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DPMF Publications: DPMN Bulletin |
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An overview of the 1998-1999 Democratization Process in Nigeria (Abubakar Momoh and Paul-Sewa Thovoethin) |
Nigeria’s current civil rule is a product
of two futile attempts by different military heads of state viz, General Ibrahim
Babangida (rtd) and General Sanni Abacha, to transit to civilian rule.
General Abudulsami Abubakar planned the transition, which brought into
power the current civilian regime. The Abubakar political transition programme
(June 1998 - May 1999) is the shortest in Nigeria’s political history, lasting
barely one year.
It is pertinent to note that, out of approximately forty-one years of
Nigeria’s independence, civilians have successfully ruled the country for only
twelve years, while the military have ruled the country for about twenty-nine
years. While Nigeria has
had seven military regimes, it has had just four civilian regimes (Shonekan’s
Interim government and Obasanjo’s civilian rule inclusive).
This situation has enormous impact on the political development of
Nigeria.
In order to understand and explain the present situation, there is need to
reflect on the past. It is
on this premise that this article will x-ray the democratisation programme of
the Abubakar Military regime and set
in context the nature of the civilian regime that was established through
the transition process.
Overview of General Abubakar
Abdulsalam’s Democratisation Process
The 1998-1999 transition programme was against the background of two
successive military authored political transition programmes, which were dubious
to start and ended up in fiasco. The first was the lengthy political transition
programme of the Babangida regime (1985-1993) and the second by the Abacha
regime (1995-1998). The Abacha transition programme, like the Babangida episode,
was a political fraud designed to entrench General Abacha in power and was
inconclusive due to his death ps in the country. He admitted the failure
of past attempts at democratisation in the country. In his national
broadcast of Monday July 20, 1998, he said:
While recrimination and buck-passing would be unhealthy, we must admit that mistakes have been made, particularly as our most recent attempt at democratisation was marred by manoeuvring and manipulations of structures and actions. At the end, we have only succeeded in creating a defective foundation on which a solid democratic structure can neither be constructed nor sustained. This is an overwhelming verdict from our consultations (Guardian, July 21, 1998:15).
In
the light of this, he dissolved the five political parties registered by the
Abacha regime and their assets were taken over by administrators appointed by
the government. Similarly, all previous elections conducted under these parties
were cancelled, for lack of credibility. Immediately, senior civil
servants were posted to take charge of local government councils, for the
management of their affairs. In a bid to convince the world that the country has
finally turned to the path of democracy, Abubakar pledged not to interfere with
party formation. Consequently, Abacha’s electoral commission, the
National Electoral Commission (NECON), was dissolved and a new electoral body
was established. This he called the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC),
which was headed by Justice Ephraim Akpata, a retired Supreme Court judge.
This body was charged with the responsibility of registering political parties,
registration of voters and the conduct of elections.
Furthermore, in an attempt to
march towards a genuine and fully-fledged democratic civilian rule, many
transition implementation agencies established by the Abacha regime were
dissolved. These include the Transition Implementation Committee (TIC),
National Reconciliation Committee (NARECOM) and Power Devolution Committee (PDC).
The decrees establishing those agencies were also repealed. In light of the
foregoing, political activities resumed in all parts of the country. The
electoral commission opened the floodgate for party registration, with some
specific guidelines. Thus, about fifty political associations emerged
within a month. However, only thirty of them collected registration forms from
INEC headquarters and, by the end of the close of submission of registration
forms, only twenty-four of these associations had returned their forms.
Out of these twenty-four associations, only nine of them met the conditions for
registration of political parties, in accordance with INEC guidelines.
Consequently, nine political associations were registered provisionally as
political parties. These include the Alliance for Democracy (AD), All Peoples
Party (APP), Democratic Alliance Movement (DAM), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP),
Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), United Democratic Party (UDP), the United
Peoples Party (UPP) and the Movement for Democracy and Justice (MDJ).
On December 5, 1998, the
election for local government councils was held. This election was used as
a yardstick for the final registration of political parties. The electoral
guidelines stated, among other things, that any party that would eventually be
registered must score at least a minimum of five percent of the total number of
votes in at least 24 states. Fulfilling this and other conditions, the
Alliance for Democracy (AD), All Peoples Party (APP) and Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) were granted full and final registration by the
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the three parties that
qualified to participate in the remaining elections of the transition programme.
