same attitude – ‘I do not need a job’ – but this time he added a rider: “It is not my job to amend any
constitution; it is the prerogative of the National Assembly. If the National Assembly chooses to
amend the Constitution, I cannot stop them. I can veto it but they can override the veto.”
Later in the year, some time after these series of conversations with Obasanjo, the ruling Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) published a document dated December 2005 titled "Declaration of
Principles concerning amendments to the Nigerian Constitution" restating the views expressed to me
earlier by Obasanjo as the official party position. This publication confirmed that the party leaders -
Dr. Ahmadu Ali (Chairman), Ojo Maduekwe (National Secretary), Tony Anenih (Chairman, Board of
Trustees), Bode George (National Vice Chairman, South-West) and Dr. Bello Halliru Mohammed
(National Vice Chairman, North-West) strongly supported the ‘constitutional amendments’ – the
phrase that later became the respectable-sounding pseudonym for the tenure elongation project.
The Benefit of Hindsight
After thinking about this addition of the rider by Obasanjo and sharing it with a few people, we
concluded that indeed there was a project underway for a third term in office, but Obasanjo obviously
did not want it to be public at that point. It was at that point that I remembered an event earlier in the
year whose significance did not occur to me at the time it happened. In January 2005, the Economist
Intelligence Unit (EIU) held its first roundtable with the government of Nigeria. The roundtable
organizers approached us, the economic team, to collaborate, with me, as the FCT Minister, playing
the prominent role of chief host. President Obasanjo came and delivered a speech, as did I, along
with some other cabinet ministers and business leaders.
The event wound up being a great success and in the end, the Economist’s senior economist covering
Nigeria, David Cowan, came to my house for dinner before leaving. He thanked me for my efforts in
getting the roundtable organized, and said, “You know, our projections in The Economist’s
Intelligence Unit show that if Nigeria continues on its current trajectory, by the middle of 2007 when
you guys hand over power, Nigeria will have about $40 billion of reserves and nearly $20 billion in
your excess crude account (ECA).” At the time we had about $10 billion in the ECA. “Really?” I
replied. “The numbers are going to be that big?”
“Well, that was our projection,” he said. “And we are often right.”
“Wow. That will be wonderful. So we will be leaving a nice legacy for the next
administration.”
He continued, “But you know something? I am an economist. I run these numbers, I conduct
these scenarios and I see this. But you know someone else that knows? Your potential successors.
They can smell the money. They know that the way you are going, by the middle of 2007, there will
be a large amount of money in the bank. They are not economists, they do not know the numbers, but
like dogs with raw meat, they can smell it.”
“What are you telling me?” I asked.
“If your boss has not done so already, you guys have to start thinking about who is going to
succeed you. Because the guys that want to steal already know there is a huge bank account in the
future and they will start planning now. I have not seen anything indicative of a succession plan. You
tell Obasanjo to start planning. Ok?”
When I asked him to share some of these figures with me, he said they were not yet
authorized for publication.
“I cannot give you the numbers; I can’t give you the projections. But I can tell you, this is
what we see.”
“Please tell the minister of finance, share this with her.” I said.
“No. I am not telling the minister of finance. I am telling you.”
“Why me?”
“Because throughout the roundtable, I observed that you have a different level of relationship
with Obasanjo than Ngozi has.”
I did not understand what he meant and I did not care initially. I promised him I would share it with
the president. As soon as he was gone, I called President Obasanjo and arranged to meet him. He was
at his farm in Otta for the New Year holidays.
When I arrived to discuss this issue, the president had a number of other officials and governors in the
room for various meetings. Given the sensitivity of my news, I requested to speak to him alone, so he
finished his consultations with everyone else and once it was just the two of us, I told him everything
I had learned from the EIU economist. Almost the moment I began sharing this knowledge, President
Obasanjo left the settee and sat down on the floor cross-legged, compelling me to do the same. So
there we sat, secretively, like two little boys plotting to eat some candy we should not. You see, that
gesture, which was involuntary – he did not realize he did it – leaving his chair to sit on the floor,
said a lot about how important he considered the subject matter. Any time you are being
conspiratorial with Obasanjo or something like that he wants to sit on the floor and bring you closer
so that nobody else can hear. I think it has something to do with his military training and the suspicion
that such rooms may be wiretapped for voice recordings. We sat there talking in hushed tones, only
the two of us, in this huge living room. When I was finished, he thanked me for sharing this
information with him.
