THE OBASANJO SCORECARD
Part 1-What Criteria?

The just departed President Obasanjo has retired to Abeokuta after eight eventful years in office. He has been succeeded by his preferred successor, Umaru Musa Yar’adua and seeks to go down in history as “father of modern Nigeria” and leader, perhaps for life of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which obviously seeks to be Nigeria’s ruling party for the foreseeable future. The PDP is in power in 30 states out of Nigeria’s 36, (pending the final outcome of the various electoral petitions0 and has secured overwhelming control of the Senate and Federal House of Representatives, including a two-third majority that allows it amend the 1999 Constitution, whenever it so desires. Everything appears to have gone Obasanjo way. How will history record his impact on Nigeria? What will Obasanjo’s “balanced scorecard” look like? This column will now attempt an objective and balanced assessment of the Obasanjo era.

Any one familiar with the concept of the balanced scorecard will understand that the most critical element is coming up with the scorecard measures and deciding relevant criteria. Most evaluations of Obasanjo will suffer from the fact that the evaluators will typically select one single measure which from the evaluator’s frame of reference is overwhelmingly important and judge the president on the basis of that single criterion. So a favourably inclined evaluator may simply judge on the basis of “GSM” or perhaps “debt write-off” while someone determined to fail him will judge on the basis of “power failure” or perhaps the quality of the last elections, and so on. What can be considered objective and balanced criteria to employ in evaluating the entirety of Obasanjo’s performance?

The way to be rational and unbiased in so doing will be to first cast one’s mind to 1999 and ask, if we were setting the evaluation criteria in 1999, rather than today, what indices would be important to us? What were the challenges we would have wanted Obasanjo to address when he was sworn in 1999? Where was Nigeria in 1999, and where were we entitled to expect an effective president to take us to, eight years later? Given the resources available to the nation, what level of development would an objective analyst expect to have occurred within the time period? What were the reasonable and legitimate aspirations and expectations of the voters and citizens of Nigeria in 1999, and to what extent have they been realised? This will be our frame of mind as we propose criteria for evaluating President Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight year reign.

By 1998, General Sani Abacha had turned Nigeria into a pariah in the comity of nations. Nigeria had been expelled from the Commonwealth, and had effectively been ostracised from the United Nations and the international community. The world did not know how to deal with Nigeria, as just as his eyes were shielded by his dark goggles, the regimes intentions were unclear to just about everyone, except Abacha himself. The country was under sanctions, laboured under a mountain of debt, and was shut out of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows except in the oil sector. Domestically the economy was in shambles. Sensible macro-economic management and fiscal transparency were lacking, and the economy was in serious need of reform. The power sector was in crisis, infrastructure was decrepit and in shambles, manufacturing capacity utilisation was rapidly declining and the state laboured under the yoke of inefficient state-owned enterprises and utilities-in telecommunications, power, petroleum marketing and distribution amongst others.

The Abacha regime (and his other military predecessors) had destroyed the practice of politics. Nigeria’s federal constitution had been so bastardised by decades of military command and control that what remained was neither recognisable as a federal nor unitary system. A new breed of mercantilist political class made up largely of friends, business partners, contractors and stooges of the military had taken over the political space, relegating the true politicians into virtual obscurity. Human rights, constitutionalism and the rule of law had been severely eroded. It was doubtful whether civilian democratic rule could ever succeed in Nigeria, and soldiers and their retired colleagues became the new ruling class. The military under Babangida, Abacha and Abdulsalam had elevated corruption to new heights and as was typical with Abacha, he had shocked the world with his crude and tactless version. Transparency International routinely concluded that Nigeria was number 1 on the global corruption league.

Finally the standard of living of Nigerians had deteriorated. The social sector-education, health, mass transportation, rural development, housing etc were in shambles. Unemployment was a ticking time bomb and poverty was growing. Abdulasalam who took over after Abacha’s death did not alter any of the fundamentals and was basically a transitional administration to enable the military hand over to their anointed successor and former commander-in-chief, Olusegun Obasanjo. And so it was Obasanjo’s lot to deal with all of these issues. To my mind the above is a fair summary of the challenges Nigeria faced in 1999, when General Olusegun Obasanjo, the former Head of State of Nigeria, and recently released prison inmate was sworn in as civilian president of the Nigerian nation.

