That General Olusegun Obasanjo, the emperor who misruled
Nigeria
for eight miserable years ( May 29, 1999 - May 29, 2007) recently raised the
alarm that President Muhammadu Buhari was plotting to arrest him, shows how
transient or ephemeral power can be! But, to paraphrase Frank Arthur Vanderlip,
the great American banker and journalist, "Since nothing is settled until
it is settled right, no matter how unlimited power a man may have, unless he
exercises it fairly and justly, his actions may return to plague him."
Yet, how many Nigerians can see Obasanjo's frustrations and arrogant gaffes as
plain as a boil on the nose? As an army general, former head of state and an
imperial president for eight years, Obasanjo is a tacit representative of the
reactionary faction of the Nigerian ruling class - those shameless apostles of
feudal revival who want Nigerians to continue in medieval servitude.
*Olusegun Obasanjo |
Obasanjo's recent alarm is Karma at work. The question
is: why is Obasanjo still walking about freely in Nigeria in spite of his crime
against the people of this country? For almost eight years, he was the
petroleum minister who would not brook any nibbling at shouting down anyone who
had the courage to challenge him to appoint a substantive minister to man the
oil and gas portfolio. The restiveness, acrimony and rancour which had
enveloped the Niger Delta were deliberate creations of President Obasanjo, who
would continue to stoke the fire while mindlessly looting the booty. Only a
demented despot would spend N200,000,000 daily to maintain the presence of
Joint Taskforce in the region that produces over 90 per cent of the nation's
foreign exchange earnings while fueling agitations and restiveness among the
youths.