“Did you know about this, Mr. President?” I asked.
“Not really.” He paused, and then asked, “So what are we going to do?”
“Mr. President, I am just a messenger. My job is to give you the information. You are the
president; it is up to you to figure out what to do with it.”
“No Nasir, this is a problem for the country. What are we going to do? None of my
prospective successors will make good use of this.”
“Well who are those seriously interested in succeeding you?”
“(Vice President) Atiku is obviously interested, but you know I will never hand this over to
him. Babangida is interested and you know very well what he will do with these levels of financial
resources, he already showed his hand the last time he had the chance.”
“But Mr. President, the point that the EIU economist was making is that the guys interested in
succeeding you can already smell the money, so what are YOU going to do?”
“I do not know but we have to do something - Something drastic.”
“Drastic?”
“Yes.”
I remember that word – drastic, and he had started using the pronoun ‘we’, not ‘I’. I left Ota for Abuja
the same day in a pensive mood, thinking that the country was again at the crossroads. The leader we
chose in 2007 would either make or mar the legacy of reforms we would leave behind, and invest or
mismanage the accidental monetary windfall by way of reserves and excess crude oil earnings that
had begun to build up by then. I prayed that Obasanjo and his political advisors would make the right
choices and did not even direct my mind to the possibility that Obasanjo would want to stay on
beyond 2007! Unknown to me, things would move in quick succession from that day of innocence to
the emergence of the third term intrigues within weeks. It is an indication of my political naivety that I
did not get it nor link the two issues until much later.
He Gets It Who Wants It Not
Shortly after that, President Obasanjo called me and said he had decided, because of persistent calls
for a national conference[10] to discuss the future of the country, to convene a national political
conference in Abuja. One of the mandates of the conference was to recommend which constitutional
amendments are needed to make our democracy work better. Representatives from each state were to
attend the conference and I was to nominate two persons from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to
participate. We nominated retired General A. B. Mamman from Abaji to represent the original
inhabitants of the FCT and Reverend Okoye, the chairman of the local chapter of Christian
Association of Nigeria (CAN) and a pillar of the Igbo Community in Abuja, to represent everyone
else. Later, one-time Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) chairman Princess Esther Audu was
nominated by President Obasanjo to represent special interests.
When I went to the president with the list and bio data of the FCT nominees, I decided to take the
opportunity to ask Obasanjo for the first time about the rumours that had begun to circulate then, of a
third term project. I got straight to the point.
“Mr. President – third term, has this conference got anything to do with the rumours of such a
plan?” I asked.
“There is nothing like a third term being discussed at the conference. You will receive the
conference agenda soon and see that the rumour is unfounded.” I believed him and left convinced that
the whole 'third term' rumour had no basis. I did not connect the rumour with the conversation we had
in Ota a few weeks earlier, but the rumours did not go away.
At a point after the conference commenced in earnest, we became increasingly concerned that there
was a ‘third term agenda’ even if the president was unaware of or sitting on the fence about it. We felt
this strongly even though Obasanjo continued to completely deny it. I came to the conclusion that we
were kept out of it because Obasanjo's political team either did not trust us, or thought we would not
buy into such a major constitutional manipulation. I reflected deeply about the whole situation for
some time and decided to confront Obasanjo for the last time and offer some advice. I met him in his
office and asked again about ‘third term’ and got his standard, qualified denial of any such thing. I
then offered what I considered to be my advice in the midst of the denials.
“Just listen to me. Please, Mr. President, do not interrupt me, sir. Let me speak first and then you can
respond.” He agreed. I continued, “We are hearing too many stories about this to believe that there is
nothing like that. There is something. You have told me that the National Assembly can amend the
constitution that is true, they can. You have convened a conference to recommend, among other issues,
what parts of the constitution should be amended. After adding up the rumours to what you have said
to me, and to what you have just done, I have come to the clear conclusion that there is a third term
project. Now, I may be wrong, or I may be right. But Mr. President, let me give you my own piece of
advice. I have studied you as a person; I have studied your life. I have come to the conclusion that the
only things that you ever get in your life are those that you did not ask for, struggle for or fight to
have.”