So how do we compress these 1999 set of circumstances and implicit challenges into a compact and measurable scorecard? I propose to adopt a five-dimensional scorecard in evaluating Obasanjo based on a distillation of the issues discussed above into the following blocs-international relations; political issues; economic reform and development; impact on people; and corruption and transparency. The international dimension will include Nigeria’s place in the international community, foreign debt, FDI etc, while political measurements will take account of democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism, federalism, political parties, electoral systems, human rights, press freedom etc. The economic dimensions will cover infrastructure, including power, macro-economic management, economic and sectoral reform, the state of private enterprise and similar issues.

In looking at how the Obasanjo government affected people, we will consider factors such as living standards, (un)employment, education, health, rural development, housing, life expectancy, and security of lives and property. The critical issue of poverty alleviation and creation of a viable middle class will also be discussed under this head. Finally we would consider corruption and the success (or failure) of the regime efforts in that respect, in recognition of the fact that corruption is probably Nigeria’s most critical problem as it cuts across all the other dimensions.


THE OBASANJO SCORECARD
Part 2-Political Issues

In the first part of these series, I outlined the five dimensions on which this column will evaluate President Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight year tenure. This week we look first at Obasanjo’s impact on Nigeria’s political and constitutional development. The relevant issues here include stabilising and entrenching democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism, federalism, independence of the judiciary, legislature, political parties, electoral systems, human rights, press freedom and the state of our political institutions. In 1999, when Obasanjo came in one major political challenge was putting an end to the spectre of military rule which had loomed over Nigeria since the soldiers ventured into politics and governance in 1966.

Obasanjo appears to have succeeded in reducing the probability that military coups could occur in Nigeria in future-it is still premature to say he has eliminated the possibility. In one of his first moves, he decapitated the Nigerian Army and purged it of the more ambitious and politically savvy of its top echelons especially those officers who had acquired wealth and a taste for power under previous military regimes. In the absence of clear ideas about economic policy and reforms, Obasanjo’s first term became notable only for preventing a slide back to military rule. However whatever the nation gained in this respect was arguably lost as Obasanjo himself reverted to acting like a military ruler-seeking to destroy all political opposition, seeking to totally control the National Assembly and subverting internal democracy even within his own party.

The elections which brought Obasanjo to power were largely acceptable to most Nigerians, even as he was the clear favourite of the caretaker Abdulsalam government and its mentor-General Ibrahim Babangida. International observers, notably Obasanjo’s old friend-former President Jimmy Carter of America and his main opponent Chief Olu Falae however complained of malpractices. In certain regions of Nigeria-particularly the “South-South” and South-East those elections laid the foundation for the travesty that elections would later become under Obasanjo. The 2003 elections were much worse than 1999, and by 2007, Nigerian elections had become a sham, with an openly partisan electoral agency, compromised security agencies-police and SSS, and the complete monetisation of democracy. In many parts of the country-Anambra State being a notorious example, but Imo, Edo, Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Rivers, Delta and several others included, the “elections” if they were held at all failed all tests of credibility. The 2007 elections set Nigeria’s democracy and international image back several decades and on that count alone should earn Obasanjo a straight F at least on account of political matters.

But his performance on other political issues was equally unimpressive. President Obasanjo regretfully did not appear to have a well-developed sense of what the long-term political imperatives of the Nigerian nation were-in terms of political reforms and forging a strong, resilient and enduring federation along with entrenching the rule of law and multi-party democracy. If anything his basic instinct was a preservation of the status quo. One wonders what lessons Obasanjo learnt from the June 12 crisis, which he ignored throughout his tenure, refusing even calls for token measures to immortalise MKO Abiola his fellow Abeokuta indigene who won the annulled elections. Indeed Obasanjo ignored all calls for constitutional and political reform, or a national conference (some elements insisted it must be “sovereign”) until he finally found a selfish reason to act-the infamous “third-term project”. It became clear that the single motive behind the National Political Reforms Conference (NPRC) which Obasanjo finally summoned in February 2005 was to secure an amendment of the 1999 Constitution in order to allow him run for a third term as president. The failure of the third-term bid demonstrated that in spite of the president’s best efforts, our political institutions, in this case the Nigerian Legislature and Press retained some strength especially when the chips are down.

