Obasanjo’s Moment Of Epiphany

 By Promise Adiele

I met Olusegun Obasanjo for the first time in his Abeokuta home in 2017. I had gone to interview him with Prof. Hope Eghagha as part of the research materials we needed for a national project. After three hours of robust engagement on various topics about Nigeria, I no longer had any illusions about Obasanjo’s sagacity, intellect, and sometimes exaggerations which exonerated him of all culpabilities, creating an infallible image of a being.

*Obasanjo 

To say that Obasanjo is intelligent is to put it mildly. He recounted historical events with an uncanny exactitude and subtle arrogance that belies his position as a no-nonsense former leader of the most populous black country in the world. One can profitably argue that few people know or understand Nigeria more than Olusegun Obasanjo.

His disposition to Nigeria’s issues portrays a nationalistic consciousness devoid of the narrow pathways of ethnicity or religion. However, his prevaricated responses to allegations of a third-term agenda and sundry misdirection in governance while he was in Aso Rock left much to be desired. Given his inexorable immersion in Nigeria’s historical and political provenance, it would be difficult to find a living Nigerian who can outclass Obasanjo as a Nigerian encyclopaedia.

Recently, while presenting a paper at the Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum in faraway Yale University USA, the former president made distinctive submissions which reverberated around the world and Nigeria in particular. According to him, the INEC chairman Mr. Mahmood Yakubu and other officials of the electoral body should be dismissed as part of electoral reform in Nigeria. He indicted the INEC leadership for woefully failing to utilize two main technological tools, BVAS and IReV during the 2023 presidential elections, describing the election as a mere travesty.

In addition, the former president averred that Nigeria has become a ‘failed state’ as a direct consequence of the policies of two individuals he referred to as ‘Baba-go-slow’ and ‘Emilokan’. ‘Baba-go-slow’ and ‘Emilokan’ are derogatory monikers for former president Mohammadu Buhari and current president Bola Tinubu. Given his symbolic patch in international political corridors, the world noted OBJ’s remarks even though it is a rehash of widespread, common knowledge. Only the uninitiated in Nigeria’s political clan will be surprised at OBJ’s remarks as he never fails to gravitate towards challenging putrefying aspects of governance in the country, sometimes through letter writing and other times through no-holds-barred public declarations.  

OBJ’s submission in the USA has expectedly attracted diverse interpretations, especially from Nigerians worldwide. For many apologists of the current gruesome economic conditions in the country, OBJ has committed a crime of infinite proportions and therefore deserves to be literarily tied to the stake. In fact, many opinion writers have practically murdered OBJ on different platforms for his remarks about INEC, state capture, and Nigeria as a failed state under Mr. Bola Tinubu. Also, many people have collaborated OBJ’s comments, insisting that he only emphasized the obvious, which is simply a self-evident, manifest reality to a well-meaning mind.

Although people are entitled to their reactions to OBJ’s stated position, the truth lies somewhere, not in an indeterminate realm, but on the streets of Nigeria populated by verifiable indices indicative of state failure, failed leadership, and general angst against the electoral body. While reactionary voices are entitled to their responses, OBJ is also entitled to his opinion as a Nigerian citizen. Indeed, it is beyond the purview of this space to determine the right or wrong of people’s opinions about events in Nigeria, but we must critically examine the complexion of these responses that berate OBJ to reveal their hollow, puerile milieu.

The glaring issues highlighted by OBJ in Nigeria are failed state, state capture, and INEC’s long overdue overhaul. Are these issues frivolous or trivial? Has the former head of state lost the right to pass a judgement on the governance protocol of his country because according to some people, he was not a better president? Some commentators vehemently argued that OBJ lacks the moral justification to criticize the current government because they think Nigeria was worse under him. Really?

It is mortally unforgivable for any sane soul to argue that Nigeria is better now than during OBJ’s administration. Such effusions deserve immediate exorcism to banish demonic byways of the mind. Let us be clear about this – to compare OBJ and Tinubu in terms of personality and times in power would be the greatest architectural insolence to be erected in global history. Perhaps, if some of us were not around during OBJ’s government, one would have wondered if indeed there are any bases for comparison. But because we were all here, that comparison hangs delicately on the precincts of a misnomer.

