By Reuben Abati
Former President Obasanjo is a
courageous patriot and statesman who tells truth to power when he is convinced
leaders are doing wrong” – Muhammadu Buhari, March 4, 2015.
“Buhari is sick in the spirit,
body and soul. Let’s beg him to go and rest…Let’s give chance to another
person” – Olusegun Obasanjo, January 21, 2019.
On Sunday, President Olusegun
Obasanjo addressed a press conference at the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential
Library (OOPL) in Abeokuta where he gave the equivalent of a state of the
nation address which was essentially a testimonial on the performance of the
President Muhammadu Buhari administration, an assessment of the integrity and
credibility of the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) vis-a-vis the upcoming 2019 general elections, and a general
commentary on recent developments in the country and the tactics and methods of
the incumbent administration. This is the second time in the last one year that
President Obasanjo would be taking on the Buhari administration in an extensive
and provocative expose. In his 2018 intervention, Obasanjo had advised
President Buhari not to bother to run for a second term in office because his
performance was disappointing and even more importantly, he would need more
time to go and attend to his failing health.
He accused Buhari of cronyism,
nepotism, incompetence and failure to bring about the change that he promised
Nigerians. The former President’s advice was ignored at the time. Professor
Itse Sagay, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against
Corruption who hijacked the job of the President’s spokesmen launched an attack
on Obasanjo. He told Nigerians that Obasanjo is “irrelevant” and he needs to
show President Buhari ‘some respect.” Titled “The Way Out: A Clarion call for
Coalition for Nigeria Movement” (January 23, 2018), the Obasanjo letter then
generated ripples within the polity and energized those seeking a third force
as an alternative to the PDP and the ruling All Progressives Congress.
We should all take special notice
of the fact that this was all in the month of January 2018, precisely in the
third week. On the anniversary of that very episode, almost exactly to the day,
President Obasanjo has intervened again. If his January 2018 letter to Buhari
was hot, this one of 2019 is explosive. The 2018 letter was 13 pages long; the
2019 contribution titled “Points for Concern and Action” runs into 16 pages.
But the key difference is not in the additional three pages; it can be found in
the fact that Obasanjo’s tone in this latest one is not advisory at all. This
is a brutal, dismissive, utterly condemnatory commentary which seeks to consign
the Buhari administration to the ugly chapters of Nigerian history. The style
of writing is lucid, frank, assertive, no one is left in doubt that Obasanjo
considers the Buhari administration a mockery of sorts, some of its programmes
such as TraderMoni “idiotic”, and its management of the country’s security
situation, utterly laughable.
Having once declared that this
government does not deserve a second term in office, and having shown his
preference for the Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party
(PDP), Obasanjo, without an obvious hint of partisanship, tells us that the
Buhari administration is adopting desperate tactics to rig the 2019 general
polls. He takes on the Independent National Electoral Commission and accuses it
of crossing the “redline” with “blatant
partiality, duplicity, and imbecility”. Imbecility! Now, that is a very strong
word. According to Obasanjo, INEC can
only convince us otherwise if it redeploys Ms. Amina Zakari, the INEC
commissioner in charge of the collation of results who happens to be related to
President Buhari by marriage, and by conducting free, fair and credible
elections.
The big take-away from the
16-page commentary is Obasanjo’s concern about how the Buhari administration
seems to have compromised all institutions of state, and how in recent times,
it has also taken on the task of humiliating and denigrating the Nigerian
judiciary. The unkindest cut is the comparison of President Buhari to General
Sani Abacha. This comparison is not helped by the fact that President Buhari himself
once described Abacha as a “hero”. Many Nigerians consider Abacha a villain. He
presided over a period in Nigerian history, 1993 – 1998, regarded as the “years
that the locust ate”. When he died, there was ‘dancing in the streets”. The
people jubilated and said: “Never Again”. When President Obasanjo says we are
back to the Abacha era, he is clearly saying that Nigerians are currently under
a military dictatorship. He notes quite instructively, that “criticism, choice
and being different” have become near-impossible under President Buhari. These
are very carefully chosen phrases. They constitute the very essence of
democracy and fundamental human rights -
to deny citizens the right to speak, the right to choose, and the right
to be different is an assault on everything that makes us human or a nation.
