Nigeria: A Short Essay On ‘The Other Room’

By Banji Ojewale

“In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman”

– Margaret Hilda Thatcher (Late British Prime Minister)

*President Buhari and wife, Aisha

It’s fast turning out that ‘the other room’ in the cosmos of President Muhammadu Buhari is where we have to look for answers to some of the bewildering national questions of the day. When he was grabbed on camera as he faced the world to disclose the existence of an enclosure exclusive to his wife, the president hardly perceived the location as a world beyond his own vision. His remarks were a gratuitous riposte to a loving spouse’s customary admonition. He ignored her and sought to cage the woman, as it were. But the genie was out of the bottle.

Obasanjo, Fayose And The Libyan Idol

By Louis Odion, FNGE

A humour bag of arguably inexhaustible depth, former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, would make even the most consummate stand-up comic feel inadequate on a good day. From improvising the risqué to trafficking the folksy, his creativity, as he himself once famously put it in one such fit of self-deprecating humour, is fed by a certain native resourcefulness, being "Omo ma lo le gbesi" (scion of he who is prodigiously adroit at tackling single-handed any public loud-mouth without help from home). "Wait and get", for short. 

*Gaddafi and Obasanjo

The reason it is therefore rather surprising, if not troubling, that the witty general has kept a studied silence to the avalanche of weighty revelations by Ayo Fayose, the feisty Ekiti governor, in the current edition of wave-making The Interview. Since release last Thursday, Fayose's wide-ranging expose on his one-time political godfather has been widely reproduced by all leading national dailies with massive rebroadcast in the social media.

At this writing, five uneasy days had passed without as much as a whimper from Ota. More and more, the ensuing silence conveys an eloquence not even a thousand words can possibly describe.
Whatever happened to the fabled facility of "Wait and get"?
Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned, Shakespeare tells us.
Now, with Fayose, we now know no venom is as lethal as an estranged godson on rampage. For all his unalloyed loyalty and submission to be used for dirty jobs, he regrets Obasanjo eventually betrayed him by orchestrating his kangaroo impeachment in October 2006.
Of course as a former OBJ enforcer, the "Oshoko" of Ekiti was an insider. What seems to complicate matters is that he did not just squeal; he named living witnesses in the series of infamies OBJ perpetrated as Nigeria's civilian emperor, particularly between 2004 and 2006. 

The revelations surely stink. The image of Obasanjo revealed is pathetic indeed. They include how public funds were used to bribe lawmakers to support Third Term Agenda which OBJ has in the last decade fought tooth and nail to deny. Going down memory lane, for instance, Fayose recalled that the day the bill was shot down at the National Assembly, OBJ dozed off in bitterness as they rode together from Akure airport to Ado Ekiti. Midway, he recalled, OBJ jerked up from slumber, muttering, "Ah, (Ken) Nnamani (then Senate president) willl not leave in one piece".