What Nigeria Lost By Abacha’s Untimely Death
May 29, 2005
I was an elected member of the 1994-1995 National Constitutional Conference, which sat exactly for one year (June 26 1994 -June 26 1995) and had reasonable time to discuss and ponder over many thorny issues that concerned the Nigerian polity. We were anxious that the military should disengage as soon as possible and hand over to elected civilian governments at all levels. At one time we passed a resolution, later rescinded, setting January 1996 as the date for hand over. The work of the National Constitutional Conference culminated in a two-volume report, Volume 1 of which was report of the constitutional conference containing the draft constitution 1995.
In December 1995 we held a very successful “All politicians summit” At Eko Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos which I had the privilege to chair. I describe the summit as “very successful” notwithstanding its disruption by agents of the government. It was obvious that General Abacha was in no hurry to disengage. We then formed the Institute of Civil Society, which again I had the privilege to chair, one of whose objectives was to sensitize the Nigerian public on the need for an early return to democratic ethos as we considered military rule which is imposed on and not elected by the populace, a vicious form of colonialism. It eventually materialised that Abacha set October 1, 1998 as the date for the transition from military to civilian government. But it was soon clear, judging by the decisions of all the five registered political parties to nominate him as the sole presidential candidate that it was his wish to hand over from Abacha as a military head of state to Abacha as civilian president. Some of us did not think that this was the right thing for Nigeria and at a meeting of the “G34″ in April 1998, we decided to advise Abacha by a well considered memorandum not to countenance the prompting by sycophants that he should succeed himself. Within two months of the G-34 memorandum, Abacha was dead and so the question of self-succession also died a natural death.
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