Why for example should an Igbo person not be good enough for the position of
Inspector General of Police or any other security chief position? Why must
everyone who criticizes the government consistently suddenly have a
problem? Why should the membership of
the ruling party become a form of life insurance? Obasanjo makes a strong case
for democratic principles, and the urgent need to protect those principles from
being violated by those who are committed to self and selfish interests.
Obasanjo is so impressively
quotable, virtually every line from his pen drips with venom and journalistic
topicality, his words sound like stones, hitting their targets with devastating
force, drawing “blood” and pain. He does the job of the opposition in this
January 2019 piece, barely 28 days to Nigeria’s general election, better than
the opposition itself. Obasanjo may not always be right, and he has had cause
to revise his assessment of people and circumstances when confronted with a
different set of facts and variables, but his timing is always carefully
chosen, his courage to speak up is unmistakable, and he is probably the only
Nigerian statesman alive today who speaks, whenever he does on public issues,
with a startling combination of poignancy, histrionics and a ricocheting
effect. For this reason, he manages to capture the attention and imagination
of both local and international
audiences.
His blistering, bleaching,
blinding attack on President Buhari is the last thing a sitting President
seeking a second term in office, wants or needs at this time. Obasanjo has just
told the whole world that Buhari is planning an “electoral coup” against the
people of Nigeria: their right to choose, their right to differ, their right to
be different. In addition, he says: “It
is clear from all indications that Buhari is putting into practice the lessons
he learned from Abacha. Buhari has intimidated and harassed the private sector,
attacked the National Assembly and now unconstitutionally and recklessly
attacked and intimidated the judiciary to cow them to submission.” So, who is
left? Perhaps, the media, wrongly omitted by President Obasanjo.
Whatever happens, Obasanjo has
achieved his objectives. One, he has managed to put down the Buhari
administration. The last time he did that to a sitting President, the
opposition quickly rushed to him and made him the arrow-head of the
“anybody-but-Goodluck Jonathan” coalition. Their conspiracy succeeded and
Jonathan lost the Presidency. The myth
that Obasanjo can make and unmake any Nigerian President became part of the
national folklore, and it continues to flourish. The flip side of that however,
is that if Obasanjo fails this time around and Buhari for any reason whatsoever
wins the 2019 Presidency, and the myth thus evaporates, he, Obasanjo and others
who are staking everything on Buhari leaving Aso Rock, may be the ones who may
have to leave town. This is what their characterization of the Buhari
administration tells us.
Two, whatever happens, Obasanjo
and others who share his views have already raised very serious legitimacy
questions about President Buhari and his party. Less than a month to Nigeria’s
2019 Presidential election, they are already hacking down any claims to legitimacy
in the event of an APC victory. The APC can claim all the votes, but the
election will be dismissed as fraudulent. Ahead of the elections, the APC has
been set up for a post-election legitimacy crisis, the implications of which no
one can fully imagine. But if the APC loses, that may well not be an issue. The
result will be praised as a true reflection of the people’s wish. You may not
like Obasanjo, but he is not just another voter with a PVC, the way many of his
critics respond to him simplistically. He has a voice, a voice that resonates
across continents. He has international credibility, the kind of credibility
that transcends local bickering. The relationship between him and President
Buhari has been a stuff of classical romanticism. With his latest commentary,
that has ended in a bitter, feuding divorce.
Three, his statement is couched
in the language of statesmanship. He is raising “concerns” and calling for
“action.” It is not a crime under any jurisprudence for a former Head of State
and a former President who is also a global eminent person to raise such
concerns about his country. The world will listen. And Obasanjo knows.
