This story examines former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s
latest dance steps, a break-dance of twists and turns with
one suspected objective: the actualisation of a self-serving
agenda that is at variance with the projection of a united
Nigeria. Yet, a more perceptive incumbent President would
have pulled all the stops to successfully rein-in Obasanjo.
Instead, aides and confidants, who are far, very far, from
being adroit at statecraft, continue to mislead President
Goodluck Jonathan, as part of a turf battle that is raging
inside Aso Rock Presidential Villa. Interestingly, the
perceived shoddiness of the Presidency, a Presidency
foisted on Nigerians by Obasanjo and which he ought to be
working to adequately address, is being allowed to flounder
because of self-conceited considerations by political leaders
who ought to work at nation-building. Said to be desperately
working for a stalemate immediately after February’s
presidential election, some political leaders in Nigeria, as
this report will show, are going for broke.
YOU ARE ALL MARKED
Sometime last year, Matthew Okikiolakan Aremu Olusegun
Obasanjo, at a private meeting with two former aides and a
former minister (while they were still hibernating in the All
Progressive Congress, APC) implored them to ensure that
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan did not return as President in
2015. At a time when the cluelessness of Nigeria’s
presidency was manifestly waxing more embarrassing by
the day, especially with a First Lady that had become gung
ho, Obasanjo’s move appeared altruistic. Nigeria needed to
be saved from the Jonathans – or so it seemed.
It was at that meeting that Obasanjo revealed that should Jonathan return
next year as President and Commander-in-Chief, those at
that meeting would have to go on exile because, according
to a source who was in attendance, the former Nigerian
leader said, ‘Jonathan would go after all of you here,
including me; so you all would have to go on exile. But I,
Obasanjo, would be here. Therefore, he must be stopped’ by
whatever means!
During a closed door meeting with the leadership of the APC
sometime late last year, Obasanjo admonished it to do
whatever it would take to ensure that Jonathan did not
return.
Again, Obasanjo, just this month, repeated the same threat
of stopping the President in a BBC Hausa Service radio
interview. According to him, Jonathan must be stopped.
I WILL JAIL YOU
Last month, one of the key pillars in the merger that gave
birth to the APC re-defected to the Peoples Democratic
Party, PDP. The reason for his movement back to PDP
could not be ascertained by Sunday Vanguard at press time.
However, Obasanjo is, according to sources, not taking
matters lying low. He did not like the idea of his protégé
returning to the PDP.
Just a fortnight ago, after the re-defection of the said
confidant from the North-east and who is considered very
close to Obasanjo, the latter, reportedly, sent two former
state governors of South west extraction to the said
confidant to convince him on why he should return to the
APC.
According to a very dependable source, for two hours, the
former governors tried in vain to convince the said
confidant.
Undaunted, a telephone call was placed to Obasanjo in
Maputo.
It was understood that for almost an hour, the former
President also, in vain, tried to convince his erstwhile
protégé that he should return to the APC.
Strangely, Obasanjo ended the not-so-pleasant conversation
on the note that should the said confidant refuse to return to
APC, he, Obasanjo, would jail him.
But the question is where will the former President get the
power to jail somebody?
Meanwhile, Obasanjo, whose statements and actions should
not be taken lightly, is believed to have his agenda close to
his chest.
OBASANJO’S MOVES
An Ebora is likened to a spirit – a strange one – in Yoruba
folklore.
For those who know Obasanjo too well, he doesn’t shoot in
the dark; and if and when he does, he already knows the
spot where his target is. His comments and statements are
almost always weighted not necessarily on sincerity but on
forbearance hinged on a self-conceited agenda.
According to Obasanjo, in his much fractured and derided
book, My Watch, which Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has
condemned as a pack of lies, the former President wrote of
Jonathan: ”Jonathan is lacking in broad vision, knowledge,
confidence, understanding, concentration, capacity, sense
of security, courage, moral and ethical principles, character
and passion to move the nation forward on a fast
trajectory.”
That was not all. He went on: “Under Jonathan, we seem to
have gone from frying pan to fire. If in the past corruption
was in the corridors of power, it would seem now to be in
the sitting room, dining room and bedroom of power.”
Obasanjo has not said anything new and this would not be
the first time he would be taking on a sitting leader.
However, what makes this instance very curious is that it is
this self-same Obasanjo who, against an agreement on
power rotation which he signed, sealed and delivered on
December 22, 2002, in Aso Rock Presidential Villa, urged
Jonathan to run for election in 2011.