With the exception of its abortion of the tenure elongation project however the legislature-both at the national and state levels failed to perform their basic roles under the constitution. In virtually all the states the Houses of Assembly were an extension of the governors’ offices-with the governors choosing the speakers and other officers, corrupting the members to keep them acquiescent while the governors looted their states’ treasuries. At the national level, the situation was only slightly different in that Nigeria’s complex ethnic and religious configuration made one-man control of parliament difficult to sustain, in spite of Obasanjo’s efforts. For the Nigerian Press, the real threat to freedom of the press was no longer the fear of repression or arrest as under the military, but poverty and the erosion of values that the Nigerian society has suffered.

The Judiciary however was the star of the republic. With the exception of the questionable judgment of the Supreme Court in which it failed to find prima facie evidence against Mohammed Abacha, and discharged him from trial for conspiracy and murder, the Supreme Court became the last bulwark against a rampaging incipient dictatorship. In judgment after judgment especially in respect of the absurd impeachments of Joshua Dariye, Rasheed Ladoja and Peter Obi-all engineered in clear breach of the law and constitution by Obasanjo’s presidency and party-the Supreme Court signalled that it was not going to shirk its mandate as the arbiter between law and power, consistently choosing to side with the law. It is fitting that less than one month after Obasanjo’s exit from power, the Supreme Court put an end to the arrogantly contrived House of Andy Uba that Obasanjo had built in Anambra State.

The practice of politics under Obasanjo regressed significantly. To be fair, his military colleagues-Babangida and Abacha had laid the foundation for debasing politics and democracy. They created a new breed of unprincipled politicians driven not by any ideas or notions of service, but by the prospect of easy money and a primitive definition of power. But Obasanjo surprisingly (at least for those of us who regarded him with higher nobility) adopted these types as his favourites. The regime allowed its friends to steal public funds so long as they remained loyal. Obasanjo by and large abandoned statesmanship and elevated ideals for which he was known, and embraced circumstantial, temporal, tactical politics anchored on no discernible or consistent principles.

Indeed a metaphor of politics as a military “garrison” where might was right was articulated on Obasanjo’s behalf by his self appointed PDP Chairman, Ahmadu Ali. Lamidi Adedibu in Oyo and the Uba brothers fully practicalised this new notion of crude power while Obasanjo looked the other way. The national outpouring of joy and relief over the Supreme Court’s ejection of Andy Uba from the Anambra Government House is perhaps the best testimonial about Obasanjo’s performance in relation to political matters-a missed opportunity!


The Obasanjo Scorecard
Part 3-Economy

In the first part of this series, we set out the criteria on which this column will evaluate President’s Olusegun Obasanjo’s remarkable eight-year tenure. Last week we looked at Obasanjo’s impact on Nigeria’s political and constitutional development. Today we examine the ancien regime’s impact on the economy. In agreeing the criteria, we had said that “the economic dimensions will cover infrastructure, including power, macro-economic management, economic and sectoral reform, the state of private enterprise and similar issues”. Followers of this column will of course not be surprised about my basic view of the Obasanjo government’s performance in the economic area. In Part 3 of my recent “Memos to Yar’adua”, I wrote “if there is one area in which your predecessor recorded significant success, it is in the area of macroeconomic management and economic reform”.

In the first term, the regime’s auctioning of three digital mobile licenses to mobile operators (popularly called “GSM” companies) was a turning point in Nigeria’s telecommunications sector development. In 1999, it was inconceivable that more than 33 million Nigerians would own mobile phones in addition to those with various PTO operated land lines just eight years later. The transparent process and the huge license fees paid by the successful companies was a signal to the world that something was happening in Nigeria. Another problem the government inherited in 1999 was the long fuel queues and complete breakdown of the local petroleum distribution system. While problems with domestic petroleum refining and distribution remain, the government displayed a lot of courage and political will in reducing the level of subsidy on petrol prices. It is clear that if oil prices had not risen unexpectedly beyond the previously believed limit of around $40 dollars per barrel, Nigeria would today have a fully de-regulated domestic petroleum sector.

