Recognising the heroes of our democracy

It will be exactly six years in May this year that the Senate shot down the kite of tenure elongation, popularly called Third Term agenda, for former President Olusegun Obasanjo. And so, it is commendable that after a long while, the management of Leader & Company Limited, publishers of Thisday newspaper, has decided to honour some of those who stood against the tenure elongation project.

The third term debacle was a moment that almost pulled down the political matrix of the country because of the desire of Obasanjo to remain in office beyond his 2007 terminal date. Of course, the agenda failed to see the light of the day and the president got very angry. The aftermath of his anger decimated the polity in no small measure, as Obasanjo was fixated in casting his venom on those personalities that frustrated his ambition for a third term in office.

Obviously, chief among those on Obasanjo’s hit list was his estranged deputy, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.  Others included the former President of the Senate, Senator Ken Nnamani; and many other parliamentarians who spearheaded the anti-Third Term campaign in the National Assembly.

For many of those who stood on the way of the tenure elongation bill, their action was akin to standing on the way of a moving train as Obasanjo is legendary for his vindictiveness. Not only did Obasanjo engineer a process that deregistered many of these political actors from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, through a weird policy  of membership card revalidation during the Ahmadu Ali leadership of the party, the President further ensured that he stood in the ways of these personalities even in their attempts to actualise their political ambitions in other political parties.

The case of Abubakar, who was accused of phantom corruption cases to disqualify him from participating in the 2007 presidential election on the platform of the then Action Congress, remains a reference point of executive recklessness of that time.

That Abubakar could withstand the storm and was able to participate in the 2007 presidential election through recourse to the judiciary as being the last resort of hope for the common man, further defined the character of our democracy and the statesmanship expected of a modern day politician.

It would also be recalled that in spite of the fact that the PDP had a majority of seats in the Senate at that time (and still has), members of the party in the Red Chambers dropped their toga of partisanship and made the chairman of the party, Ahmadu Ali, to kiss the dust by a way of public apology when he called senators a bunch of rascals.

It is doubtful if our present crop of senators could demonstrate such candor, by dwarfing their political ambitions in insisting on respectability of the lawmaking institution.

It is therefore not in doubt that history will continue to remember those actors who put their political career and, indeed, lives on the line to ensure that the chain of our democracy is unbroken. They are the heroes of our democracy.

The decision of Thisday newspaper to put Alhaji Atiku Abubakar on its list of awardees of Lifetime Achievers is the minimum recognition these gallant men deserve from us. 

Okohue, a public affairs commentator wrote in from Benin, Edo State.