The result of the chairmanship and councillorship elections into the
local government councils showed the AD having 100 chairman and 1,071
councilors, APP, 459 chairmen and 4,650 councilors while MDJ got three
chairpersons and 61 councilors. NSM
and PRP won two chairmanship seats each, with 8 and 21 councillorship seats
respectively. The UPP won
one chairmanship and 26 councillorship seats, while DAM and UDP won no
chairmanship seat but managed to get four and 26 councillorship seats,
respectively. (Tribune,
December 15, 1998:2).
This result shows that the
Peoples Democratic Party won the majority of the chairmanship and
councillorship seats and also has a wider geographical spread than the remaining
parties. This result also shows that the All Peoples Party (APP) came
second with votes drawn from the north. The Alliance for Democracy (AD)
came third with the concentration of their support from the southwestern part of
the country.
On January 9, 1999, Governorship
and Houses of Assembly elections were held nationwide. The results were
not all that different from the pattern the local government elections took.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) maintained its lead by winning twenty-one
Governorship seats, the All Peoples Party (APP), won nine Governorship
seats and the Alliance for Democracy (AD) maintained its domination of the
southwestern states by winning in six southwestern states. Elections into
the state Houses of Assembly also showed the same pattern of victory by the
political parties. That election was followed by the National Assembly
election, which was held on February 20, 1999. The Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) also maintained its lead, by winning sixty-nine Senatorial seats and
majority seats in the House of Representatives election; it was followed by the
All Peoples Party (APP), which won twenty-one Senatorial seats and had a
considerable number of seats in the House of Representatives. The Alliance
for Democracy (AD) maintained its third position by winning nineteen Senatorial
seats and the least number of seats in the House of Representatives. The
major upset of that election was the AD victory of two Senatorial and two House
of Representatives seats in Enugu State, which was one of the strong bases of
the Peoples Democratic Party in the eastern part of the country.
Due to the dominance of the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in all previous elections, the scene was set for
an easy win for any presidential candidate presented by that party. As the
February 27, 1999 presidential election drew nearer, the AD and APP fashioned
out an alliance to checkmate the unchallenged popularity of PDP. On
realising that General Olusegun Obasanjo (Rtd), was selected as the presidential
flag bearer of PDP, in the party’s presidential primaries held in Jos, Plateau
State, the AD and APP sealed their alliance talk. Chief Olu Falae of the
Alliance for Democracy was therefore chosen as the joint presidential candidate
of both the All Peoples Party (APP) and the Alliance for Democracy (AD).
The most interesting thing here was that both presidential candidates were from
the southwestern states of Ogun and Ondo, respectively. This was the first
time in the political history of the country when the presidential candidates
came from a particular zone of the country. This development may not be
unconnected with the fact that Chief M.K.O. Abiola, the acclaimed winner of the
June 12, 1993, presidential election (who eventually died in detention, after
the annulment of that election) was from that zone. This gesture was
ostensibly used to appease the Yoruba of the southwestern part of the country.
The 1999 Presidential Election
The march toward civilian rule in Nigeria moved to the crucial stage in the
last days of February 1999, with the presidential election. On February
27, 1999, the presidential election was held. There was low voter turnout
in most parts of the country. The day after the election, international
observers or, more precisely, members of the International Election
Monitoring Group (IEMG), invited by the government to allay fears of bias or
“hidden agendas” in the elections, in unison estimated voter turnout at
about 20%. However, the actual election results put the turnout at between
30% and 40%.
There was a widespread disparity between the number of voters observed at the
polling stations and the final results that were reported from several states.
Mr. Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States of America, who was head
of the Carter Centre, one of the Election Monitoring Groups, subscribed to this
view. Other election monitoring groups, such as the National Democratic
Institute for International affairs, the Commonwealth Observer Group, the
European Union and the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), a coalition of
Nigerian human rights and civil liberty groups, shared Carter’s view on the
irregularities during the election. Most of them, however, said that they
did not think the irregularities were massive enough to question the result.
This was partly informed by their findings that both the Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP) and the All Peoples Party (APP) were involved in box stuffing and
inflation of election results, the commonest of the irregularities (Conscience
International, May 1999:19).
This notwithstanding, the result
of the presidential election confirmed the trend that emerged since the
inception of elections in Abubakar’s transition programme. The PDP
maintained its lead in most states and zones of the Federation. The hopes
raised by the AD/APP alliance proved misplaced, as the alliance lost many states
to the rampaging PDP. This, however, was attributed to the handling of the
alliance and the exit of many of the APP presidential aspirants from the party
on the eve of the election.
