If you watch events carefully as they unfold in the country, you would agree with historians that history has a way of repeating itself. One of the teachers I admired most in my undergraduate days, Professor Innocent (IFA) Uzoechi, usually had this compulsory question for freshers: “The lesson men learn from history is that they do not learn from history – Discuss” You could agree or disagree with him, depending on the strength of your argument. But there was always some logic in the assertion. Personalities may change, the environment may differ but there are certain trends that keep recurring.
In 1993, Uche Chukwumerije (later, senator) was the minister for information under the infamous Interim National Government (ING) put in place by the departing military administration of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB). Babangida, who toppled a fellow putschist, General Muhammadu Buhari (current President), in 1985, had taken Nigerians on a senseless circus, promising to conduct a transparent election that would usher in credible democracy.
A presidential election, which held on June 12, 1993, saw newspaper publisher, MKO Abiola, coasting to victory. But Babangida annulled the election, citing frivolous reasons. It thus became clear to Nigerians that Babangida had no agenda of handing over power to anybody. Consequent agitations across the land forced him to constitute the ING, headed by Ernest Shonekan.
It fell on Chukwumerije, as the information minister, to explain to Nigerians and the international community the true state of affairs in the country. But the minister turned his assignment to declaration of war against the pro-democracy organisations and other Nigerians that demanded the validation of the Abiola mandate. Chukwumerije accused Abiola of treason for insisting that he be declared the President-elect. Subsequent events led to the arrest of Abiola, who eventually died in detention. Nigeria is yet to recover from the spill-over of that thoughtless action by Babangida.
Thirty years after that fiasco, another minister of information, Lai Mohammed, is toying with allegations of treason against another politician, Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP) in the February 25, 2023, election. Obi’s offence is his argument that Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who was declared President-elect by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), did not win the election. Obi insists that he is the winner of the election and has filed a petition with the Presidential Election Petition Panel, raising grounds on why Tinubu should not be President.
Lai Mohammed is not taking kindly to the audacity by Obi, hence the treason charge against him and his running mate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed. The minister had in Washington DC, during his official engagements with some international media organisations, accused Obi and Datti of inciting people to violence over the outcome of the presidential election, describing the action as treasonable.
“Obi and his Vice, Datti-Ahmed, cannot be threatening Nigerians that if the President-elect, Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC) is sworn in on May 29, it will be the end of democracy in Nigeria. This is treason. You cannot be inviting insurrection, and this is what they are doing,” he alleged.
Obi has dismissed the allegations, describing them as fictitious and malicious. For emphasis, he stressed: “I have never discussed or encouraged anyone to undermine the Nigerian state; I’ve never sponsored or preached any action against the Nigerian state. Those initiating these actions have increasingly used their official positions and agents to make false allegations against me. I’m on record as always advocating peace and issue-based campaign and not campaigning based on ethnicity or religion. I’m committed to due process and am presently seeking redress in Court.”
There is nothing further any person can expect from a patriotic Nigerian who feels sufficiently aggrieved on how he and his followers have been treated. Seeking redress through the court, as Obi is doing, is regarded as an acceptable action in strengthening democracy all over the world. There are even instances of such commendable actions here. In the Second Republic, when the presidential candidate of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), Chief Obafemi Awolowo, felt cheated in the 1979 election, he took his grievances to the courts and followed them up to the Supreme Court. From 2003 to 2011, when Buhari repeatedly ran for the presidency and lost, he sought redress in the courts. In all these instances, neither was Awolowo nor Buhari accused of treason or intimidated by the government of the day. Obi’s case should not be different.
Lai Mohammed may wish to know that treason is not a word he can drop recklessly. Apart from being a minister, he is a lawyer who should know better. Treason is a weighty offence. The laws of the land describe it as conspiracy at declaration of war against the state. The penalty is punishment by death. This is not what someone in a position of authority as the minister should wish a fellow citizen that has not committed any offence.
There is danger in the tricky game by Lai Mohammed and the government. Externalizing the allegation of treason against Obi without proof is not good for the image of the country. It portrays Nigeria as a system without laws. Everything is not about politics.
There are times that national interest counts. This is one of such moments. By its panicky mode, the Buhari government is confirming the suspicion by Nigerians that it acted in cahoots with INEC to rig the election for Tinubu.
The government is also showing that it is working against the interest of Nigerians and confirms the views of Harvard University political scientists, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in their book, How democracies Die, that “democracies may die at the hands not od generals but of elected leaders – presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power”. This is the crux of the Lai Mohammed phantom treason charge against Obi and Yusuf-Datti.