By Tunde Olusunle
For his famous zeal, stamina, energy and verve, Nigeria’s former President, Olusegun Obasanjo had to learn when to draw the brakes. There were those times his spirit was willing, but his body weak. He had to succumb to the body clockwork to catch some rest. If he still desired to drag his body, he was tactfully restrained by his aides. I know a bit about Obasanjo. I served as his campaign media officer, a job I was enlisted into, even before his formal declaration to contest for the nation’s top job. He threw his hat in the ring at his famous Otta Farm, his primordial resort in Ogun State, November 1, 1998.
I had been previously introduced to him by my respected senior professional colleague and mentor, Onyema Ugochukwu. I served under Ugochukwu, beginning from the glorious days of the Yemi Ogunbiyi restoration and revolution of the Daily Times. I’ve attempted to capture my perceptions and impressions about the works and persons of Ogunbiyi and Ugochukwu, in separate, self-authored, full length academic essays. Both have been published in reputable journals, in 2017 and 2022 respectively. I also accompanied Obasanjo to the State House, Aso Villa, Abuja and served his administration for eight years.
Obasanjo thinks, talks, eats, drinks, walks, sleeps Nigeria. Even
as a presidential aspirant before he won the ticket of the Peoples’ Democratic
Party (PDP) to run for the presidency, Obasanjo’s uncommon affection for
Nigeria and desire for its growth and development, was intensely unassailable.
There were regular pre-campaign preparations, and campaign post-mortems.
Obasanjo’s style is peculiar, but reflects his disposition towards
his country and his determination to contribute selflessly to its progress. He
could begin a discussion with members of his core team in his bedroom, be
reminded he was running behind schedule for appointments, jump into the bath
dragging his co-discussants along, and continuing the argument. The world is
eagerly waiting for the memoirs of Ugochukwu and Ad’Obe Obe, both former
colleagues in the now rested London-based West Africa magazine in the 1980s,
who were reunited by the Obasanjo project.
During his years as president, the pathologically stubborn,
somewhat nonconformist Obasanjo, found himself managed in many ways. From his
chief personal physician, Olusegun Ajuwon; to the state chief of protocol,
Oluwole Coker; to his aide-de-camps, Solomon Giwa-Amu and Christopher Jemitola,
and chief security officer, Kayode Oduneye, Obasanjo had professional minders.
Of this list, only Amu, unfortunately, is no more with us. They found ways to
“ground” him from time to time, albeit for him to get power-naps. If he was
proving a handful, Abdullahi Mohammed, Obasanjo’s chief of staff and former
military colleague stepped forward to chaperone him away from his desk or
meeting, as the case may be. Obasanjo pocketed his recalcitrant streak when the
need arose, for his good and Nigeria’s benefit.
I
could feel the agony of Kashim Shettima, running mate of the presidential
candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, at the rally
held in Minna, the other. I saw the discomfort in the faces of Abdullahi
Ganduje and Adamu Abdullahi, Kano State Governor, and national chairman of the
APC, as Tinubu took the microphone at the Minna event. As has become famous
with Tinubu, he floundered in grand style while reciting what was easily the
simplest preamble to a Muslim prayer! Public revulsion was spontaneously
manifested by loud murmurs and grumbling as Tinubu called Allah (father) in his
prefatory chants! This in Islam, is an act of polytheism, a condemnable and
actionable act.
Within 17 minutes, Tinubu was spirited away from the rally. Bayo
Onanuga his campaign media adviser, would subsequently issue a statement to the
effect that his principal was overwhelmed by the mammoth numbers at the rally
and had to rush off for other engagements. It emerged later, however, that a
three-pronged development necessitated Tinubu’s ferrying to safety. First, the
call-and-response interaction with the crowd, showed they plan to vote the APC
governorship candidate, Mohammed Umar Bago, and PDP’s Atiku Abubakar, at the
presidential polls. Second, purported security reports indicated there was a
plan to attack Tinubu at the end of the rally, for the heresy he committed against
Allah in his earlier remarks. The third reason was connected to the urgent
imperative to manage a pressing health situation related to him.
The Minna fiasco was not Tinubu’s first public stutter, even
before the blast of the starter’s shot for the commencement of the presidential
campaign. If we were circumspect, Tinubu’s foibles began to manifest years ago.
