Obasanjo Again!
Well, whether Obasanjo’s call was sensible or not, that is not the focus in this piece. Our attention is more in substantiating a position we have canvassed for years that the greatest disservice that some retired Generals did to this country was not whether they interrupted civilian governments or have carried out military coups at […]
Well, whether Obasanjo’s call was sensible or not, that is not the focus in this piece. Our attention is more in substantiating a position we have canvassed for years that the greatest disservice that some retired Generals did to this country was not whether they interrupted civilian governments or have carried out military coups at intervals to advance their personal and group interests, but the decision to free Obasanjo from prison in 1998, clean him up, grant amnesty to a convicted traitor and went ahead and adopted him as the candidate of the PDP and campaigned for him to win the election in 1999.
The PDP democratically ‘died’ with that victory and the ascendency of Obasanjo on May 29th 1999. Since then, both Nigeria and the party have not been the same and not for the positive but very negative reasons. In 2003, the party broke all the known rules of electoral democracy and conducted a historically revealing farce that was to henceforth be the standard that Nigerian elections were to be conducted.
General Obasanjo was reckless in office and has since his departure, arising from the staunch opposition of Nigerians to his moves to amend the constitution in 2005 to perpetuate himself in power to the emergence of Umaru Yar’adua as president, his ailment and the politics that followed to the ascendency of Goodluck Jonathan as acting president until Yar’adua finally bowed down to the will of nature early in 2010.
The man became wounded by the huge humiliation he received from the South West political establishment under the leadership of Bola Ahmed Tinubu, where Obasanjo lost all elections including in his own polling station not to talk about his daughter’s desire to return to the Senate for the second time. I am sure the defeat will extend to his council ward when local elections are conducted in Ogun state.
My thinking was that the return to sender which General Obasanjo faced in the hands of the main line South West political taciturn was sufficient to humble the old man into submission rather than this national grandstanding of tyranny trying to reap where he never sowed. The history is short and simple. In 1999 when the government of Abdulsalam Abubakar thought the best way to appease the South West was to ensure that one of its own was elected president in 1999, the choice of Obasanjo was thought to be the right thing to do, forgetting about the fact that he had lost so much steam in the desperation to be relevant at different times and psychologically speaking, that had impacted tremendously on the health of his conscience and thoughts.
For instance, General Obasnajo wanted to become the Secretary General of the United Nations, Nigerian government under General Babangida had spent tremendous resources to help him realize that ambition but he was found grossly inadequate and Boutros Ghali instead was elected. He had lost the membership of eminent persons’ group of the Commonwealth and was back at Otta in relative misery because the farm was also getting comatose. All of a sudden, he walked into a coup plan and it was botched. He was found guilty and sentenced accordingly.
Under such a scenario, it is difficult to expect such a person to retain any high degree of composure and candor to provide leadership to a complex nation like Nigeria. That was why he came, saw, destroyed the tremendous resources that accrued to the nation and left. Now, he is back as the traditional social critic that he since claimed to be while leading the Board of Trustees of his party, the PDP.
When the Bola Tinubu machine swept the South West, the confusion in General Obasanjo was palpable but I will say, it is shocking that people who claim intelligence cannot read the handwriting clearly. In 1999, he had no base in South West; he was merely elected by the rest of Nigeria. He used state machine to emasculate the entire nation’s political landscape including the South West in 2003, retained it fraudulently in 2007.
Out of power and helpless, I wonder how General Obasanjo thought he could play the same game as he did on two occasions when he held the nation by the balls. After losing woefully, taking advantage of the fact that he was the president for eight years and was single handedly responsible for the installation of Yar’adua as President and Goodluck Jonathan as Vice in 2007, and playing a dirty politics before the death of Yar’adua to ensure that Goodluck took over, and he did and the politics that followed the issue of zoning and so on of which Obasanjo was among the first Nigerians that came out and disowned zoning thus giving Jonathan the clearance to contest and he is now the president whether anybody likes it or not, it is amazing that it is the same character that should now be talking about zoning in the parliament. What is the meaning of integrity? What is statesmanship?
The scenario paints a picture of either insanity or confusion. The House of Representatives for the first time since the inception of this democracy is near equal between the PDP and other political parties in terms of composition. I am a witness to the fact that General Obasanjo couldn’t control the House when his party had over 75% of the membership and when he was the president, talk less of today when the distance between the PDP and other parties in the House is a little over thirty members. The development today in my view is a case of the former president desperately searching for relevance in the face of humiliating defeat right in his house and the neighborhood. He was beaten hands down in his own house and he characteristically wants others to save his face when he hardly can do the same to anybody under similar clime.
He did not either elect or cause Aminu Tambuwal to be elected. It wasn’t Goodluck Jonathan or even Tony Anenih, the traditional fixer general of the federation or Bello Halliru, who thought he could use his office as acting chair of the party and from the North West to cow Tambuwal out. The presiding officers of the House were elected by the members of the House who are both PDP and other political parties. No one, not even Jonathan, can ask either Tambuwal or Emeke Ihedioha to resign. I am happy that Obasanjo lacks the political skill to throw any banana pill on the floor of the House after all the exuberance in the House makes banana pills un useful because it has never worked and cannot work in this case.
The call by Obasanjo was simply because his candidate wasn’t elected, a she-Speaker, and of course I reason with the members because it wouldn’t make any political sense to elect a speaker out of only five members from a zone that has the second largest representation in the congress. What would anybody make of the huge resources from the South West who are certainly amongst the best brains and law makers in the House? And who incidentally belong to the ACN?
The House should disregard this old man. Age has set in. he ordinarily should be in his Church most of the time by now because God gave him a second chance, a rare opportunity people get, but he squandered it, messed it up.
As far as the reality of PDP politics is concerned, zoning is not essential unless the map is redrawn and it cannot be redrawn now just to satisfy the caprices of failed political lenders. The House must be allowed to work for their peoples. Nigerians are at home with the decision of the House to go against the wishes of a few cabals in the party hierarchy and government to decide its leadership.
Nigeria must move forward and by the result of the 2011 elections, the voices of the South West was not only heard but loudly too and very visibly seen. Let us not be disturbed by the ranting of those who have failed to be relevant.