Why Obasanjo Must Leave Jonathan Alone

By Dan Amor 
At the convocation ceremony of Benson Idahosa University, Benin City last weekend, former president Olusegun Obasanjo who delivered the convocation lecture was quoted as saying that Nigerians should not blame him for the failure of the immediate past President Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. He also was quoted as saying that the actions of Jonathan as President for six years would continue to haunt the people of the South South geo-political region for a long time to come. Obasanjo who continues to pose as a messiah despite his monumental failure for eight miserable years as a civilian dictator (1999-2007) would not brook any nimbling in castigating Jonathan even when he knows that Jonathan preformed better than him by far. This has now become his stock-in-trade since 2012 when it became obvious to him that Jonathan would not allow him to have his scuttled third term agenda through the back door. 

*Jonathan, Obasanjo

Jonathan resisted his attempt to manipulate him while acting as the Board of Trustees chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party( PDP). When he tried this gambit a few months to the 2015 presidential election, Nigerians had thought that his mission was simply to sway Jonathan's support base. But the reactions of Nigerians of varied backgrounds to Obasanjo's old tricks showed that Nigerians are no fools. The people's condemnation of Obasanjo's arrant hypocrisy was overwhelming. The first reaction came from no less a personality than the traditional ruler of Lagos, His Majesty Oba Rilwan Akiolu,  who said that Obasanjo's government was the most corrupt in the history of Nigeria. The respected monarch cannot be more correct. Amidst Obasanjo's catalogue of anti-corruption verbal interventions, the question that now begs for an urgent answer is: is Obasanjo among the Saints? Yet Obasanjo is still bashing Jonathan even after the latter has lost election. Analysts now believe that Obasanjo's recent diatribe against Jonathan is just the manifestation of his bottled up anger that the Bayelsa born former President has won international acclaim over his display of the highest form of civility by conceding victory to his opponent even when the actual result was still evolving.


Now, he is poised to incriminate Jonathan while making himself look like a saint before Nigerians. But does Obasanjo possess the moral credentials to speak from a higher pedestal than Jonathan? Due largely to the lamentable short memory of homosepiens, it seems as though we have forgotten so soon about the person of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and his recent past. But the poor boy from Owu Village in Ogun State was led by fortuitous and opportunistic circumstances to have a rendezvous with history and destiny. Against his will and command, Obasanjo became head of state after the assassination of his boss, General Murtala Muhammed. He was said to have been the man who launched Nigeria into the estranged comity of heavily indebted nations when he took the first ever N1 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan in 1978 when the Nigerian currency was 75 kobo to the United States dollar. It was said that more than half of this money was not accounted for by General Obasanjo while a fraction of it was left for the incoming administration of Alhaji Shehu Shagari in October 1979.