And we should have known he was a disaster waiting to unravel. At a colloquium
commemorating his 69th birthday last year, he proffered that the Federal
Government should recruit 50 million youths to enhance national security. He
assured they will be fed on “cassava, agbado (maize) and yam.” Tinubu’s media
adviser, my longstanding friend and brother since several decades back in our
university days, Tunde Rahman, had the unpleasant task of issuing a rejoinder.
Rahman was called to work shortly after again, when he had to clean up Tinubu’s
gaffe while advising a group which visited him, to renew their expired
Permanent Voter’s Cards, (PVCs)! At a November 26, 2022 meeting with his
supporters in Lagos, Tinubu admonished them to get their APVs in place of PVCs!
It has indeed become “one day, one goof” for him on the campaign
trail. The audience was bemused last October, when Tinubu at the Seventh
Edition of the Kaduna Economic and Investment Summit (KADInvest), serenaded
Nasir El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State, a miracle worker. He described him as
an administrator who can change “a rotten situation to a bad one!” He
wrongfully referred to the Director-General of his campaign organisation and
Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong, as Simon Dalong.
His response to a question about climate change, elicited a most
inconceivable, off-tangent response from him. His answer that it “is a question
of how do you prevent a church rat eating a poisoned holy communion!” Weeks ago
in Imo State, Tinubu struggled with the word “hullabaloo,” representing it as
Bala Blu, Blu, Bulaba! Skits and memes of that outing have been variously
represented in the social media. Such has been the manifestly worrying carriage
and presentation of the APC presidential candidate.
One
doesn’t want to play back Tinubu’s outing at the APC presidential primaries in
June. Cameras trailed on him beginning from when he was disembarking from the
VIP cubicle, showed him missing his steps and almost tripping down the stairs
as he alighted from that reserved section of Eagle Square. The lenses were also
beamed on him as he struggled with trembling fingers to flip over the sheets of
the prepared speech he read at the event. You wonder if anyone has to go
through such regular public torture and humiliation, if it is truly all about
altruism and service to fatherland. You truly wonder if this obsessive
nightmare will ever end.
Tinubu urgently needs help, he has to be restrained in spite of
himself. Videos of the president of South Sudan, Salva Kiir Mayardit peeing on
himself in public, made the global rounds recently. That is bad advertisement
for leaders who want to die “executive deaths” in office. What has become very
clear is that Tinubu’s chaperones are confirmed wayo people. They are intent on
selling to us, “by force, by fire” as pentecostals will say, a holistically
defective product. It is worse than a junk tokunbo contraption, which people up
north describe as gura-gura.
But they keep advertising this ware in a glazed, air-conditioned
showroom to the rest of us, as a new one, or chassis in “mechanic village”
lingo. The product keeps malfunctioning and breaking down, while the marketers
keep patching it up and panel-beating it. And they keep thrusting it in the
faces of buyers whom they consciously want to fleece, as a tear rubber, a
straight-from-the-dealer’s brand new product! The reckoning is that we probably
have no choice since the ruling party is intent on reincarnation and
self-succession.
And
this exactly is where they get it wrong. Has anyone pondered about why, since
the flag-off of the Tinubu campaign in Jos, many weeks ago, outgoing president
Muhammadu Buhari has not attended or appeared at any political event with
Tinubu? Obasanjo held up Umaru Yar’Adua’s hands at rally after rally,
advertising him to Nigerians. Is Buhari’s noticeable non-identification with
Tinubu’s campaign strictly for official engagements across the world? Is it
because he knows something we don’t know?
In an effort to placate the greater majority of us who are
implacably displeased with his below par performance in his near eight years in
office, Buhari seems intent on redeeming himself, somewhat. He has advised
Nigerians to vote whoever they want, from whichever political party. He is
promising that people’s votes must count and government must be seen to be
respecting the people.
Buhari finally clocked 80 years recently. He was senior to the
Ibrahim Babangida/Aliyu Gusau generation in the military academy, but junior to
them biologically. He desires to be on the acquittal side of history. The
Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has promised to deliver a
BVAS-inspired, manipulation-proof election.
If this is followed to the letter, Tinubu and his orchestra will
be in their own townhall of balablu, blublu, bulaba, come February 25, 2023.
The rest of us will be readying for the resetting and reclamation of Nigeria,
come May 29, 2023, courtesy of our informed choices.
*Olusunle,
PhD, is Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, to Atiku Abubakar, presidential
candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP).
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