I paused to let him digest this. He remained silent but exhibited some discomfiture. I went on, “Let me
repeat sir. Throughout your life and your career, both professional and political, any time you made a
move to get something you wanted, or took any active steps to get anything, you did not get it. The
only time you got anything is when you sat back and let the desired thing come to you. That is your life
pattern. I believe in that. I believe very much that everyone has something about him such that God
blesses him in a particular way. There are people that can only get something when they work hard
for it. Then there are those who just get it on a platter. If one does not understand what kind one is,
and remain consistent, one would get it wrong often. In summary, what I am saying is this, Mr.
President: if you want a third term, do not do anything to try to get it. Then you will probably get it,
even though I think it is not a good idea. But if there is nothing like third term, or if I am wrong in my
conclusions, then forgive me, and we have nothing to worry about.”
Obasanjo looked at me, unwavering. “Are you finished?” he asked.
“I am done.”
“Thank you.”
“That is all?”
“Yes, that is all. Now get out of my office.”
The National Political Reform Conference (NPRC) sat between February and July 2005. We got our
Paris Club debt relief at the end of June 2005, and President Obasanjo presented the Report of the
public record. However, I can say that the conference was not a complete exercise in futility in that
certain important things were achieved. However, from the standpoint of achieving what the third
term protagonists may have desired to say things did not quite go the way they wanted would be an
understatement. None of the agreements and recommendations of the conference included or even
touched upon flexibility regarding term limits. Instead, a movement even began to spring up promoting
a single six-year term in lieu of two four-year terms for the office of the president. This, of course,
did not stop allegations that Obasanjo encouraged a variety of gambits toward his aim: put one ethnic
group against another, one religion against another, one gender against another, one northern group
against one southern group, one northern group of one religion against another northern group of
another faith, get the Niger Delta representatives to say they wanted 50% of oil revenues – all kinds
of rumoured shenanigans. At the end of the day the national political conference was a giant waste of
time and over N900 million, as far as presidential term limits were concerned.
Platter of Gold
I firmly stand by what I said to him that day with regard to life patterns and I believe that events since
then have only proven my thesis correct. Obasanjo did not understand that any time he desired
political or career advancement, anytime he took any step toward achieving any position, he never got
it. If one reads Obasanjo’s various biographies carefully, as I have several times, one will understand
that pattern about his life. The only reason he became head of state the first time around was when his
boss was killed. The only reason he became president the second time, when Chief Abiola died, was
because someone from the southwest was needed as president to assuage the grievance arising from
the annulment of the June 12 election which the deceased Abiola had won, and people like Generals
Ibrahim Babangida and Aliyu Gusau came to him, drafted him, organized everything and handed it to
him for what many people alleged was in pursuit of their interest and long-term survival. Obasanjo
did not spend one penny to be president. It was all done for him by others and handed to him on a
platter.
When he aspired to be Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1985, and even bega
n learning
French so that he would be bilingual, he lost to Boutrous-Ghali, despite being a far better candidate
and having a much more formidable international profile than Boutros-Ghali. Any time Obasanjo
made a move to want something; he did not get it, simple! When we had a political crisis in 1993 and
Obasanjo desired to head the interim national government, he lost out to the less prominent Chief
Ernest Shonekan the moment he made a couple of moves. This is how Obasanjo is, and I am not sure
he thought that about his life until I laid it out to him. I am not even sure he ever took me seriously on
that subject. Still, he could not restrain himself and let things ride even if he believed what I thought
about his life pattern.
Third Term’s not a Charm
One day in late October 2005, an Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) alumnus and friend who chaired
the board of a federal parastatal and was very close to Obasanjo, called to say we needed to talk. I
invited him over for dinner, and following the meal we went into my study to discuss the issue that
had simmered below the surface during dinner.
“I want to talk to you about the third term project,” he said. This was the first semi-official
acknowledgement that a third term effort was, indeed, underway and despite all my suspicion, I was
still taken aback to finally hear it confirmed. This friend, along with Andy Uba, had by then emerged
as Obasanjo’s closest allies and confidants and if there was anyone who would know about a third
term effort, it would definitely be my one dinner guest that evening.
“So there is a third term project?” I asked.
He laughed. “Of course there is. You are too well-informed to tell me you do not know that.”