By Olayinka Oyegbile
Olusegun Okikiola Mathew Aremu Obasanjo is no doubt an Akanda eda (special being). He is like the folk character, Ajantala, in the Yoruba fokltales. Ajantala spoke and walked the very day he was born. He was a child of controversy who defied all human limitations. Former President Obasanjo may not belong in the same class with Ajantala, but there is no doubt that he shares a lot in common with this Yoruba folk hero.
As the former president gingerly steps into the class of the octogenarians, it is clear that he has lived a life that is surely the envy of many. He has lived and continues to live his life trailed with so many controversies. In fact, many believe that he deliberately courts or stirs controversy as a way of remaining relevant in national and even international politics. Here we are going to restrict ourselves to only his home front controversies but not forgetting that at the height of the obnoxious apartheid regime in South Africa he advocated the use of juju, African charms, to free the country from the deadly claws of the obnoxious system.
Obasanjo has remained a constant feature of Nigerian political life since his fortuitous rise to power in 1979 after the murder of Gen Murtala Muhammed, the then Head of State, who he was second in command to as Chief of Staff Supreme Headquarters. This was perhaps the beginning of his life in controversies. On the day of the coup, while officers like Col Ibrahim Babangida et al reportedly were on the streets to capture the coup plotters, Obasanjo, a senior officer and second in command to the slain head of state, allegedly went into hiding in a civilian friend’s house in Ikoyi until the rebellion was crushed! Until today the man has been silent on where he was on that fateful day.
Stepping into the shoes of the late head of state, he never tinkered with the transition programme but went ahead with the handover of power to a civilian president on October 1, 1979. Prior to the election and in the heat of the campaign he made the famous statement that the “best man in the race may not win the contest.” This was the first iota of doubt that trailed that year’s election. Those in the camp of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the then presidential candidate of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), saw the statement as a confirmation of their fear that the election would not be free and fair against their candidate who they considered the ‘best’ among the then five candidates of the registered political parties. The other four were Alhaji Shehu Shagari of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) who was eventually declared the winner of the election, the late Malam Aminu Kano of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP), Alhaji Waziri Ibrahim of the Great Nigeria Peoples Party (GNPP) and the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe of the Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP).
The acerbic author
After his time in office as a military leader, Obasanjo found a new vocation by turning into an author. This was a very unlikely vocation for a man who many have viewed as, to say the least, a ‘nitwit’. His first offer as an author was a record of his role in the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70. During that critical period in the country’s history and towards the end of the war, Obasanjo was asked to take over the command of the Third Marine Commando which had played a crucial role in the prosecution of the war. He took over from the then Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle, popularly known as Black Scorpion. At the public presentation of the book in 1980, the late Chief Bola Ige, who was then governor of Oyo State and a friend of Obasanjo, was the special guest and characteristic of Ige, the Cicero of Esa Oke, he told the author blankly that his book was controversial and that he had opened a can of worms with the memoir. True to his prediction, the book attracted and continues to attract criticisms from those who were at the theatre of the war who felt Obasanjo over stated his role and diminished that of others, especially Adekunle’s.
That was not all, in 1987 he courted the ire of the north. Both the young and old were offended that he wrote the biography of Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, a close friend of his who was the leader of the 1966 coup that killed the late Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto, who was regarded with awe and respected as an icon of the region. In fact, the anger against Obasanjo was so venomous that his name and anything connected with him became endangered in the north. Bookshops across the northern states were raided by irate mobs who had not read or could not even read, with copies of the book seized and set on fire. For a very long time, anyone holding a copy of the book or found speaking in support of the author in the north was a target of attack.
Before the embers of the anger over the Nzeogwu book died down in the northern part of the country, in 1990 again he wrote another book that brewed another heated controversy in his region of the country. The 1990 book Not My Will, which is a memoir of his time as military head of state, ruffled feathers of Awoists because of the way he wrote about the respected politician. In it, Obasanjo stated that what the respected politician spent all his life fighting to get (leadership of the country) was given to him on a platter of gold. This didn’t go down well with his people and the controversy raged for many years. The former president was not done with his controversies; last year he wrote a three volume book, My Watch, in which he wrote damning reports about several other people. These include the man who served as his vice president for two terms, Atiku Abubakar; a former friend and supporter, Senator Buruji Kashamu. The two, among others, were at the mercy of the former president’s acerbic pen. In fact, Kashamu who is now a senator made spirited efforts through the courts to make sure the book did not see the light of day. He got the nod of the court but typical of Obasanjo he went ahead with the public presentation of the book.
On the political front
The former president does not suffer fools gladly. During the reign of the former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, he was in the forefront of those who pilloried the military president for his long winding transition to civil rule and wasted resources. He never ceased to state his mind over the dubious nature of the transition programme. The peak of his criticism was in an interview with a magazine in which he dismissed the entire programme of the Babangida administration and said that if the former military leader sees him and says “good afternoon”, he would have to look out the window to confirm whether it was really afternoon!
His intervention in national politics did not end with the exit of Babangida from power. At the height of the brutal reign of the late Gen Sani Abacha, when many generals kept their heads under their wives’ or mistresses’ boubou, Obasanjo did not relent. In fact, there was a time that he was told while abroad not to return home because he would be arrested. He dismissed it and stepped into the next available flight home. A few weeks down the road he was arrested and tried for an alleged coup plot against the Abacha regime. He was along with the late General Musa Yar’Adua sentenced to death with some other persons. Yar’Adua died in prison. Obasanjo, a man of destiny, was almost killed too. He later became president and ruled for eight years.
Toward the end of his second term, he was alleged to be interested in a third term, which was not in the country’s constitution. He never got the chance because the National Assembly turned it down. Up till today, despite widely held belief that he wanted a third term, he continues to deny it. Former National Security Advisor to President George Bush in her memoir confirmed that Obasanjo tried to get the former American president’s support for his bid but was rebuffed.
The former president had a spat with his anointed candidates in the late Yar’Adua and later President Goodluck Jonathan. Although the disagreement with Yar’Adua never came to a head, perhaps because of his failing health and the fact that he never completed his term, his falling out with former president Jonathan is believed to have led to the man’s loss of the presidential seat.
His gale of controversies is not with politicians only; he is always at the opposite end of arguments with his fellow Egba, the Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka. The two octogenarians have never been known to stand on the same side of any issue.
