Obasanjo’s bizarre legacy, Yar’adua’s burden (1)
It is noteworthy that ten years ago, yes, just ten years ago, the average Nigerian was regarded as ‘complacent’, ‘resilient’, and those other names that Mr Babangida and the rest used to mock our collective docility, as they dribbled the people around and increased the burden that we bore. Obasanjo, who I would prefer never […]
It is noteworthy that ten years ago, yes, just ten years ago, the average Nigerian was regarded as ‘complacent’, ‘resilient’, and those other names that Mr Babangida and the rest used to mock our collective docility, as they dribbled the people around and increased the burden that we bore. Obasanjo, who I would prefer never to write about again, but who occupies such a centrally evil space in the Nigerian predicament, came around and worsened the Nigerian situation through sheer ineptitude, selfishness, self-conceit and greed, and by insulting the living daylights out of Nigerians, that we quickly progressed to a state of full-blown low-intensity civil war. How can we explain so much arms and ammunitions in a country, and how did those arms get in here in the first place when we had a government?
I recall all the twice-yearly fuel price increases that defined Obasanjo’s rulership. His government mismanaged the processes of negotiation with labour organisations, such that each fuel price increase and protest, resulted in a two weeks shut-down of the economy. He loved to say that he was brought in by his friends (Babangida and co), to save the country from collapse, but with the level of arms and ammunition acquired in the length and breadth of this country during his tenure, and with the kind of politics he foisted on Nigeria a la PDP, it was he who almost effectively tore this country to pieces. I recall the insults levelled on anyone who dared to question his opinion. Even honesty was many times rewarded with summary dismissal once it tended to expose some party secret or the other.
The other image that sunk me deeper into depression is that of Mr Soludo, in a white jumper traditional uniform, with red cap to match, waving in the middle of the most ferocious gunmen I had ever seen (they looked fiercer than militants), as he made to declare his intention to be the next governor of Anambra State. He later emerged as the party’s flagbearer in a process so glaringly bizarre, that one’s heart wept for the banality of his party and even himself. For they seek not peace. The desperation surrounding his emergence bespeaks a desire to cover one fraud with another.
How could someone to whom this nation handed over all its resources to manage, who signed off on every currency and was defacto number 2 decide that his dream is to go and bring out the ‘potentials of Anambra State’. Is this not the same thinking that make people bastardise our commonwealth, in the deceptive pretext that they are trying to secure the position of their tribes? He also talked of rejecting ‘juicy’ international appointments (with World Bank and Co.). In truth, he is effectively stale intellectually. And those ills that he could not see regarding this economy, has been written on by small me, in this column, since over a year ago. I wish him luck.
The government of Obasanjo elevated gangsterism and cult followership to a national virtue. They all wept when Lamidi Adedibu died. They lamented that the ‘Amala’ politics proponent would no longer be around to show them how to appropriate the wishes of the people. Adedibu was their modern-day high priest of Machiavellism, and his main belief was that the people of Ibadan, and by extension Nigerians, were no better than monkeys who could not be allowed to make up their minds about what they wanted and for whom the few of them who have usurped state power should continue to oppress and lord it over. ‘Keep them illiterate and without a mind of their own, give them Amala to fill their hungry tummies, and they’ll continue to eat from your palms’, seemed to be Adedibu’s mantra, and by extension PDP’s holy grail. Yar’adua is a prisoner in that party, and all the devious deeds ascribed to him are indeed beyond his control. But only for a while.
It didn’t matter that Soludo should be seriously questioned for his role in the on-going banking saga. If not for the shock effect of Sanusi’s intervention, I would have entertained fear that the current investigation will go the way of Halliburton, Willbros and others, in which Obasanjo and his band of ITKs (i-too-knows), benefited massively. The banking meltdown was created by the last government. The bankers formed themselves into what they called ‘Corporate Nigeria’, and donated massive amounts to the president and his party. They basically selected all those we have in ‘elected’ positions today.
How can a president and his CBN governor see clearly through the murky books of the banks when they had been compromised by collecting donations and sundry gifts? Those are the problems that Yaradua is having to grope with. Insha Allah, God willing, we shall look at some of the other problems next week, including the rants of Ribadu and el-Rufai. I think we should start to support this simple president. Someone suggested proposing his name for the next Nobel Peace Prize for the subtle but effective manner he has tried to solve the militancy problem. I concur.