Tag: Obasanjo

WHEN ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo issued a scathing statement in January denouncing President Muhammadu Buhari’s second term ambition, he hoped to capitalise on the wave of discontent against the president by forming a coalition to engineer a groundswell of opposition to the government. He had noted exaggeratingly that the biggest opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), was racked by division and acrimony. The scathing statement was well received, and its content fairly accurately captured the mood of the country. The former president’s analysis, his identification of the problems that beset the government, and the despair into which the country had sunk as a consequence of the hardship they were called to endure presented a sensible portrayal of the weaknesses and lethargy of the Buhari presidency.

Chief Obasanjo’s enthusiasm was not only effervescent, it was even mildly infectious. His conclusion soared to great heights despite its obtuseness: “I, therefore, will gladly join such a Movement,” he said of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement which he was inspiring, “when one is established as Coalition for Nigeria, CN, taking Nigeria to the height God has created it to be. From now on, the Nigeria eagle must continue to soar and fly high. CN, as a Movement, will be new, green, transparent and must remain clean and always active, selflessly so.  Members must be ready to make sacrifice for the nation and pay the price of being pioneers and good Nigerians for our country to play the God-assigned role for itself, for its neighbours, for its sub-region of West Africa, for its continent and for humanity in general.  For me, the strength and sustainable success of CN will derive largely from the strong commitment of a population that is constantly mobilized to the rallying platform of the fact that going forward together is our best option for building a nation that will occupy its deserved place in the global community…”

Determined to give the project a great push, the former president, in May, got the movement to adopt one of the registered political parties in the country, with a promise to henceforth take the back seat. Again, displaying unrestrained excitement, and still believing he was letting loose a momentum which no one could stop, let alone President Buhari whom he dismissed as somnolent and nepotistic, he addressed the press to announce the adoption he had in January given indication might be done. Said he in May: “Once again, I congratulate all members of the Coalition for Nigeria Movement, all the political parties and civil society organisations that have adopted African Democratic Congress (ADC) as a political party platform to move Nigeria up and forward and I wish them success for now and the future. The eyes of the nation and the world are on you to show that with people and organisation of like mind, a real difference is possible and you will make it. I wish you well. But always remember that Nigeria belongs to you as it belongs to those in power. If you fail to use the potent weapon democracy offers you, and that is your vote, then you have yourselves to blame. You can move on to the next stage in the democratic advance for change, unity, security, stability, good governance, prosperity and progress. So may it be for Nigeria.”

By May when the adoption was done, it was already becoming somewhat clear to him and many others that his understanding of the gravity of the country’s problems and his estimation of his own strength and political capital were both overstated and overdone. In January, he was of two minds: to get his newfangled coalition to form a critical mass and become the fulcrum of opposition to the Buhari presidency; or to eventually adopt a political party untainted and untrammelled by the vagaries and corruption of the past. But by May, realising that no such critical mass was likely or even conceivable, he and his supporters had become desperate to save face by seeking to operate within the confines of an existing but perhaps innocent party. A few months later, however, with President Buhari’s sullied managerial and leadership image defying gravity and all kinds of ineffective handling of national crises, Chief Obasanjo’s voice had begun to lose oomph, and his customary and feared acerbity also began to wane. Now, together with those who vehemently despise the president’s controversial methods and clannish disposition, the former president has begun to yield to despair.

Opposing the populist President Buhari was always fraught with difficulties. He has a cultic following in some parts of the country based on the general impression of his parsimoniousness. And though he proclaimed his independence at his inauguration, he has in fact been appropriated by a few cabals and sections of the country, most of whom can’t imagine life without him. To the dismay of the rest of the country, that cultic following will last for a long time. In addition, going by the simplicity of his ideas, the vexatious appeal of his gaffes, and his quaint and misplaced imageries, his supporters have found themselves strangely not alarmed by his person or put off by the dissonance in his uncomplicated ideas. Against such a man, the more complex, workaholic, and imposing Chief Obasanjo was going to have it tough going. Chief Obasanjo made sense in his January statement, and even more sense in his May press address, but the public had since learnt not to distill his enviable but apparently mainly theoretical ideals from his person. No matter how beautiful his ideas, it was bad enough that they came from him; he of indefensible superior airs, he who has never been able to propound a thought and inspire a policy without some hidden ulterior motives.

This is of course wrong. In order for the country not to keep cutting its nose to spite its face, the public must learn to disentangle Chief Obasanjo’s person and offensive politics from his sometimes wise and practical interventions, notwithstanding his suspicious intentions. It is indisputable that President Buhari does not inspire confidence in his approach to national issues, shows a disturbing lack of capacity in economic management and consensus building, finds the great underpinnings of democracy too complex to embrace, and has a very narrow understanding of national diversity and how to manage it. These were some of the things Chief Obasanjo pointed out in his statement and press conference. What undid him, however, were his suspect motives and his unmanageable personality.

If the former president had not been so cocksure about everything and had taken advice, he would have made his interventions without offering to champion the liberation of the people. Not only is he no liberator, he surely must sense that much of the country’s problems could be traced to his acts of omission and commission, not to say his abysmal lack of understanding of the tenets of democracy. Now, some eight months or so after he offered to emancipate the country from the parochial clutches of the Buhari presidency, Chief Obasanjo’s enthusiasm has waned very badly, and both the ADC and his Coalition for Nigeria are nearly moribund. Nigeria is rightly, if not sensibly, back to its default mould where the All Progressives Congress (APC) is expected to join battle soon with the PDP. If he cannot worm his way back into the party he spectacularly and openly repudiated some years ago, and if ultimately President Buhari wins re-election, Chief Obasanjo would be hard put to find any sizable relevance beyond occasional epistolary nuisance and verbal intimidation.

The country must now wait with bated breath to find out which of the two main parties is able, by their objectionable recourse to amoral politics, to outplay and outmanoeuvre the other. They have matched each other defection for defection once it was clear that the PDP could not deliver the death blow the APC managed to deliver before the last general election, and they have both been unscrupulous, loud, insensitive and unprincipled. The country will face a Hobson’s choice in 2019, between a party boasting an intransigent and ancient leader and a party boasting a collegial leadership style that neither promises much nor possesses the capacity to deliver much. As every sailor knows, sailing between a rock and a hard place is not the kind of naval adventure that often envisions safe berthing, not to talk of great national rebirth.