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By Dr. Wumi Akintide
Without any much ado Nigerians instinctively know who I am talking about in this write up because I am yet to meet any other Yoruba man named “Obasanjo” and I am yet to meet any Nigerian to name his or her son “Obasanjo” out of respect for the luckiest man in a nation of 150 million people. I sure see a bi-partisan consensus that the enigma called Obasanjo has been everything he had wanted to be in Nigeria with the exception of his short time in prison on a trumped-up charges for treason by Nigeria’s most notorious dictator with another unique name “Abacha” who many claim was originally from Niger but has lived all his life in Kano.
Matthew, Aremu, Okikiolu, Olusegun ”A de Kampe”, Baba iyabo, Balogun Owu, “Ebora Ota” has remained the longest serving Head of State beating Yakubu Gowon and even the evil genius into second and third places and now becoming the self-appointed father of the nation and arguably the closest thing to a Messiah that has long eluded Nigeria. When you mention names like Herbert Macaulay, Ogbuefi Nnamdi Azikiwe, Sardauna Bello and Obafemi Awolowo, the Lion of Ikenne, Obasanjo’s body language would tell you that he saw those distinguished Nigerians leaders as only runners-up to him for the cherished title of “Father of the Nation.” He could be right, if you see what I see, but my advice to him would be to have the courage to finally quit politics and to do it now, not tomorrow if he is not going to die by the sword because he has lived by the sword for much of his adult life and he has gotten away with it by sheer destiny up till now.
A powerful delegation of the newly-registered A.P.C at his Taj Mahal in Abeokuta which is fast becoming the “Mecca” of Nigerian politics where his political friends and foes in Nigeria have to visit to acknowledge him and to get his blessings either freely given or not, because the man has truly proved himself to be a force to reckoned with in Nigerian politics if not for good government but for his staying power and abundance of luck in Politics. You cannot take it away from Obasanjo. He has proven himself to be a more authentic evil genius and democratic pretender than even his junior colleague in arms, the one and only Ibrahim Babangida of Minna who fears no one more than Obasanjo in the military establishment of Nigeria for reasons I cannot get to in this write-up. Obasanjo to me is even more talented than “Baba Mero” his look-alike in Nigeria and few of the world renown Hollywood actors who are able to act many roles in every movie and do it so well.
I am talking of Tyler Perry in his blockbuster “Madea” movie, Will Smith in his first class movie as Mohammed Ali, Jamie Fox in his classic movie as Uncle Ray Charles and Eddie Murphy in his “Coming to America” movie where he flawlessly played the role of an African crown prince to his famous King of “Samunda.” I knew it because I used to flawlessly play the role of a Prince or an Oba in my primary school days because I was raised in the Deji’s Palace in Akure and I could clearly see the genius of Eddy Murphy in “Coming to America.” Obasanjo to me even beat the disgraced Bayelsa Governor D.S.L Alimiyeisegha who taught his pony, our current President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria all the tricks he has mastered in that office. President Jonathan in a “quid pro quo” arrangement has formally institutionalized and deified Corruption in Nigeria by giving a state pardon to a crook and fugitive criminal who escaped jail in the UK by dressing as a woman. He succeeded in fooling all of the Scotland Yard operatives in the UK for all their wizardry in security and espionage work just like Obasanjo has managed to fool many Nigerians to offer him the opportunity to be all he has been in Nigeria.
Very few will disagree that Obasanjo has beaten all of those actors in the way and manner he had to drop out of the famous Methodist Boys High School to go pursue a career in the Military the only place he could afford to go free of charge and where he quickly rose thru the ranks learning to speak Hausa fluently along the way and where he ended becoming the second-in-command and hatchet man to Murtala Mohammed during his 200 days as Head of State and Commander-in Chief. Obasanjo as Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, was listed to die that same morning at Alagbon Close, Ikoyi on his way to work.
Guess who took the bullet? It was poor Air force Colonel Dumuje, an Obasanjo look-alike. Obasanjo who had been tipped off about the coup before leaving his home at Ikoyi escaped death without a scratch. When it was time to pick who would succeed Murtala Mohammed, the only southerner the Core North could trust to do the job was Obasanjo who positioned himself very well and he proved to the North he was more a northerner than the average Hausa Fulani man. The northerners looked on other southerners who were equally qualified to take over from Murtala as “Barawo, Mutumu Banza”.
