Cycle of broken promises comes full circle
The most paradoxical aspect of these weird presidential campaigns, which are much more about emotions than issues, is that Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former president, is blowing a lot of hot air that President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has not kept his promise of holding office for only one term. When Chief Obasanjo was brought out of prison to run for the presidency of this country in 1998, he promised the nation that he would run for only one term. Not only did he not keep that promise, and went for a second term, he, thereafter, mounted a spirited battle for the Constitution to be tinkered for him to go for a third term. A move which, thankfully, died in the hallowed chambers of the National Assembly.
Chief Obasanjo has already made this Jonathan promise a campaign issue and the All Progressive Congress (APC) has sought to make some political capital out of it. APC forgets that its presidential candidate, General Mohammadu Buhari, also stated in clear and unambiguous terms in 2011 that he did not intend to contest for the presidency of Nigeria again. So the cycle of broken promises becomes a ripple in the country’s political waters.
Those who are trying to hold Jonathan to his words, therefore, lack the moral justification to do so. It is a promise one personally does not want him to keep. Keeping such a promise would be a disservice to the South South. It would amount to redefining the zoning arrangement and creating the precedent that the South South was entitled to only one term. The sense of injustice against the South South would have been strengthened. Decades from now when another South South man may emerge as president, it would be said, “Hey check the history books, the South South always goes for one term – not two.” Not the kind of legacy one wants to leave behind for one’s posterity. However, if this just battle fails, and one’s great grandchildren ask one under the moonlight, “How did you do us such great injustice?” One wants to be able to look them in the eye and say, “Boy, I am sorry, but I did my best. We had traitors in our midst and enemies
without. I was on your side and fought till the last moment!”
Such deprivation of a group and its telling effect on its posterity is not of any concern to Obasanjo. Obasanjo has always taken himself more highly than he ought to. Of all the former Heads of State of Nigeria none seems to think that he has a greater sense of being the lord protector of the Nigerian estate than Obasanjo. Obasanjo sees himself as both a deity and a principality in the Nigerian political landscape and as “He who must be obeyed.” No government (except the one he has been the head of) has escaped his acerbic tongue. Here is the list, the Shagari government was an “unmitigated disaster’; the Buhari Government was “directionless”; the IBB government’s Structural Adjustment Programme did not have a human face. The Jonathan presidency is “clueless.” When he tried it with the no nonsense Abacha government, he went to jail.
Obasanjo going to jail should remind us of something IBB said recently. When Buhari visited him, he (IBB) claimed that all retired generals would support Buhari’s presidential candidacy. Generals are supposed to lead the large in defense of the nation, right? Where were they when journalists and civil liberties organizations waged a sustained battle for democracy and faced the bullets, bombs and boots of Abacha Murder Incorporated, the Strike Force? Did the retired (or is it tired) generals fight in any way for this democracy? No they did not, but they are set to reap where they never sowed. That is one of the curious aspects of this electoral campaign which is beginning to look like something right out of “Animal Farm.”
Obasanjo should understand how to run an animal farm, he is a farmer. But, sadly though, he seems to think that Nigeria is his farm. It is easy to decode Obasanjo’s twisted personality. He believes that the world revolves around him. His first book was titled, “My Command” and it was about his war exploits. That others fought the war and had more exploits, or that war is a range of combat activities involving different commands which should take credit for success in meeting the goals of the war was immaterial to him. In his bloated ego, he was the greatest news during the war. Thereafter, he published another book titled, “Not My Will.” In this one he sought to explain how he became the military dictator after the death of Gen. Murtala Mohammed. Not that anyone wanted to know, but OBJ is the kind of man who cannot stop talking about himself. Then came the next one, “The Animal Called Man.” A book about his prison experiences and how he
survived in prison. The last one is “My Watch,” a book about his presidency. He cannot think of any subject better than himself to write about. One is sure that you have bores like Obasanjo in your neighbourhood.
Asked to define the difference between a misfortune and a calamity, British statesman, Benjamin Disraeli said, “If Prime Minister Gladstone were to fall into the River Thames, that I suppose would be a misfortune, but if anyone were to bring him out, that I suppose would be a calamity.” It does not follow that OBJ going to prison was a misfortune, and his being brought out was a calamity. But he has certainly and without doubt become the greatest nuisance in the Nigerian political space.
Listen to this. He claimed that when he heard that Buhari was involved in some unsavory things at the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), he confronted Buhari and asked him to tell him the truth before God and Buhari denied it. To the Ota deity, that settled the matter. Sounds incomprehensible, right? That is because it is actually incomprehensible. As the “god of Ota”, he does not believe anyone could say a thing before his “divine self” and it would not be taken as a scientific fact. Take his entire communication and you begin to wonder what the political landscape would have been like if all former heads of state were as irksome and meddlesome as Obasanjo is.
Consider Gen Abdulsalami Abubakar, the Head of State, who birthed our democracy. He has not arrogated to himself the answers to Nigeria’s problems. He does not pick up his pen and write a critical open letter to any president. Did he agree with everything Obasanjo did as President? No! He obviously must have been appalled at OBJ’s dogged attempt at a third term, but he did not join the fray. What of General Yakubu Gowon who fought to keep Nigeria one. If it were not for Gowon, Nigeria would have disintegrated. The only time Gowon intervened in an administration was when Abacha was head of state. He started the “Nigeria Prays Project” and kept at it until Abacha died. It is not on record that he ever criticized any president. It is not on record that he has ever written an open letter to any president. Even IBB has been reticent as far as comments about serving presidents are concerned. He has always stated that he can only make comments if he
were to know the information and intelligence which informed policy decisions.
So why is Obasanjo different? In a remark about Obasanjo’s latest book, “My Watch”, Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, pointed out, “(Obasanjo) invokes God tirelessly, without provocation, without necessity and without justification, perhaps pre-emptively, but does he really believe in such an Entity? Does our home-bred Double-O-Seven believe in anything outside his own Omnipotence? Could he possibly have mistaken the Christian exhortation – ‘Watch and Pray’ for his private inclination to ‘Watch and Prey’?” This fairly sums up Obasanjo. The book he owes Nigeria and which he may never write is “My Confusion.”
Akpaide is a public affairs analyst.