NIGERIA NEXT PRESIDENT FROM THE NORTH?

New African, Apr 2004 by Fisher-Thompson, Jim

John Paden, one of America's foremost Africanists, has revealed that President Obasanjo has convinced his ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) to field a Northern candidate for the next presidential elections in 2007. Jim Fisher-Thompson reports from Washington DC.

At a time when Nigeria "lost its moral compass", spiralling into sectarian violence, President Olusegun Obasanjo, helped preserve national unity by encouraging Northern Muslims to continue working within the political system.

To that end, he helped convince the ruling PDP to agree that in 2007 their candidate would come from the Muslim North. This was revealed at a recent meeting in Washington DC by John Paden, professor of international studies at George Mason University.

"Now, whether that's true or not, everyone in the North believes that in 2007, the president will be a Northern Muslim," the scholar said at a discussion on Sharia and the state of Muslim/non-Muslim relations in Nigeria at a meeting sponsored by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in Washington DC.

"The president's accommodation makes sense," Paden said, "because there are three experienced Muslim candidates waiting in the wings. Vice President Abubakar Atiku is one, General Muhammadu Buhari is another, and General Babangida is a third. Each has constituencies and different backgrounds and experiences in the North itself. And so, no one wants to pull themselves out of the game at this stage and say, 'we've given up on constitutional politics, when our main man could be it'."

Paden praised President Obasanjo for the way he reacted to the "divisive and sometimes bloody confrontations" over Sharia, by reassuring Muslim Northerners of their place in the political life of the nation, which "has in a curious way kept hope alive ... and kept the Sharia [controversy] off the front pages".

Since 1999, the year Obasanjo was first elected president, 12 northern states have expanded or announced the expansion of Sharia. After a celebrated case where a Nigerian woman was sentenced to be stoned to death for adultery, the USCIRF sent a delegation to Nigeria to examine religious freedom.

Following the trip last September, the USCIRF issued a statement saying it "remains concerned about the ongoing Muslim-Christian violence that has resulted in the death of thousands since the expansion of Sharia". The USCIRF was established by Congress in 1998 to investigate religious persecution and issue reports on sectarian violence.

On the Sharia judgements, Paden, one of America's foremost Africanists, said Obasanjo chose wisely to turn the issue into a public dialogue rather than to deal with it as a federal versus state confrontation. "His effort recently to engender a national debate on capital punishment is a surrogate way of getting at the punishment issue of Sharia", Paden noted. "I think he would be perfectly happy to say: 'Well, if we abolish capital punishment, we won't have to deal with the stoning issue anymore'."

Another factor pushing unification is that "the party system has never allowed for religious or ethnic parties in Nigeria, from the time of the British indirect-rule system up to the present," said the professor. "So if you came up with the Christian Democrats or Muslim Democrats or something like that, the Independent Election Commission would just say, 'no, don't go that route'.

"It is the extremism that might lead to communal violence, because that is what is politically destablising. That's how you get to a failed state [status]. That's how you could get the military back in and bring the house down if you really wanted to."

The point is, "if you can get people involved in electoral politics - and this is one of the blessings of democratic federalism - people can express their grievances through these [non-religious] means rather than resort to sectarian violence when they feel powerless or provoked," the professor concluded.