State of the nation: Was Obasanjo playing the Biblical Moses?

These are not the best of times for Nigeria. Many negative things appear to be conspiring to create fear in the mind of many a citizen. From security challenge to biting economy; from worsening unemployment level to escalating incidences of corruption; from uncertainty over the 2015 general election to rumours or war and anarchy… and several bad news all over the place! The nation’s media is awash with hopeless stories. And the political class is to blame. While some who mean well for the country are not willing to take the right step; some others fill the entire place with empty words and actions that are not salutary. Some also manifest anger that pundits describe as hypocritical, self-serving and misplaced. But the agony of it all is that they all claim to be working in the interest of the country. It is in this light that a comparison is here being attempted between the “holy” anger that warranted the Biblical Moses to break the stone on which the first Ten Commandments were written and the “political” anger that pushed former President Olusegun Obasanjo to break the covenant pot between him and his party, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). For so long, the Biblical Moses had expressed disappointment at the prodigal nature of his people Israel, who were under his leadership.

He had been an instrument of deliverance to them from their slavish years in Egypt. At this point he received a divine instruction to appear before the Almighty God in a certain mountain for a table containing commandments they were to observe for a better relationship with the Supreme Being. When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” Aaron made a golden calf out of the gold earrings they contributed and proclaimed to them, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.” He built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” So the next day, the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward, they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

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Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’” When Moses came down from the mountain, he be- held the debauchery and sinfulness of his people who were supposed to be a holy nation to the one true God. In anger, he threw down the table of stone on which the Ten Commandments were written. That singular act worsened God’s wrath against Israel. Few days back, Nigerians were treated to a gory spectacle when Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president, shredded his membership card of the PDP, a platform that provided him the opportunity to rule the country for eight years and also to lead the Board of Trustees (BoT), the highest decision making and advisory body of the party.

Obasanjo, who has been on a slanging match with President Goodluck Jonathan for a long time now, last week, picked up his gauntlet once again to give Jonathan some more punches as it were. He was not done with the allegations he levelled against the Bayelsa-born President bordering on arm-twisting the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to postpone the general election earlier slated for February 14 and 28, the Ota farmer also accused the PDP-led government of ineptitude in all fronts.

The former president wondered why he must continue with a colony of “sinners” in PDP and decided it was time to take a walk. Addressing journalists for the second time in a matter of days, the 77 year-old former military leader, said he was on a tour of some countries on international assignments where he learnt about the election postponement, which he said had further lowered the image of the country in the comity of nations. “I am surprise with the postponement. I left Nigeria penultimate Wednesday; I travelled to Morocco, Munich, Nairobi, London and New Delhi. Exactly a week today, we were in Munich for the Munich Security Conference. I was there with Kofi Annan, a lot of world leaders were there and I was to talk about peace in Africa. Suddenly, people started asking me questions from different parts of the world about the development in Nigeria. I decided not to issue any categorical statement until I got back home,” he said.

The former president, who has, by his utterances, may have attracted many enemies to himself, unceremoniously announced his exit from the PDP. Dramatizing the exit when some leaders of the party led by Surajudeen Oladunjoye, chairman of the ward, visited him at his Presidential Hilltop mansion in Abeokuta home, Obasanjo had directed the ward leader to shred his (Obasanjo’s) PDP membership card. Both Obasanjo’s action while tearing the card (by proxy was akin to Moses’ breaking of the Ten Commandments. Both actions involved lifting the objects above the head to show the level of disappointment. Oladunjoye, on the instruction of Obasanjo, raised his two hands, making a public show of the shredding. But unlike Moses, Obasanjo is seen by many Nigerians as one of the arrow heads of the nation’s woes. Analysts say that the former president, who was brought out from the Sani Abacha gulag in 1998 to contest on the PDP platform in 1999, has like many other past and present leaders of the country, greatly hampered the nation’s for- ward march several years after independence.