They crowned Obasanjo the King and he delivered on his quid pro quo agreement with the North when he quickly threw Awolowo under the bus and anointed Shehu Shagari as the winner of the 1979 election while dismissing with the wave of the hand Awolowo’s decision to go to Court. The pseudo democrat in Obasanjo played out very clearly as Obasanjo was not interested in “due process.” It was a waste of his time. He had better things to do. He had his eyes fixed on pleasing the Northern power brokers he knew he was going to need again along the way and he was right. Obasanjo is a lucky dude like his hand-picked Jonathan for always finding himself in the right place at every turn of events. He took over from the black scorpion as Commander of the Third Marine Commando by subterfuge, and he ended up becoming the Osagyefo of the Biafran war next to his boss General Yakubu Gowon another lucky compromise choice who was Commander-in-Chief. I served in the Army Headquarters in Lagos and I knew, first hand, how some of Obasanjo’s metamorphosis or transformation has occurred.
Obasanjo remained the central glue that bound Nigeria together until he momentarily fell out of favor with Sani Abacha who tried to silence him forever by putting him in jail with a plan to have him face the firing squad using a kangaroo court to get his way. But like the cat with nine lives, Obasanjo walked out of prison in 1999 to go lead the country one more time because the military establishment dominated by the North and powerful brokers like Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalam Abubakar had again seen him as the only southerner who could keep Nigeria together at that point in our history. He ruled Nigerian as a civilian from 1999 to 2003 and he became the leader of a party, the PDP he knew nothing about. He deliberately allowed his northern deputy, the filthy-rich, former Director of Customs, Atiku Abubakar to feel he was actually the one ruling Nigeria. Obasanjo, a smooth operator, was only massaging the ego of the North and their born-to-rule pretenses to be sure he would be allowed to do a second and a third term if needed.
Once he got his PDP nomination for a second term, he made diplomatic but calculated overtures to his kith and kin in the Southwest. He bamboozled them to not forget that he was one of them and that he would make sure their AD governors were all returned to their second term without let or hindrance if they would urge their constituencies to vote for him in the presidential election which was going to be the first to be held in the country. Once he had that victory in the bag, he used his power as a rejuvenated Commander-in Chief to consolidate his power over INEC to roll over the whole of the Southwest achieving what any of his king makers in the PDP could only dream of. He did it by massive rigging of election and he attributed the the rollover of the Southwest to what he called the band wagon effect following his sweet and highly macro-managed victory in the presidential election. A man who lost very badly to Chief Oluyemi Falae in the Southwest in 1999 was catapulted to Emperor Julius Caesar and the Conqueror of the Yoruba states for the PDP 4 short years later.
He used that “abracadabra” to consolidate his power as President before putting Atiku Abubakar in his place and before making sure future coups in Nigeria were nipped in the bud and made that much more difficult to stage by stopping the concentration of all military bases in the North and spreading them out in one fell swoop with no one raising a finger. It was a masterful stroke that has permanently and successfully neutralized coup plotters and kept them in their barracks and under surveillance at a time Corruption and Kleptomania had reached astronomical levels which would have been an invitation for the Military to strike under cover of darkness sending the first minority President in Nigeria taking a hike in pretty much the same way like Ernest Sonekan was defrocked and sent back home to “Abe Olumo”.
The dictionary meaning of a Megalomaniac the last time I checked is “someone suffering from a disorder of the mind marked by feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur. A Democrat on the other hand refers to an adherent of Democracy and one who practices and pursues social equality. If you apply those two brief definitions, it would be clear to all and sundry that Obasanjo is anything but a democrat. He confessed to the APC delegation in Abeokuta he remained a card-carrying member of the PDP, and that he was not about to quit his party but that he welcomed the delegation as the father of the nation and a democrat. He dismissed with the wave of the hand or completely swept under the carpet the rumors making the rounds as we speak that his own first daughter , a Ph.D holder and a powerful Senator with her eyes set on becoming the next Governor of Ogun State, had told the nation what is very well known by most Nigerians and confirmed by Obasanjo’s first son that the so-called father of the nation was an unrepentant philanderer, a domestic violence perpetrator, an enigma and a bundle of contradictions if his profiles as a father are anything to go by.
