Tag: Obasanjo

• By Abiodun Komolafe

Former president, Olusegun Obasanjo’s recent discourteous behaviour against some of the traditional rulers in Iseyin, Oyo State has drawn an angry tirade from the public. Not unexpectedly, these comments have come as a mix of both the printable and unprintable words. For yours sincerely, the former president’s comments could only be viewed from two main perspectives. 

The first is the pre-colonial era prestige attached to Nigeria’s traditional institution. During the period under review, traditional rulers were in full control to the extent that the then-visiting white men who later became their colonial masters were always at their mercy for acceptance to the kings and the locals. In their bid, the white men always came to these monarchs along with materials such as clothes, tobacco, salt, refined gold and beverages. In return for the perceived kind gesture from the white men, traditional rulers would always pack and sell or give our brothers and sisters who had either been bought or captured in inter-tribal wars as slaves as gifts in return to these foreigners. This relationship continued till it all culminated in what was later known as colonial administration.

It is also interesting to note that the colonial administration then brought the idea that traditional rulers needed to be subservient to the colonial administration. That was the genesis and the starting point of the gradual erosion of the power and influence of the traditional rulers in Nigeria. This was done to see the monarchs as middlemen through whom people were administered indirectly in the protectorates which in any case was resisted by the easterners. The Obas, too, really enjoyed it as it was seen in their fraternization and oppression of the people. But the monarchs had left their lofty positions and begun looking up to the white men or the colonial lords for decisions, directions and favours of all shapes and sizes in all things.

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At independence, the colonial masters left, but they left behind the structure for the indigenous administration.  Not only that they left, they also gave us a document known as the Independence Constitution which was meant to right all the wrongs of the past and restore the dignity of the traditional leaders, among others. The joy of independence of the year 1960 was however brought to a halt by a group of soldiers led by Major General Thomas Aguyi-Ironsi, who instead of sustaining the regional system of government that was in place, introduced the unitary system of government coloured in federalism, and that’s what has been in place, even till this day. That was how Nigeria went back to its colonial master-monarch relationship.

Needless to repeat, therefore, that Obasanjo and his co-travellers who later found themselves at the seat of power did not see anything wrong with the usurpation of the roles and powers of our revered monarchs. So, there’s no need to restore them. They went on as Nigerian leaders exploiting and further denigrating and desecrating our traditional stools. That is why governors and commissioners have been seen commanding and ordering these monarchs around against their wishes and those of their subjects.

Obasanjo could not have done less; and cannot do less. Here’s a man who places himself above others and with the colonial master’s mentality that is deeply ingrained in him. He sees himself as the eternal bank of the world’s knowledge. That’s why he could appoint and pay political advisers from the public coffers as a sitting president and still declare that he would not listen to them. On an altar of sheer arrogance, this man wasted the Yoruba slot for eight years by pursuing his agenda over that of the general public. For example, as a sitting president, he organized fundraisings that birthed his private university, revamped his erstwhile comatose farm project and established a world-class library for himself. He forcefully made his daughter Commissioner in Ogun, his home state, and senator representing the state at the National Assembly. Obasanjo was also reputed for the inglorious Third Term Agenda. 

It is coming from this background that the former president believes that he has a lesson he must drive down the throats of the representatives of our ancestors, the Obas; and he did lead them in that Parade Ground of ‘E dide! E joko!’ (Stand up! Sit down!), which they sheepishly obeyed.

Too bad! Whereas Obasanjo finds it pleasurable to be denigrating Yoruba Obas, he most certainly cannot try the same with any Emir in any part of the North. In the North, monarchs are recognized in their statute books as a result of the penal code system in operation which is different from what obtains in the South. Here in the South, our monarchs are treated as errand boys for politicians.

