar'Adua of the ruling People's Democratic Party won a landslide victory, raking in a remarkable 70 per cent of the vote. With the onset of democracy, a new approach to Nigerian politics was ostensibly coming into being; however, many of the problems that plagued the country in the era of the military juntas remained, and in some cases were exacerbated. Democracy does not feed the people, and Nigerians, despite all their oil wealth, have come to this grim realisation. Mohamed Buhari, Yar'Adua's nearest rival, scored a paltry 18 per cent of the vote. In any case, the results were a foregone conclusion. Yar'Adua, with the blessing of the powers that be secured a comfortable outcome. It is probably safe to say that the majority of Nigerians saw him as their safest bet whatever the final tally is. The real story behind the catcalls of this election seem to be something like this: outgoing Nigerian President General Olusegun Obasanjo tried to change the constitution, which limits the presidency to two terms, but his machinations were thwarted by his own vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, and he was forced to resign. Interestingly, Abubakar mustered a miserable seven per cent of the vote in this horse-race. The now incumbent Nigerian president, in a classic court intrigue, became the paymaster after the run-in between Obasanjo and Abubakar, then increasingly the chief combatant in the coalition which succeeded in cutting Atiku Abubakar, the errant vice- president, down to size. He succeeded in bringing an end to Abubakar's ambitions. A fine premise for a Tom Clancy thriller. Abubakar, a billionaire in his own right, lacked any real political agenda of his own. His politics differ little from his boss, Obasanjo -- economic deregulation and political liberalisation, democratisation and privatisation -- the pleonastic and utterly cruel prescription of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. But Abubakar wanted to strike a blow at Obasanjo in pursuit of his own ambitions. The presidency was no doubt in the back of his mind but his dreams were dashed. Be that as it may, a sober analysis might read that the election results demonstrate that Nigeria is on the way to democratisation, but that vestiges of the one-party state still continued unabated. Obasanjo conceded as much. "No elections in the world will ever be regarded a perfect," Obasanjo stressed. "You cannot use European standards to judge the situation in a developing country," he explained. Obasanjo is a pragmatist. A former general who ruled Nigeria with an iron fist, he realised some time ago that matters could not carry on as they were, and he deftly took control of the situation and steered the country to democratic and political reform. His fans in Nigeria and the West insist he made an outstanding contribution to democracy in Africa, and they stress that his legacy is sound, above criticism. Ironically the energies released by the democratic process were first channelled by Obasanjo and then usurped by him. His critics contend that he allowed himself to make an expensive and unequal deal with the political elite, and that he very nearly hijacked his beloved democracy and came within a whisker of becoming a "democratic dictator". The short answer is that the Nigerian political establishment is not in a position to deliver loyalty. Be that as it may, Obasanjo exerted a powerful hold over the minds of his subjects and still remains part of the mystique of the Nigerian ruling elite. The 1999 Nigerian presidential polls were dubbed the most important political transition in Africa since the end of apartheid. The West saw in Obasanjo a compliant ally. He was able to keep other influential Nigerian political personalities, including the host of retired generals that themselves coveted the democratically-elected post of the presidency, onside. National and international observers noted with disdain the shortcomings of the presidential and regional polls. "In many parts of the country elections did not start on time or did not start at all," sniffed Innocent Chukwuma, head of the independent Transition Monitoring Group. Indeed, one opposition leader described the elections as "wholesale fraud". Many African countries have been reluctant to step into the dangerous vortex of political forces that democracy Western-style unleashes. Deception, real or alleged, is nothing new in democratic practice, both in the West and in Nigeria. The wealthiest presidential candidate invariably wins. The bribing of voters is a widely-accepted practice that is difficult to detect by foreign observers. Apathy is rampant. "The youth of a nation are the trustees of posterity," noted Disraeli. But in Nigeria, the young boycotted the elections. Indeed, only 24 per cent of the Nigerian electorate voted. Nigerians of all ages are still struggling to decide what to think about their nascent democracy. The cabal of former military men who have been ruling, or rather misruling Nigeria for the past four decades, put up an effective resistance. The battle against Obasanjo and his select heir Yar'Adua was hard fought. But when the dust settles, the main results will probably be that last Saturday's elections struck a major blow to Abubakar's political ambitions and clipped the political wings of Buhari and other ex-generals. The political machinations of the ex- generals seemed to be a case of trying to conjure up Nigeria's past, and to make that pernicious past an element of the country's democratic present. However, they cannot really criticise Obasanjo and Yar'Adua because any such criticism looks suspiciously like a case of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.
