I hate to insert myself in a matter as important as a “dispute” between two of Nigeria’s heavyweight politicians: former president Olusegun Obasanjo, and his current reincarnation in the presidency, Bola Tinubu, but I must.
I have written critical opinions about Obasanjo for decades.
Five years ago, he sued me for defamation of character, claiming that a January 2019 article was “false, malicious, unjustified, injurious, scornful, distasteful, [and] unsavoury.”
He said I had exposed him to “public odium, ridicule and disdain,” and demanded N1bn as damages from The PUNCH, one of my publishers, and me.
In 2023, thanks to the energetic efforts of Femi Falana and his chambers, I won that case.
By implication, nothing that I had said in my interventions since 1980, when I became a columnist, was “false, malicious, unjustified, injurious, scornful, distasteful, [or] unsavoury.”
When a man such as Obasanjo is invited to an important event as a speaker, that invitation may be to play offence or defence. It may be an opportunity for both.
But it may also be a trap. When the event brings together such names as Obasanjo and Chinua Achebe, that is a clue that the opportunity, particularly if it is international. requires tremendous care.
I make this distinction because a man such as Obasanjo does not think very highly of the Nigerian people.
Were his speech made in Nigeria, he would have been even more dismissive of local views, and perhaps taken no questions thereafter.
What did Obasanjo say at Yale University?
Principally that governance in Nigeria has collapsed, beginning in 2015 when the first APC administration took office.
Obasanjo cited a recent Georgetown Journal of International Affairs article, by Professor Obasesam Okoi and MaryAnne Iwara, whom he would quote at great length, in this regard:
The declining capacity of political leaders to recognize systemic risks such as election fraud, terrorist attacks, herder-farmer conflict, armed banditry, and police brutality…The current system in which leadership is attained through bribery, intimidation, and violence.
He called the 2023 elections in Nigeria a “travesty,” and advocated several important responses, including education.
“Unfortunately, like many other sectors, the educational system in Nigeria has collapsed,” he said. “Nigerians are excelling in every academic discipline globally, why have we allowed our educational system to rot back home? In order for democracy to thrive, we must collectively rebuild our once envied educational sector.”
He lampooned corruption, reflected on the need to rebuild the judiciary, and landed on state capture. I quote him at length on the subject.
“The World Bank and Transparency International define State capture as one of the most pervasive forms of corruption, “a situation where powerful individuals, institutions, companies, or groups within or outside a country use corruption to shape a nation’s policies, legal environment, and economy, to benefit their own private interests.
“…What is happening in Nigeria–right before our eyes–is state capture: The purchase of national assets by political elites – and their family members – at bargain prices, the allocation of national resources – minerals, land, and even human resources – to local, regional, and international actors. It must be prohibited and prevented through local and international laws.”
On whether Nigeria is a failed state, he said: “Nigeria’s situation is bad.” The more the immorality and corruption of a nation, the more the nation sinks into chaos, insecurity, conflict, discord, division, disunity, depression, youth restiveness, confusion, violence, and underdevelopment. That’s the situation mostly in Nigeria in the reign of Baba-go-slow and Emilokan. The failing state status of Nigeria is confirmed and glaringly indicated and manifested for every honest person to see through the consequences of the level of our pervasive corruption, mediocrity, immorality, misconduct, mismanagement, perversion, injustice, incompetence and all other forms of iniquity.”
By “Baba-go-slow,” he meant Muhammadu Buhari, and by “Emilokan”, Tinubu, of the APC Years since 2015.Related News
Obasanjo is completely correct in his assessment, except perhaps, to say that the situation is worse than “bad.”
But Tinubu is also right in his response: Given the leadership that Obasanjo provided in 1999-2007, terminating in an infamous effort to obtain an illegal third term in office, he is at best a hypocrite.
In 2016, Ghali Umar Na’abba, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, asserted that some senators received N50m each to support the bid, while some Representatives got N40m each.
Of equal importance, Obasanjo’s manipulation of the nation’s elections, including the processes of the PDP to singlehandedly produce the presidential slate for the 2007 elections, is well-known.
Also well-known is that the pioneer EFCC chairman, Nuhu Ribadu—who is now Tinubu’s National Security Adviser—once told Robin Sanders, the then-US Ambassador, that Obasanjo was good at covering his tracks but that corruption had been worse under him than under Sani Abacha.
In 2009, in the Halliburton probe, Obasanjo was prominent, and was alleged to have collected lavish bribes.
In the scandal that rocked the power sector, the EFCC promised a “forensic probe” of the $16bn Obasanjo had allegedly spent, without Nigerians enjoying one hour more of electricity.
Internationally, an embarrassed ECOWAS in 2012, decided never again to involve Obasanjo in election-monitoring duties. I could cite a hundred examples more.
The point here is that former Nigerian leaders should be careful when they are invited to the bright lights and loud microphones of fame.
It is true that Buhari and Tinubu have in the past nine years colluded to inflict sheer menace on Nigerians.
Buhari promised heaven but delivered hell. Now hiding behind a former spokesman who writes obituaries and birthday messages to keep his name alight, he does not show up anywhere he may be questioned about his eight years of betraying the Nigerian people.
Tinubu, for his part, promised a new trip to Buhari’s heaven but discovered it does not exist.
Both men deserve to be criticized by Nigerians, but not by the man whose principal infrastructure success was to pave the route for their emergence.
Obasanjo, according to this 2007 testimony by TheNews, is a wealthy man, as Nigeria’s former leaders tend to be, but while he loves to portray himself as a successful leader, there are many questions about his record, as his suing me revealed.
Nigerian leaders do not like to identify with their records. Obasanjo, for instance, never speaks about the impostor that the EFCC has become, or about the disappearance of his National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy within months.
Oh! Did the BVN enrolment of Nigerians, including around the world, enhance Nigerian banking?
Why is it that with 115 million Nigerians now registered for the national identification number, and as of this weekend, kidnappers and assorted bandits cannot be traced or tracked?
Achebe was right. The trouble with Nigeria is leadership failure. When he first rejected the award of a National Honour in 2004, it was because of the shameless record of Obasanjo’s government, particularly in his home state of Anambra State. He rejected it again in 2011.
Obasanjo cannot honour Achebe’s memory without first apologising for that perfidy.
Neither can he contribute to scholarship, or to Nigeria’s political crop failure, without admitting that he it was who poisoned the soil.