Only fools would consider him a democrat if you judge him by the words coming out of his mouth and by many of his actions as a major power broker in Nigeria. He told the APC delegation which included one of his colleagues in the Military, a former Head of State, Mohammadu Buhari that he fully appreciates the role of the opposition in a democracy. But what he did not say is how he has persistently undermined the opposition in Nigeria by making it impossible for Nigeria to have a free and fair election which is the very opium or engine of Democracy. A one party dictatorship like the one Obasanjo has been preaching when he foolishly announced he wants the PDP to rule Nigeria for the next 100 years is recipe for disaster. No democrat would ever make that kind of pronouncement. Give the opposition a chance. If they fail, or fumble, vote them out in 4 years and go for another party like is done in America and the UK where the two major political parties compete from one election circle to another.
In more civilized countries like the United States and the United Kingdom Obasanjo’s useless party, the PDP would have been confined to the dust bin of history a long time ago because the party has failed the nation as confirmed by the current PDP Speaker of the House and by Obasanjo’s 18 page letter to the man he hand-picked to run with a terminally-ill man he nominated to lead the nation in 2007 and as confirmed by the same man’s reply to Obasanjo where the only excuse the President could offer was that he inherited most of those problems Obasanjo had alluded to and that those problems had gotten worse only because his mentors like Obasanjo had not cooperated enough with him.
The corrupt President believes till tomorrow that the scourge of Corruption in Nigeria was grossly exaggerated. Left to him and his alter ego like the turn-coat called Reuben Abati, Nigeria could not be luckier to have a President like Jonathan under whose watch Nigeria has now become a clueless member of the UN Security Council, a position Saudi Arabia, one of the richest but weakest countries in the UN has said “no” to because they knew such membership means absolutely nothing to their country when the chips are down.
The 5 super powers in the Security Council who have veto powers are the real deal not a country like Nigeria which has just manufactured a toy drone that could not fly. Nigeria is a country which is being tormented by her own demons and a country that could unravel or crash any time under her own weight. What is a country like Nigeria that could not guarantee security to her own people from the exploits of Boko Haram and armed robbers and kidnappers in broad day light doing in the Security Council? It is simply absurd. Unemployment has hit double digits, pipe-born water in Nigeria is hard to come by anywhere in any of the metropolis talk less of the villages. Electricity is nothing to write home about despite the billions of dollars squandered on it from one financial year to another under the most corrupt Government Nigeria has ever known.
Yet Obasanjo, the father of the nation, prides himself on the fact that he succeeded in rigging Jonathan into office and he openly brags about it in front of the opposition. If he was truly a democrat, what he would be talking about is what he is doing to make sure that power rotates between the two major political parties based on performance. He would have told the Opposition that if they wanted his support they should demonstrate how they are different from the ruling PDP which has already forfeited her right to being re-elected in 2015 based on their track record he himself has exposed in his 18 page letter to Mr. President. The letter was an indictment of the Jonathan Government and the PDP as a whole. He should have been talking on how to encourage Professor Jega and his INEC to conduct a fair and free election without any fear or favor. He should have long taken himself out of the PDP altogether and remain an elder statesman whose only interest should be the ultimate interest of Nigeria. He could not do that and retain his credibility as long as he remains a card-carrying member of the PDP.
I dare say that one of the reasons the United States and much of the civilized world did not support his lackluster nomination to run against Kofi Annan as Secretary-General of the UN was because they saw him more as a megalomaniac than a dye-in-the-wool democrat who will fight for justice and social equality. Even though Kofi was never a Head of State up to that point, he had more credibility than Obasanjo as a product of MIT and as a top notch bureaucrat and diplomat who was a lot more refined and qualified for the job than a military dictator who only paid a lip service to the virtues of Democracy for public approval and just to earn the undeserved respect of the international community.
The choice is clear. Obasanjo is a Megalomaniac and one of the greatest problems and burden of Nigeria as we speak. If he loves Nigeria as much as he claims, he should quit politics altogether to fully assume his role as the conscience of the nation in pretty much the same way like Awolowo and Madiba Nelson Mandela in particular had done when he served for only one term as President when he could easily have held on to power till he died at 95 with the whole world acknowledging him as one of the world’s greatest leaders and giving him a standing ovation that was heard in the 4 corners of the world.
I promise in my new year resolution to never write a long article any more.It is a promise I mean to keep for your reading enjoyment.
I rest my case.
Source: SaharaReporters
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