Beyond the oil marketing and telecommunications sectors however, the government in its first term had no clear direction concerning economic policy. The regime failed to address two major imperatives of the Nigerian economy-power and transportation infrastructure. It failed to apply the lessons of the telecommunications sector to power and transportation and simply put more money into the incompetent structures existing in the sector, money for which no discernible value can be seen today. The only other achievement of the first term was the relative financial discipline and “due process” that Obasanjo emphasized. But in the second term, Obasanjo corrected the mistakes of the first-by assembling a core of competent professionals to address the economy. The results were discernible only six months after the inception of the second term leading this columnist to proclaim the economic team “Team of the Year” as early as December 2003.

That economic team led by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as Finance Minister and including Charles Soludo first as Chief Economic Adviser and later as Central Bank Governor, Bode Agusto as Director-General of Budget, Oby Ezekwesili severally as Special Assistant at the Budget Monitoring and Price Intelligence Unit (BMPIU)-referred to as “Due Process” and Minster in charge of Solid Minerals and later Education, Dr Mansur Muktar at the Debt Management Office, Nasir El-Rufai who was Federal Capital Territory Minister and Mallam Nuhu Ribadu amongst others, received authority and protection from Obasanjo (to his everlasting credit) and changed the tenor of the economic discussion in Nigeria. The team articulated a comprehensive and coherent economic agenda-NEEDS and unleashed reforms which have resulted in greater fiscal transparency and prudence, reforms in several sectors including banking, insurance, pensions, capital markets, solid minerals, education, aviation and telecommunications, accumulation of over $40 billion in foreign reserves and resurgence of foreign investment in the Nigerian economy. These reforms also led to the landmark Paris Club deal which wrote-off most of Nigeria’s indebtedness.

The major failings in economic management remained the carry-over of the problems of the first term-insufficient impact on renewing Nigeria’s decrepit infrastructure and a shocking failure of policy and management in the power sector. In the power sector, the government inexplicably allowed the Electric Power Sector Reform Bill to languish in parliament from 2001 to 2005 and even after passage of the Act began to now question the basic model contained in the Act. The failure in the power sector was particularly strange as apart from the promise to “fight corruption”, redressing the problems with power supply was the only other concrete pledge Obasanjo made to Nigerians. The lack of impact on Nigeria’s failing transport infrastructure was equally surprising, given that it was also a clear imperative in 1999 and the belief that the budgetary appropriations to road, water and aviation infrastructure do not match the facts on ground. The regime also failed to put in place a competition and anti-trust law to complement its deregulation, privatisation and liberalisation policy and create an environment conducive to the proper practice of free enterprise.

Like all else in the last regime, there was a lot of “slippage” in the last year to eighteen months of the regime. Key personnel-Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Fola Adeola were pushed out. Oby Ezekwesili left for the World Bank and we hear Mansur Muktar is also heading for the African Development Bank. The regime appeared to relax fiscal prudence as elections and its exit date ran closer and macro-economic discipline and even commitment to reforms wavered. In spite of these failings this column feels the out-gone President earned an A in the overall management of the economy. Significant in the last actions of the government were passage of the Mining and Minerals Act, Fiscal Responsibility Act, new CBN Act etc which seek to institutionalise some of the reforms that have taken place.

POSTSCRIPT

One of this column’s major worries has been precisely the issue of institutionalisation and sustenance of the economic reforms carried out under Obasanjo. Thankfully the ministerial nominations announced by President Umaru Yar’adua contain a core of credible professionals who can take sensible economic decisions and who have had successful private sector careers. Bode Agusto will ensure a link with the past and with our international partners; Dr Shamsudeen Usman will be excellent in any finance or economy-related Ministry and Remi Babalola, a multiple award winner and brilliant chartered accountant and banker who has excelled in a career spanning Price Waterhouse, Arthur Anderson, Zenith Bank and First Bank-where he is currently an Executive Director are some of the names from which I derive great comfort.