Hear The Rev’d ‘Toyin Adesokan’s view on the propriety or otherwise of Obasanjo’s impoliteness to the traditional institution in Yorubaland: “I am aware that we have Kings in the Bible, from the Book of Genesis, to the Book of Revelation. Among the Kings were Pharaoh, Saul, David and Solomon. We have also read about Kings Ahab, Ahasuerus and Herod of the New Testament. They were all revered as leaders and as the aggregate of their people’s traditions and culture. Prophet Nathan never thought it right to confront King David even with the overwhelming revelation and backing of God in the case of Bathsheba the wife of Uriah, he treaded wisely. Prophet Elijah ran away from King Ahab and Joseph and Mary the earthly parents of Jesus Christ had to obey the divine instruction to escape the little Jesus to Egypt for fear of King Herod. However, what do you think would have become of Obasanjo in the presence of Kings like David, Pharaoh and Herod with that outburst?”

“Finally, the Bible says about kings: “The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it” (Rev. 21:24 NIV). We see here that Presidents, Prime Ministers and Governors were not mentioned. 1 Samuel 16:2 has also shown the paramount nature of the kings and how divine they are above the man-made presidents and governors.”

With the above from a priest of the Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion) Diocese of Lagos West, need Nigerians say more? After all, there are many ways to insult a Yoruba monarch and I’m sure Obasanjo knows them all.

• Komolafe wrote in from Ijebu-Jesa, Osun State.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is no stranger to controversy. He exudes the vibes: sometimes frontally like an army of occupation exudes aggression, at other times latently like a decaying organism exudes putrid smell. Either way, you can’t miss the vibes or keep out of its stormy orbit. You get pulled in willy-nilly by the sheer bravado of the old man’s postulations. And he seems to relish all the fuss. With his characteristic imperial temerity, you can’t help recalling that his daughter and ex-Senator of the Federal Republic, Iyabo Obasanjo, once accused him openly of behaving like he is God and owner of Nigeria.

‘Baba Obasanjo,’ as he should be rightly addressed at 86 years of age, rides controversy like a storm. Sixteen years on after he left office as two-term president of the current political republic, besides a three-year stint in the late 70s as military head of state, Obasanjo carries himself as Lord of the Manor. He dictates rules of conduct for everybody based on his personal value standards, with any deviation incurring his harsh censure. It was such self-assigned pontifical oversighting that estranged him from his successors – former Presidents Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari – who he badgered with acerbic public letters criticising their performance in office. Mind you, this was against the familiar convention of a predecessor having unfettered access to his incumbent successor to offer counsel in privacy. Those successors, of course, didn’t welcome his irritable pretention to superior wisdom and responded much of the time with equally acerbic ripostes.  As for the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration presently in office, it is ‘morning yet on creation day’ (apologies to the late Chinua Achebe) for the ex-president. Still, he has been darkly expounding doomsday projections that only betrayed his prejudice since he is not exactly dispassionate. He openly canvassed a preferred candidate who lost the last presidential election and is, thus, a loser who cannot now disguise bitterness of electoral loss  as patriotic commentary on the state of the nation.

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But the octogenarian is by no means deterred. He obviously enjoys the ruckus he creates and craves being prominent in national consciousness. Some people argued it might be because he hadn’t written a contentious public letter in a long while that he seized the moment penultimate weekend to foist another controversy on the national psyche. At Iseyin, Oyo State, the ex-president ordered traditional rulers gathered at a state function to get up on their feet, and then to sit down like school children. This was at the commissioning of the 34.85km Oyo-Iseyin Road and the completed Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Iseyin Campus housing the College of Agricultural Sciences and Renewable Natural Resources, at which Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde made Obasanjo special guest.

Visuals of the occasion showed the former president lecturing the assemblage of traditional rulers on the need to respect Yoruba culture and give honour to whom honour is due. Speaking in Yoruba, Obasanjo chided the royals that notwithstanding their office – which in tradition entails cultural and spiritual primacy – they ought to accord respect and honour to age and secular position of authority in line with ethos of ‘Omoluabi’ (Yoruba terminology for cultural decency and propriety). He said in a gruffy voice typical of an angry parade commander: “I greet kings and chiefs here seated. I am grateful you are here. But let me say this: wherever the president or governor is, kings present must stand up to honour him.” At this juncture, he barked at the traditional rulers to “stand up!” which they did in all their royal accoutrement, and then to “sit down!” which they also did. Obasanjo continued: “In Yoruba land, there are two things that are most respected among others: age and position. When a governor is still in power, he’s more powerful than any king. Even when I was President, I prostrated for kings outside, and when we went inside, kings would prostrate for me. So, let’s always celebrate our culture!”