Diplomatic sources and political leaders across geo-political
zones in the country disclosed to Sunday Vanguard that
Obasanjo’s agenda is not about saving Nigeria from
Jonathan.
In fact, a very authoritative source, who remains very close
to Obasanjo but who does not share his beliefs, confided in
Sunday Vanguard: “The APC does not understand the game
Obasanjo is playing. Obasanjo has committed himself to
some northern political leaders and traditional institutions
that he would return power to the North in 2015. It is
obvious that Obasanjo is no longer interested in the success
of the PDP. But the APC leaders should ask him why he has
not openly declared as a member of their party?”
The counterpoise, however, as put forward by Sunday
Vanguard, is: How does Obasanjo’s membership of a
political party obviate the genuineness of his observations
about President Jonathan?
In what was to shock Sunday Vanguard as would shock
Nigerians, the source made it clear that Obasanjo’s sudden
realization that Jonathan must be stopped is not about
Nigeria but about Obasanjo.
AN AGENDA WITHIN AN AGENDA
According to another source, the only thing that can stop the
PDP from running away with victory next year would be an
opposition that can match the ruling party. APC, which was
the merger of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, with the
Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, was meant to
address that challenge.
Curiously, the regime of derision that had crisscrossed and
dominated the relationship between Obasanjo; APC National
Leader, Bola Tinubu; and the APC presidential candidate,
Muhammadu Buhari, did not matter any longer.
However, unknown to the APC leadership, sources say
Obasanjo’s agenda is “purely to force a stalemate at the
polls such that Nigerians will have only one option which is
a third way – neither Jonathan nor Buhari,” an interim
arrangement or a government of national unity.
The first plank of Obasanjo’s grand design is, according to
sources, to overwhelm leaders of the opposition with
uncommon support for their cause. That way, he would be
welcomed and seen as part of their party. That has already
been achieved – but Obasanjo has never claimed to be a
member of APC.
The second plank, Sunday Vanguard was told, is that
Obasanjo himself would overheat the polity with incendiary
comments. He has already started doing that.
Unfortunately, however, the book he wrote, My Watch, is
already suffering credibility crisis because in that book, only
Obasanjo comes out clean. But, more significantly, the
book is meant to sensitize the international community,
rightly or wrongly, to the fact that the Jonathan Presidency
is a never-do-well contraption headed by a President who is,
at best, confused and, at worst, incompetent.
As part of this plan, sufficient public angst would have a
fertile ground on which to germinate and set the stage of
massive outpouring of resentment. Another component of
this leg is the drive to engineer discontent in the polity
through verifiable and unverifiable claims and counter
claims that would further drive the wedge between both
leading political parties.
That way, a diplomatic source concluded, “any outcome of
the 2015 presidential election would not be acceptable to the
losing party”.
The source went on: “But you know what that means for
Nigeria once parties refuse to accept the result of an
election. What Obasanjo has succeeded in doing is to help
shore up the opposition which is good for democracy; but it
is also good for his own agenda which is a return to power.”
The downside, however, is that Obasanjo’s own agenda
goes beyond having a strong opposition.
Another source disclosed: “The whole idea of supporting the
APC is to force a stalemate at the polls. Obasanjo does not
do anything without his own interest.”
To buttress the point of the former Nigerian leader’s interest,
Sunday Vanguard has been told of the existence of the
report of a probe into the activities of General Buhari as
Petroleum Trust Fund, PTF, Chairman.
The interesting development is that between Obasanjo and
the PDP leadership, the details of that report would become
public knowledge. So, why would Obasanjo be interested in
leaking the report? It is for the same reason as “damaging
Buhari the way he has written about Jonathan”, an
Obasanjo aide who has since fallen out with the former
President disclosed.
The Obasanjo former aide added: “Since the first election in
2015 is the presidential election, any unpalatable fallout
may make it difficult for subsequent elections to hold. In
the event that that happens, Nigerians should begin to brace
for an interim arrangement which is what Obasanjo is
working towards. To him, it is either Jonathan is removed or
another arrangement is put in place”.
When Obasanjo threatens that he would jail an individual,
the question is, how? – he is no longer President. But the
scenario, said to be anticipated is that the need to legislate
for an interim government would not need too much push
as Nigeria’s National Assembly, by February ending, would
house a preponderant of legislators whose stake would
amount for nothing because they were not re-nominated by
their parties for another term.