In all, the PDP candidate, General Obasanjo, won 18,738,15 votes representing
62.78% of the votes, against the 11,110,287 votes representing 37.22% won by
Chief Olu Falae of the AD/APP presidential alliance. The final score sheet
of that election is shown below:
TABLE 1: PRESEDENTIAL ELECTION RESULT, 1999
|
No. |
NAME OF STATE |
TOTAL VOTE CAST |
APP
NAME OF CANDIDATE CHIEF OF FALAE VOTE SCORED |
% VOTES SCORED |
PDP
NAME OF CANDIDATE GENERAL O. OBASANJO VOTE SCORED |
% VOTES SCORED |
|
1 |
Abia |
538,918 |
175,095 |
32.67 |
360.823 |
67.33 |
|
2 |
Adamawa |
845,107 |
177,868 |
21.05 |
667,239 |
78.95 |
|
3 |
Akwa
Ibom |
383,278 |
152,534 |
17.27 |
730.744 |
82.73 |
|
4 |
Anambra |
833,178 |
199,461 |
23.94 |
633,717 |
76.06 |
|
5 |
Bauchi |
1,176,233 |
342,233 |
29.09 |
834,308 |
70.91 |
|
6 |
Bayelsa |
610,032 |
152,220 |
24.45 |
457.812 |
75.05 |
|
7 |
Benue |
1,252,957 |
269,045 |
21.47 |
983.912 |
78.53 |
|
8 |
Borno |
915,975 |
334,593 |
36.53 |
581,382 |
63.47 |
|
9 |
Cross
River |
876,156 |
283,468 |
32.35 |
592.688 |
67.65 |
|
10 |
Delta |
816,574 |
240,344 |
29.43 |
576,230 |
70.57 |
|
11 |
Ebonyi |
345,921 |
94,934 |
27.44 |
250.987 |
72.56 |
|
12 |
Edo |
679,784 |
163,203 |
24.01 |
516,581 |
75.99 |
|
13 |
Ekiti |
713,690 |
522,072 |
73.15 |
191,618 |
26.85 |
|
14 |
Enugu |
835,586 |
195,168 |
23.36 |
640,418 |
76.64 |
|
15 |
Gombe |
844,539 |
311,381 |
36.87 |
533,158 |
63.13 |
|
16 |
Imo |
736,106 |
314,339 |
42.70 |
421,767 |
57.3 |
|
17 |
Jigawa |
548,596 |
237,025 |
43.21 |
3,711,571 |
56.79 |
|
18 |
Kaduna |
1,676,029 |
381,350 |
22.75 |
1,292,676 |
77.25 |
|
19 |
Kano |
904,713 |
222,458 |
24.59 |
682,255 |
75.41 |
|
20 |
Katsina |
1,193,397 |
229,181 |
19.20 |
964,216 |
80.80 |
|
21 |
Kebbi |
512,229 |
172,336 |
33.64 |
339,893 |
66.36 |
|
22 |
Kogi |
984,710 |
476,807 |
48.42 |
507,903 |
51.58 |
|
23 |
Kwara |
659,598 |
189,088 |
28.67 |
470,510 |
71.33 |
|
24 |
Lagos |
1,751,981 |
1,542,969 |
88.07 |
209,012 |
11.93 |
|
25 |
Nasarawa |
597,008 |
173,277 |
29.02 |
423,731 |
70.98 |
|
26 |
Niger |
871,130 |
140,465 |
16.12 |
730,665 |
83.88 |
|
27 |
Ogun |
475,904 |
332,345 |
69.83 |
143,564 |
30.17 |
|
28 |
Ondo |
801,797 |
668,471 |
83.37 |
133,323 |
16.63 |
|
29 |
Osun |
794,639 |
607,628 |
76.47 |
187,001 |
23.53 |
|
30 |
Oyo |
931,178 |
693,510 |
75.29 |
227,668 |
24.71 |
|
31 |
Plateau |
672,442 |
173,370 |
25.78 |
499,072 |
74.22 |
|
32 |
Rivers |
1,565,603 |
213,328 |
13.63 |
1,352,275 |
86.37 |
|
33 |
Sokoto |
354,427 |
198,829 |
56.10 |
155,598 |
43.90 |
|
34 |
Taraba |
871,039 |
81,290 |
9.33 |
789,749 |
90.67 |
|
35 |
Yobe |
311,578 |
165,061 |
52.98 |
146,517 |
47.02 |