However, the standard response
from government spokespersons is to dismiss every piece of criticism as sour
grapes and to impugn the integrity of the critic. This is a default position in
the government-public communication process. It is so, I must explain, because
what is called criticism in Nigeria can be sometimes biased, uninformed,
partisan, sponsored or downright malicious. This in itself is a reflection of
the level of our development. In Third World politics, the stomach rules the
head, emotions suppress reason, idiots become kings, imbeciles pose as wise
men. In practical politics, every political leader believes his own vision of
reality. In his mind, he wants to do his best for his people. He wants them to
love him. From the little that I have seen, there is no political leader who
wants to be disliked. Power is like an injection: people react to it
differently.
It is something about the DNA. It
is also something about the level of exposure, belief-system, competence,
knowledge, strength of character and the quality of the environment in which
the leader finds himself. Nonetheless, when someone comes along and sticks a
pin into that balloon, and bursts the bubble, those who protect the leader, and
the leader himself are bound to fight back, oftentimes viciously. To that
extent I can understand the viciousness with which President Buhari’s handlers
have gone after President Obasanjo in the last 72 hours. I have been through
that route before. When President Obasanjo attacked President Goodluck Jonathan
under similar circumstances a few years ago, it was my duty to put out a quick
rebuttal. I dismissed the attack on President Jonathan as “mischievous and
reckless”. The President himself later took on the battle and responded to
every point raised by President Obasanjo in what became a famous epistolary war
in Nigerian politics. That war produced at least three books!
Both Presidents have since
reconciled, and have been visiting each other, but there are persons in
Abeokuta who have not forgiven me till today for responding to Baba because as
far as they are concerned, it was wrong of me to support a man they regard as a
“kobo-kobo” against a man they consider an icon. The Jonathan administration’s crisis with
President Obasanjo had its long-term effect, but when the fire burned, it was
Mrs. Patience Jonathan who stepped in to stop further responses from our end.
The only witness to that story is Senator Andy Uba. I will tell that story some
other day.
Despite that experience, I must
confess that I am shocked beyond words by the official responses to President
Olusegun Obasanjo’s January 2019 state of the nation statement. The
counter-attack is pointless, for it is exactly the kind of tonic Obasanjo
needs. It will be difficult to convince anybody locally or internationally that
Obasanjo is uninformed or that he has some ulterior motives, or that he is
sponsored. The man has earned a global reputation that grants him the privilege
to pronounce on world matters with the credibility of an oracle. The totality
of his public career has brought him to that place of security, and that is why
his almost life-long spat with his arch-rival, Professor Wole Soyinka has not
had any effect on either of the two well-placed gladiators’ reputation. INEC
promised to study Obasanjo’s submissions and has offered a polite, reassuring
re-affirmation of its resolve to be independent and run a free and fair
election. In comparison, the Presidency
has embarked on a name-calling offensive as various officials and party chieftains
raise questions about Obasanjo’s moral integrity – his record as military Head
of State, and later as President – the usual things – Third Term, Odi massacre,
and anything else that can be thrown into the net. They forget that Obasanjo is
not running for President. By calling him names, they merely reinforce his
claims and the more they abuse him, the more they give further credence to his
declaration that the Buhari administration does not tolerate “criticism, choice
and being different.” Obasanjo set a trap for them. They have walked into it,
so unwisely.
In a strange twist, Garba Shehu,
the alternate Presidential spokesman, in a written response even suggests that
President Obasanjo is sick, and he should “please get well soon”. He refers to
him as a “coward” and a “90-year old liar.” Garba Shehu was a Presidential
Assistant during the Obasanjo years (1999- 2007). Obasanjo was his boss and
benefactor even if he worked directly with Vice President Atiku Abubakar. Now,
the same Garba Shehu says Obasanjo is sick! Does he have a medical report to
confirm that? Who really should get well
soon? Garba Shehu’s current boss or Obasanjo?
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