There’s a short visual clip of that function from which many have drawn the conclusion that the ex-president was demanding respect from the traditional rulers primarily for himself and secondarily for Governor Makinde. But that was only partly the case if you saw a longer clip of proceedings at the event. Protocol rules typically provide that lesser officials in secular ranking get to an event venue and take their seat before the arrival of higher placed officials. And so, the royals were already seated at the project commissioning venue in Iseyin before the arrival of Mr. Governor. Upon Makinde’s entry to the venue, however, the traditional rulers, apparently in assumption of their royal primacy, failed to rise to their feet in his honour That was the occasion Obasanjo seized upon to berate them. Note: protocol rules required that ‘lesser mortals’ already seated before the arrival of a ‘higher mortal’ rise in honour of the latter upon his/her entry. Only that at the Iseyin event, there was a latent conflict between secular primacy and cultural primacy resulting in the seeming act of disrespect to the governor by the traditional rulers.

Truth, though, is that this latent conflict might have gone unhighlighted nor indeed taken cognizance of by parties concerned had Obasanjo not constituted himself into a lightning rod on the royals. If you asked me, both the governor and traditional rulers harboured an indifference – uneasy though, it might be – to the protocol rule. It is a valid question, therefore, whether the ex-president secured Makinde’s buy-in before unleashing his spleen on the traditional rulers; and even if he did, whether the delivery was to the governor’s preferred specifications. In other words, there is a big chance Makinde was left blue-faced with embarrassment by Obasanjo’s rain on his parade – after all, it was his projects being commissioned and his due to have all the attention. In typical Obasanjo fashion of attention-jack, however, the governor and his Iseyin projects were thrust in the shadows and all that got noticed was the ex-president’s willful denigration of the Yoruba traditional stool. And not that he left the incident as happenstance. He has returned in national discourse after the Iseyin event to double down in the face of public outrage over his conduct that was widely viewed as sacrilegious; even when a self-acclaimed wife came up to offer public apology on behalf of the Obasanjo family, he disclaimed that apology and dismissed the woman as challenged in mental health.

Obasanjo’s act in Iseyin reinforced the lore about the uncertainty of his Yoruba ancestry. In Yoruba cultural consciousness, traditional rulers are semi-deities, which is to say they are spiritual essences in material packaging, and with inherent primacy over all mortals of whatever secular status. It was in that consciousness apparently that late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, with all his secular preeminence and historical cult following, rose to his feet at a public function in honour of the late Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade, as can be seen in an old clip that was dug up and made viral by netizens in the wake of the Iseyin debacle.

To be clear, no true Yoruba-born of whatever secular status would contest primacy in the open with traditional rulers, even if those same royals would in privacy submit to their preeminence on account of either age, lineage or office. Funny that Obasanjo himself made this very point verbally at the Iseyin event, but self-contradicted by his action. He said when he was president, he prostrated to kings outside but when he went inside – that is to say, in privacy – kings prostrated to him.  But then, what he ordered traditional rulers to do in Iseyin was to ‘prostrate’ outside to him and Governor Makinde, not the other way round. Another self-contradiction was on account of age, which the ex-president said had primacy in Yoruba culture. Obasanjo being in his 80s was on point in demanding obeisance to himself from the traditional rulers, many of whom he surpasses in age. It is indeed likely the royals obliged his culturally impunitous order out of respect for age. But not so for the Oyo governor for whom he as well demanded public obeisance. Governor Makinde is one gifted and favoured young man to whom many of the traditional rulers gathered at Iseyin are of sheer fatherly age. The ex-president’s statement about primacy of age was thus non-sequitur in light of what he demanded of the traditional rulers for Mr. Governor. Actually, Makinde must have cringed inwardly at Obasanjo’s demand from the royals on his account if he himself sets any store by his cultural heritage.

Still, Yoruba culture has abiding respect for age and accommodation of geriatric whimsies. And so, we must allow Baba Obasanjo to ride out this storm and others he may yet kindle in his days at ‘the departure lounge.’

• Please join me on kayodeidowu.blogspot.be for conversation.