Obasanjo and Jonathan: is it really too late?

As President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan continues to push for an impossible third presidential term, media reports say he is considering visiting former President Olusegun Olusegun to ask for “forgiveness” and continuous support to remain in the Villa. As is usual with him, President Obasanjo will oblige Jonathan the visit if he insists, but will never […]

As President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan continues to push for an impossible third presidential term, media reports say he is considering visiting former President Olusegun Olusegun to ask for “forgiveness” and continuous support to remain in the Villa. As is usual with him, President Obasanjo will oblige Jonathan the visit if he insists, but will never “forgive” or support his 2015 presidential bid and unlike Adamu Adamu, Daily Trust’s cerebral and respected columnist, I doubt whether the outcome of this political rub-a-dub will produce “the same old story.” Already, an advanced party made up of the Senate President, Mr David Mark, Peoples Democratic Party national chairman, Ahmad Adamu Mu’azu and others had gone to Obasanjo and asked to be forgiven. They want Obasanjo to reverse himself, endorse Jonathan’s ambition for additional presidential term and campaign for PDP. Blimey! It’s a season for forgiveness as the season for offence has clearly gone.
But why are these PDP bigwigs requesting for Obasanjo’s forgiveness? Which offence (s) have they committed against him? Why do they need Obasanjo to forgive them and why should he do so? Obasanjo may even forgive the PDP and its leaders for all the “lies and untruths about me emanating from the presidency.” But to understand whether Obasanjo will support Jonathan’s continuous presidency, we need to re-read their letters to each other. According to Obasanjo, one of the most painful offences committed against him by the presidency is “saying that I recommended a wanted criminal by UK and USA authorities to you or your aides to supplant legitimately elected PDP leader in South-West.”
Obasanjo’s letter, which is “clearly a threat to national security”, according to Jonathan, leaves no room for a meeting point between him and President. I guess that if Obasanjo were to write his letter now, the tone of the reply from Jonathan would have been different; I mean it would have been mellow. As it is, the presidential reply was a tit for tat that left no room for Obasanjo to feel respected. But the more challenging thing about Obasanjo’s letter is that he has raised too many issues from which Jonathan cannot satisfactorily disentangle himself, now or in the future. Time has proved that not only is Jonathan’s presidency adversative to national interest, it is in opposition to Obasanjo’s personal preferences.
Like Obasanjo, all of us are horrified by the hate speech discharged from the leaking mouths of Asari Dokubo, the half-Ijaw, Annkio Briggs and even their grand old leader, Chief Edwin Clarke, who have all spoken of Jonathan as an exclusively Ijaw President. All of these characters have verbally closed the door to the emergence of any other President from another part of Nigeria in 2015. “To  allow  or  tacitly encourage  people of ‘Ijaw nation’ to throw insults  on  other  Nigerians from other  parts of  the  country  and threaten fire and brimstone to  protect  your interest  as  an  Ijaw  man  is  myopic  and  you’re not  openly  quieting  them  is even  more  unfortunate”, the former President said to the present in his famous letter.
The utterances of President Jonathan himself cannot exculpate him from this divisive rhetoric and Obasanjo again noted it: “Also  declaring that  one section of  the  country voted for  you  as if  you  got  no  votes  from other sections can  only  be  an  unnecessary  talk, to  put it  mildly.” While playing host to some South East leaders who met him in the Villa, the President had said then that he was aware that the votes he got from the North were cast by the Igbo leaving there, meaning the Hausa-Fulani didn’t vote for him.
Many of the dangerous possibilities foreseen by Obasanjo have become reality. “Let  me  put  it,  that  talks,  loose  and  serious,  abound  about  possible abuse and misuse of the military and the legitimate security apparatus for unwholesome personal and political interest to the detriment of the honour, dignity, oath and professionalism  of these  honourable and patriotic forces.”
Anybody who witnessed the massive deployment of Nigerian security forces – police, soldiers, SSS, civil defence personnel, etc in Ekiti and Osun states, presumably to guard against the “snatching of ballot boxes”, but which citizens realised was aimed at ensuring the victory of PDP at gun point. Unfortunately, the North Eastern part of the country that requires these numbers of armed forces to curb Boko Haram murder, kidnapping and wanton destruction is left unguarded. Yet, according to Mr Obasanjo: “Mr  President would  always  remember  that  he  was  elected  to  maintain  security  for  all Nigerians  and  protect  them.”
Neither is there any semblance of justice or even-handedness in the deployment of financial and material resources across the regions of the country. While the federal government continues to expend billions of Naira for the welfare of Niger Delta “militants”, it voted only N2b for the entire North East to address similar problems. Obasanjo’s warning that “the most dangerous ticking bomb is youth unemployment, particularly in the face of unbridled corruption and obscene rulers’ opulence” has gone unheeded.
“Putting  a  certified  unasha-med  criminal wanted abroad to face justice and who has greatly contributed to corruption within the judiciary on a high profile of politics as you and your aides have done with the man you enthrone as PDP leader for the South-West zone is the height of disservice to this country politically and height of insult to the people  of  South-West  in  general  and  members  of  PDP  in  that  zone  in particular.” For Obasanjo too, this is a direct personal insult and a challenge to his honour, reputation and integrity.