Is anything new in Obasanjo’s endorsement letter?

For the umpteenth time, the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo has come forth with another letter to endorse one of the presidential candidates. The letter unfolded, as he is wont to do, coinciding with the time of campaigns for the national and state elections. He has done this ever since and it has become a habit […]

For the umpteenth time, the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo has come forth with another letter to endorse one of the presidential candidates. The letter unfolded, as he is wont to do, coinciding with the time of campaigns for the national and state elections. He has done this ever since and it has become a habit too entrenched to shed. Coincidence or not, within the same period, a book titled, “The Letterman: Inside the ‘Secret’ Letters of former Nigerian President, Olusegun Obasanjo” written by Musikilu Mojeed of Premium Times was released to the public.  

The Letterman logs correspondences Obasanjo had over the last many years and which he had kept in meticulous conditions. These correspondences covered the whole gamut of his life. Some of the letters were personal but many were official.  You find letters written to family members, friends, associates, superiors in the military, fellow Heads of State, and former leaders within and outside Nigeria. The letters, as always, reveal the real Obasanjo – forthright, brash, and always calling a spade what it is. What the book does also was to confirm the suspicion held by many that Obasanjo is a compulsive letter writer and record keeper.  

That was then. But still, Obasanjo is going strong, churning out letters. This most recent letter, titled, My Appeal to all Nigerians, particularly young Nigerians, is a six-page tome of a missive exhorting the youth to unite, organise and seize the moment by voting wisely to effect change in their lives and the country. If he had stopped at that it would have come out as a statesman’s declaration. But typical of him, he had to make a controversy out of it. And he did this with aplomb by endorsing Peter Obi of the Labour Party, one of the presidential candidates.  

He said: ‘None of the contestants is a saint but when one compares their character, antecedent, understanding, knowledge, discipline and vitality that they can bring to bear and the great efforts required to stay focused on the job, particularly looking at where the country is today and with the experience on the job that I had, Peter Obi as a mentee has an edge – – he is a needle with thread attached to it from North and South and he may not get lost. In other words, he has people who can pull his ears, if, and when, necessary. It is needless to say that he has a young and able running mate with a clean track record of achievement both in public and private life.’

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As expected, and I suspect as Obasanjo also desired, there has been an uproar in the media. The Labour Party accepted his analyses and endorsement with glee, while both the PDP and APC went up in arms against Obasanjo. This has not come as a surprise to those of us who are familiar with the antecedents of Obasanjo when he was president vis-a-vis his relationship with both the presidential candidates of PDP, Atiku Abubakar, and APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. There has never been any love lost between Obasanjo and the two.  

At a time during Obasanjo’s tenure as president, both Atiku then vice president, and Tinubu, Lagos State governor even shared a kindred spirit of the two topmost officials that have suffered the greatest antagonism and harassment from him. When Atiku Abubakar fell out with Obasanjo at the start of their second four-year tenure, his office was deliberately rendered redundant. The office of the vice president lost its autonomy and was always hamstrung by lacking funds to even run the most routine errands. The political appointees attached to the office were shown the door, one after the other, till the last one was out at the end of 2006. The civil servants and I as one were subsumed into the State House structure. Nevertheless, at every turn in the unsavoury relationship, Atiku went to court receiving a record seven landmark judgments from the Supreme Court against President Obasanjo. 

Similarly, Governor Tinubu had a rancorous relationship with President Obasanjo partly because he regarded Tinubu, then of the AD party, as too independent and a stumbling block to his vision for the president’s party, the PDP, winning in all the states in the West. When eventually PDP won in the West, except for Lagos State, Obasanjo must have thought he had achieved his vision. However, things turned sour for the PDP when Tinubu spearheaded the losing group to challenge the victory at the tribunals. To Obasanjo’s chagrin, the AD eventually was able to wrench three out of the five states from the PDP.  

President Obasanjo had other problems with Governor Tinubu. When in 2003, Tinubu created additional local governments with the support of the Lagos House of Assembly, President Obasanjo considered it an affront. When Tinubu refused to withdraw, Obasanjo decided to withhold the local government allocations to Lagos State. Even when Tinubu won the case in court, Obasanjo denied Lagos State the accumulated funds till he left office. 

With these antecedents, it would be futile to expect Obasanjo to endorse either Atiku or Tinubu for office. There is nothing new in Obasanjo’s letter. From my perspective, it is out of spite that he endorsed Peter Obi and not for any altruistic reason.