Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is the ‘lion king’. He is both a source of admiration and a source of frustration. Nobody loves and nobody hates him with an equal degree. He is either a Muppet show or a clown. You could call him a despondent jazz player, villain or an angel-it all depends on what views you hold. To everyone, he must mean something.
But while most commentators have been pre-occupied with his combative stance and a few with his age and rhetoric, his message and the motor with which he carries the message across have fascinated me.
His reputation? He doesn’t hesitate. He just makes bold, controversial moves and plays every canny gambit you can fathom to get his message through. They do not happen over night for him. He loves dancing amidst his controversies, enthusiastically too.
Criticisms? He endures them from different fronts ranging from family to political anger at his attacks on Presidents (from way back) and numerous political travellers. To hushed mockery of his personal appearance (worwor ‘ugly’ man) and his uncanny brashness in front of the cameras.
I will not forget his dismissive outbursts against incompetence and always quick to call a thief (ole) a thief, never hesitating to tear apart a reputation just as he did in public his party membership card.
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Call him a surrealist for his creative and irrational juxtapositions in the way he attacks everyday concerns as what happened when he encountered President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013 with a damning 18-page letter, where he dismissed the president as (my own interpretations) a co-traveller with corruption and non performance.
Within every context, you will find the ‘ghost’ of Obasanjo hunting you and you would want to ask, what is the matter with this restless ghost. I think political psychologists can best explain the restless mind. But come to think of it this way. He has been better at appealing to emotions than all those he has pierced their amour. There is something about his combativeness that is akin to that of the ‘social animal’. He has a deeply, sometimes cynical view about politics and about politicians. His countenance draws him to a whole range of flacks including those that question his credibility and capacity to pontificate on any issue.
But all of this gives some indication of what sort of vintage Obasanjo is: far from opulent, he is rough and focused. You can agree or choose to disagree that his interest is aligned with those of Nigerians who for long have been despondent on the nature of economic abuse the country has witnessed in recent years: helping to expose the predations of politicians across the country.
He is a constant, thoughtful reminder that leadership is often simply about a transparent and firm control over finite resources, a process where leaders get things done properly, in civil manners. So he is not just about political rhetoric and not at all about masochist.
He points and wags those fingers conscious that most of them are ‘a little bit’ soiled too. He takes solace in the fact that those he is pointing the fingers at have more soiled fingers and soiled toes than he does. At the same time he seems to often display a frame that suggests anger that they (current leadership) are already out doing him in the gluttonous decapitation of the economy, and the country’s wealth.
Yet, Obasanjo’s disposition is understandable. A sensible strategist must weigh the costs and benefits of his ‘vituperations’-but once one accepts there is value in the information contained in his often thickly coated letters, perhaps the value of our views would shift considerably.
Charles Ike-Okoh
