Again, the arch-narcissist, Olusegun Obasanjo, strikes — President Muhammadu Buhari is “not hot” on the economy and foreign affairs, but is “hot” on security.
To be sure, the sum total of the comment would appear inoffensive. Obasanjo was speaking at a Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, seminar; and, on the surface, it would appear a comparative analysis of President Buhari’s strengths and weaknesses. Besides, the former president referred his listeners to his latest self-adulating autobiography, My Watch.
Still, there is always the Obasanjo-esque subversive comparison, between himself and his successors — or even his predecessors, as was the late Brig. Benjamin Adekunle, the Civil War Third Marine Commando great in My Command; and Gen. Yakubu Gowon, in Not My Will — how Obasanjo’s predecessors and successors are useless; and how Obasanjo is brilliant and stellar.
The snag, however, is: hard facts seldom support this self-beatification!
On foreign affairs, Hardball cannot remember any golden moment during Obasanjo’s presidential tenure (1999-2007), except the usual policy jumbles. His presidency started with an Afro-centric policy, even boasting a minister of African Integration. But, eight years later, perhaps nobody remembered Obasanjo ever flirted with African integration as state policy!
Compare that to the Buhari era. It’s too early in the day, to be sure; and things might still change, as they are wont to do around here.
But it would appear Buhari’s foreign policy is sharply driven by using diplomacy to repatriate Nigeria’s stolen money, by wayward past leaders. It is far conceptually sharper — and would prove more functional, if it succeeds — than Obasanjo’s “African integration”.
But the economy is, as they say, where the real action is. Obiageli Ezekwesili claims Buharinomics is driven by “dogma”, while her own fixation with Breton Woods is not “dogma”. Why, even the ever attention-seeking Pat Utomi has weighed in: that Buharinomics is driven by “medieval” sentiments, in a celebration Breton Woods dogma-without-dogma!
But it is this growth-without-development paradigm that Obasanjo, with a vengeance, plunged into, from the commandist heights of his first coming as military head of state!
The result? Move no farther than his star policy of liberalising petroleum downstream, not by local refining, but by product importation. The stiff price of that “modern” but extremely senseless policy is haunting us all again.
By this perverse energy policy, Nigerians will pay more for fuel, even as the price of crude appreciates! Yet, if Obasanjo had invested in more refineries, things would have been far better.
Still, a dog-nosed “cold” Buharinomics, even after succumbing to an audacious hike in fuel prices, seems to have a clear programme on local refining, targeting 2018, for when 70 per cent of consumed fuel would be locally refined. Even that can’t be said of the “modern” Obasanjonomics!
Besides, how could brilliant Obasanjonomics, which Goodluck Jonathan took to a record low, have birthed so much corruption, poverty, and underdevelopment, when it remains the golden policy?
This self-adulating former president grates on our sensitivity. Could somebody tell him to be quiet, while his much maligned successors try to clear the mess he left behind?