The dangerous mix of having a stalemate and an
assemblage of disgruntled lawmakers would make for a
tantalizing cocktail for disaster in a country of clashing
socio-political, economic and religious interests.
The international community would wade in and would
rather support an interim arrangement than sees a unstable
nation.
CONCERN OF LEADERS
As investigations for the scripting of this piece was on-
going, Bolaji Akinyemi, a professor, and former Foreign
Affairs Minister and who just served as Deputy Chairman,
National Conference, 2014, alerted Nigerians on Monday
that danger looms. He sent an open letter to both Jonathan
and Buhari, calling on both men to conduct their campaigns
with decorum as well as ensure that they abide by the
outcome of next year’s presidential election in order not to
set Nigeria on fire. He also called on leaders to intervene
and meet with both candidates.
Since Monday when the letter was published, as if driven by
a peculiar spirit, both camps have not ceased to tone down
their rhetoric of assault. While the Buhari campaign claimed
to tacitly support mutiny, insisting that the military has a
right to protest, Jonathan’s camp has been busy pouring
invectives on the person of Buhari. This is exactly the type
of scenario Obasanjo had allegedly envisaged.
Mercifully, a few of those leaders of thought that Akinyemi
suggested should meet with both candidates appear to be
on the same page with the former minister and erudite
scholar.
Sunday Vanguard learnt that a former Secretary General of
the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, agrees totally
with the observations of Akinyemi.
In separate interviews with Col. Abubakar Umar, the
Caliphate and other prominent Nigerians, they all agreed that
Akinyemi had hit the nail on the head.
WHEN OBASANJO SPEAKS
From the Olympian height of nationalism, logging a record
in 1979 as the first African military leader to voluntarily hand
over power to civilians, Obasanjo has fumbled down the hill
with a deafening fall occasioned by his attempt at tenure
elongation in 2006.
Perhaps, a more thorough interrogation of the man,
Obasanjo, would have revealed a self-conceited individual
whose only claim to goodness is opportunistic.
Yet, consider the following:
In 1983, during the deadly days of the post-1983 election
violence, Obasanjo took a swipe at the then President Shehu
Usman Aliyu Shagari for running a clueless government.
Soon after, precisely on December 31, that year, the military
struck.
Again in the early second half of 1985, Obasanjo, while
delivering a lecture somewhere in the South West,
lampooned the General Muhammadu Buhari junta and,
barely two months later, Buhari was toppled.
When Obasanjo tried something similar in 1989 against the
Ibrahim Babangida administration, attempting to ride on the
back of the riots against the Structural Adjustment
Programme, SAP, of that government, younger military
officers out-shouted Obasanjo. Whereas Obasanjo, who
holds the traditional title of Balogun of Owu, doubling as the
Ekerin Egba, had counseled that Babangida’s SAP must
have a human face and a milk of human kindness, Navy
Captain Okhai Mike Akhigbe charged back on behalf of that
government, describing Obasanjo as a frustrated chicken
farmer. That silenced Obasanjo for a while.
It was not until the troubling days of June 12, 1993
presidential election annulment, a time when it would have
been expected of Obasanjo to be on the side of decency,
common sense and logic, that the former President found
his voice in a most ludicrous and egregious manner. Rather
than keep quiet in the face of nothing meaningful and
helpful to say, Obasanjo declared that the winner of that
election, Bashorun MKO Abiola, was not the messiah
Nigerians were waiting for. That statement further
emboldened the military to stay the course and cause of
annulment.
In retrospect today, maximum dictator Sani Abacha, by a
twist of ironic tragic-comedy, hauled Obasanjo into prison
as a way of stopping his serial pranks – the coup tribunal
actually ordered Obasanjo kept out for life. Interestingly,
had those administrations Obasanjo criticized found
accommodation for his influence, all would have been well
in his estimation!
For a traditional man, it takes a strange individual to do
what Obasanjo does with relish. After imposing Umar Musa
Yar’Adua on Nigeria, it was the same Obasanjo who railed
against the former when his illness became imminently
terminal.
And after campaigning for Jonathan to become President in
2011, and when the centre could no longer hold for both
men, Obasanjo switched on his atavistic and cantankerous
mode.
Make no mistake, it is only a manifestly shambling and
shambolic presidency like Jonathan’s that would be a
receptacle for all manner of dirt. And which is why an
Obasanjo, with the attendant ills of his administration, would
not see anything good about Jonathan, his protégé.
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