Was OBJ’s administration perfect? Far from it. There is no perfect situation in any human commune. However, it is an unparalleled injustice to compare apples and oranges or to even consider the possibility that there are bases to juxtapose OBJ’s administration and Tinubu’s administration. It not only violates the recesses of intuition and equitable cognition but ridicules all claims to education and formal training. How do we even begin to start the comparison, just how?

Perhaps, apologists of the current tragic procession in the country codenamed ‘Renewed Hope’ agree that the country is tottering dangerously to precarious heights, their only worry is why the criticism must come from OBJ. I do not share that sentiment. Shall we then inaugurate a psychological tribunal to demarcate truth excluding those who should say it and who should not say it? Does truth lack flavour and public acceptance because it was uttered by someone we do not appreciate? So because some people erroneously think OBJ’s administration was worse than the current government, therefore his honest submission lacks merit?

I have always maintained that truth as a phenomenon is best when it stands in naked simplicity but unfortunately and regrettably so, most people prefer truth to be adorned in multiple apparel which ultimately disfigures its simplicity. OBJ said Nigeria is a failed state. The question to ask is, what are the indices of a failed state? Nigeria failed under Buhari but Tinubu has sustained that failure, stifling any hope of recovery.

OBJ said the INEC chairman and his cast should be sacked as part of the country’s electoral reform to restore sanity in our electoral procedures. Mortar and pestle are witnesses to INEC’s catastrophic orchestration of electoral plot during the 2023 general elections. Nowadays, INEC is used as the butt of jokes and caricatures in electoral conduct across the world. Nigerians always believe that INEC would certainly manipulate any election if given the opportunity. The last US election was a case in point. It was joked that Kamala Harris lost because INEC did not conduct the election. It is a sad reality.

Gradually and steadily so but with an unconscious determination, Nigerians are sliding into immoral spaces by ignoring palpable socio-economic realities in the land while vocalizing religious mantras both in public and private situations. It borders on overflowing immorality and self-debasing hypocrisy to excuse the current nightmarish languor in the country.

Those who do so are victims of defeated consciences but who must pollute the polity as a therapeutic process for their mental and emotional rehabilitation. The totalizing duality of judgement and its impaired harmony constitutes a moral burden for those who drew the sword against Goodluck Jonathan but became rationalizing apostles for Bola Tinubu under more perilous conditions. For such people, including some renowned religious leaders, it threatens their moral intimacy with elements of the divine and spiritual. God is not mocked.

OBJ avowed that Tinubu’s economic policies have inflicted poverty on millions of Nigerians but I say it differently, Tinubu and his gang do not even have any shred of economic policy and that is apparent in the lives of Nigerians. Those who manufacture figures and statistics to sell the current government operate outside the realms of reality. Any positively penetrating government policy should immediately reflect on the lives of the common people.

But when the people continually groan under suffocating inflation and economic hardship, then there is certainly no direction or will on the part of the government to salvage the people. 5 billion naira was recently spent to renovate the Vice President’s Lagos residence where he does not stay. I am wondering what that amount would accomplish in 5 university teaching hospitals in the country. That is what I call the direct impact of governance, not some abstract conjecture that only titillates our immaterial faculties.

Many Nigerians believe that 2027 is a forgone electoral conclusion given the way APC is engineering the electoral machinery in some state elections in the off-cycle structure. To restore hope and a sense of belonging to the polity, the INEC chairman and his gang should be sacked immediately. The debate should be – how should the new INEC officials emerge? If the same process that produced the current INEC officials also produces their replacements, there are possibilities that the principalities that fed their predecessors will also feed them.

Perhaps, Nigerians should all give a voice on how to rescue the country from the vicious grip of predators whose only intent is to satisfy a deep-seated longing for political glory. OBJ has spoken the truth but what do we do with the truth? Or is OBJ’s truth a lie because OBJ said it? Or could his traducers be inspired by a remote loathing of his political inclinations during the 2023 elections? Maybe.  

*Promise Adiele, PhD., Mountain Top University, Ogun State, Nigeria