Obasanjo’s epistolary

In more recent times, Prince Tony Momoh’s letters entitled:- Letter to my countrymen—a series written to explain government policies when he was made minister of information would also remain a sustained epistolary engagement with the Nigeria public aimed at informing it on what government was doing at that time. The exacting task of the weekly […]

In more recent times, Prince Tony Momoh’s letters entitled:- Letter to my countrymen—a series written to explain government policies when he was made minister of information would also remain a sustained epistolary engagement with the Nigeria public aimed at informing it on what government was doing at that time. The exacting task of the weekly letter writing must have been made tolerable for Tony Momoh because of his background as an accomplished news man and editor.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s missive to his protégé, President Goodluck Jonathan follows somewhat in the foot step of the earlier ones. First, except for a few rhetorical usages of allusions and metaphors, doctoral students in Communication Styles may not find enough material in it to sustain a full length thesis. It is however a bare knuckle, harm fisted attack on President Goodluck Jonathan’s stewardship of his party and Nigeria. Had Obasanjo not hinted that this particular missive was the 4th, and that he was making it public because it could also be thrown into the waste basket like the earlier ones he had written to which he got no reply, one would have asked what happened to heart to heart and eyeball to eyeball talks to iron out differences in the inner sanctum of Aso Rock which was open to Obasanjo on request. Has communication broken down so irretrievably to warrant all this bile dripping from the letter?
Anyway, the jury is already out and it is that all is not well between the former president and his protégé. The natural order demands that Goodluck Jonathan remains obedient, indeed subservient to one who, as he says, acted as the hand of God to make him president.  But it is also well known that life is all about self expression and self actualisation; no one wants to remain in the shadows of another all his life, particularly when you are occupying a position GEJ is in now. So, the situation is akin to the puppet or is it the surrogate having come to his own by throwing away the yoke of being at the beck and call of the master, who judging by the vitriol in the letter, is not taking it kindly at all.
And this can be seen in the portrayal of GEJ.  According to Obasanjo, GEJ has undermined his own party on whose back he climbed to power by surreptitiously egging on the chairman to display certain attitude that grated on people and has precipitated the disquiet that was now causing an exodus from the party. Obasanjo calls to question GEJ’s honour and moral fibre as a leader on grounds of categorically not coming out to say whether or not he would contest in 2015. His reasons for this charge is that despite having stated that he would do only one term, his body language and other goings -on suggest otherwise. A leader should be predictable but on 2015 no one can predict GEJ, Obasanjo noted.
For me the charge of clannishness is most brutal of all. GEJ, Obasanjo says, has whittled down the pan-Nigeria ambiance and stature of the presidency to that of only one tiny ethnic group—his own Ijaw group, whose members take unusual interest in casting slurs on other groups as they wish. GEJ and his acolytes have enough fire power in their armoury  to counter all these charges but it is necessary to state that since when has throwing costly barbs across ethnic divides lay one to the charge of chauvinism?
Ethnic name calling has become a national pastime, to the extent that it no longer elicit anger. Stereotype statements like the Yoruba are cowards elicits only laud laugh from everyone including the one the joke is directed at. The national television has even tapped into it through comedy programmes that make us laugh at each other’s foibles and idiosyncrasies as a way to teach tolerance. Having said this though, it would be another matter however if it can be proved that GEJ has secretly singled out the Ijaw people for undue favours to the detriment of others.  Still, coming from OBJ it may well be that the Ijaws have taken name calling and slur casting on others not of their kind to new height hitherto unseen, in which case it calls for attention.
Therefore if the charge of ethnic chauvinism is not frivolous, surely that of 1000 people on the political list cannot be made lightly. In other climes security agencies would have since started scurrying about including calling in GEJ for questioning and OBJ to provide proof of his assertions. If they have not started doing that then they better start now because inherent in it is the dire security implications to almost everybody.
It is easy to explain away OBJ’s bitter allegations against GEJ as sour grapes on the part of the former now frustrated by the display of new found independence of the latter, particularly the wall of inaccessibility erected around himself. Yet as has been emphasised several times, OBJ’s exasperation is more or less self-inflicted. His missive is nothing if not a study of anguish over his own choice of a successor, who proceeded to actually simply emulate his erstwhile master, to the detriment of their party and the nation at large.
Put another way, a party would not long remain a party if decisions are taken by a few and rammed down the throats of other members. No matter the docility of the members, soon they will wake up to demand to be listened to or else. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is at present sadly at that moment of reckoning. The obverse of this notion is that the party’s impasse was brought about by the African Big man syndrome, whose wishes and caprices must be obeyed.
The value in OBJ’s treatise, if it can be called that, is that it listed qualities a leader must have which are sorely lacking in the polity, and a leader does not deserve his position if he does not have them. He forgot to add that in this milieu of self serving cynicism, it would take more than pious preachments as contained copiously in his letter to get such a leader. Leaders of such calibre can only come from the crucible of years of altruistic service imbued and inculcated by a system designed to achieve such an outcome.