Jonathan as Obasanjo’s nemesis

Ordinarily, Olusegun Obasanjo, former military head of state of Nigeria and later its democratically-elected president, carries on as if he has thick skin to even the most discomforting issue. Those who did not know what stuff the former president is made of got some inkling sometime last year when his own daughter, Iyabo, literally stripped him naked in the public. Of course, it has since been established that in terms of contents and language, the letter Obasanjo’s daughter, Iyabo Obasanjo-Belo, wrote his illustrious father is the worst thing that could happen to any man or father, however poor or lowly placed. In describing her father as an intolerant “narcissistic megalomaniac”, Obasanjo-Bello was merely reminding many of the same words one of her father’s wives once used on him.

Tongue-lashing and vitriolic from a wife is understandable but certainly not when it comes from a daughter who came from the loins of an African patriarch of Mathew Okikiola Olusegun Obasanjo’s standing. But if Nigerians had expected that that was going to sober Obasanjo, they were dead wrong. For ever since, the former president has even gone haywire. On the very issue that incurred his daughter’s wrath on him – President Goodluck Jonathan – Obasanjo has become far more acidic in his comments on the president, in a manner and language that defy any known presidential norm. Of course, Nigerians have since stopped comparing Obasanjo with other former ex-presidents in any part of the world. Nigerians have since stopped worrying that unlike Obasanjo, former United States presidents, for example, do not launch public attacks on incumbents. While there could be a rationalisation in terms of the disparity in political culture between, say, America and Nigeria, we need not even go that far. Here at home, Obasanjo must be an embarrassment to other former leaders including (former) military heads of state. He probably would find company only in the likes of Muhammadu Buhari in the penchant for uncouth and undignifying utterances. Still, a distinction could be found between the two in the sense that whereas Buhari is driven by a blind ambition to become an elected civilian president like Obasanjo, the latter is haunted by the fact that he not only failed Nigerians as a civilian president, but also that his actions and inactions were what brought Nigeria to its current state of apparent hopelessness.

How did we know? At the heat of transition from military to civilian rule in 1998-1999, Theophilus Danjuma, one of those who went to bring Obasanjo from Yola prisons to present him as a presidential candidate, declared publicly that he would go on exile if Obasanjo was not elected president. Ten years later, on February 17, 2008, Danjuma, in an interview in The Guardian on Sunday, said of the same Obasanjo thus: “If we take an audit of NNPC, we will find that Obasanjo qualifies for a second term at either Yola or Maiduguri prisons.”

In all this, however, Obasanjo seems to have only one regret in life: allowing a Goodluck Jonathan to come close to Aso Rock and eventually become president of Nigeria. President Jonathan is Obasanjo’s nemesis because the latter has made a mockery of the total of 11 years – three as military head of state and eight as civilian president – he spent as the number one citizen of Nigeria.

There is this theory that Obasanjo knowingly brought in the late Umaru Yar’Adua as his successor in the belief or hope that the latter would not survive the terminal illness he was suffering from so that once he fell, a successor whom he, Obasanjo, could manipulate would then take over. And a rider to that was that Obasanjo, to the surprise of many, had refused to have Peter Odili as Yar’Adua’s running mate; that is, regardless of their (Obasanjo and Odili) close relationship. Obasanjo was said to have been looking for a Yes Man and had believed that Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was one. What, therefore, could be more frustrating for him to realise that Jonathan turned out to be the exact opposite of what he had expected?

Last week, Obasanjo reportedly rated Jonathan as under-performing and attributed this to what he described as the president’s attitude of not seeking guidance. Not only has Jonathan refused to be a stooge, he has shown Nigerians and the world that an elected president could be civil, rational, courteous, composed, not given to alleged sex scandals, devoid of concubinic proclivities, not a bully, not pick his nose in public and not given to sending an entire battalion of troops to level villages populated mostly by elderly men and women.

In Jonathan, the world has seen that Nigeria is not sentenced to having presidents who would sponsor kangaroo panels to impeach governors, senate presidents, etc and send security operatives under his command against citizens who express dissenting views on crucial national issues. In Jonathan, the world now knows that it is possible for Nigeria to have a president who would allow a people to freely vote their choice candidates as governors and legislators.

Witness the earlier reference to the summation of what Obasanjo’s presidency stood for by one of his closest friends. Danjuma’s statement, as seen above, was a euphemism for branding the Obasanjo regime (1999-2007) as the most corrupt Nigeria has ever had; that is, assuming that Nigerians believe that Obasanjo himself is not corrupt. Of course, T. Y. Danjuma should know. Although some might argue that he went superlative, Danjuma was not the only Nigerian who in 1999 felt strongly that Obasanjo would do a good job in reconstructing Nigeria. But in less than four years, Obasanjo failed those who vouched for him, to the extent that he allegedly had to go genuflecting before governors and his former deputy for support to be able to get the ticket of his party to run for a second term.

One of the attractions to an Obasanjo presidency was that with his military background, he would foster civil security in the country. But what did Nigerians get? It was under him that the insurgency now threatening the very existence of Nigeria first reared its head. It was under Obasanjo that militants held the nation to ransom, through their operations, in the Niger Delta region. Yet Obasanjo, who deludes himself as the one who led the ‘conquering’ of Brafra, was there, helpless. He could neither come up with a military strategy to rout the militants nor the political astuteness to constructively engage them. It took the administration of the late Yar’Adua, whom he had allegedly expected to drop dead any moment, and the same Jonathan to find a workable solution to the Niger Delta militancy.

As it is now, not a few people are of the opinion that Obasanjo is among those who believe that the spate of terrorism in the northern part of the country is a good weapon for wresting power from Jonathan. Apart from that, Nigerians were to see how empty his boast that he could help mitigate the insurgency was when the insurgents went after a family he had visited in Maiduguri in purport of a search for a truce. Since then the Federal Government, led by Jonathan, has kept him away from any further moves to achieve an end to the insurgency in whatever way – either by military endeavour or through diplomacy. And is it any wonder that Obasanjo is angry, very angry? We can go on and on but does Obasanjo still deserve precious editorial spaces? Not many Nigerians would think so.

Ethelbert Okere